Grab-Brew Stew

"Meals are the special privlege of the living. In order to stay alive, we need to keep eating. Now come on, it's time to eat!"

From the advent of mankind, to the dawn of exploration, to the times of war, to the modern day, Edda has been full of travellers and wanderers of all kinds. While there are a million variations between people, of too many sources to count, one thing that any living creature needs is a good meal to get them through the coldest nights. 
For the traveller, their most reliable light in the darkness is Grab-Brew Stew, the name for a cross-cultural catch-all cuisine that combines a simple yet flavorful stock with whatever can be foraged from a travellers immediate area. From ancient times to present days, it's stayed a rare point of consistency and evergreen Eddan culture.

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Mechanics & Inner Workings

The culinary design of the Grab-Brew Stew is to combine a simple-to-make stock with general flavor enhancement so that whatever is added in won't clash, and instead be emboldened by the stock itself. Each nation, heck, each region of Edda has their own variations on this core premise, with their most local starch or similarly filling stock-maker combined with salty seasonings. Listing each and every possible combination would be an incredibly taxing and unnecessarily thorough adventure, so let's talk about the most common variation in the modern market: Central Magnian!
The stock begins with Reintuber, local potatoes with a rich flavor and softer interior. They are reduced to broth with small bits of thickening tomato paste and, on occasion, bits of other root vegetables such as celery or carrots. Once the broth is made, it is enhanced by simple salt and Sprite grass, an herb found in droves among the grass plains of Magnum Opus, and well liked for making all manners of meat taste all the savorier. This base broth is then sealed by various means, usually bottled tightly, and saved for later.
Once the travelling party has made their camp, all one needs to do is start a campfire and get a pot for the broth to get ready. In the most dire cases, it can be eaten on it's own, but it will be missing many nutrients. Instead, while the fires are being set up and the broth is heating, this is when it's best to forage for the ingredients that'll go into it. For lone wanderers, it's best to have these items prepared beforehand, as you'll never know what might come along to take your delicious smelling broth.
For a fully hearty batch of stew, you're going to want to find a kind of meat to put in, a filling vegetable, and an accenting ingredient, either a different vegetable or a local herb or fruit, although sweet fruits will most likely clash. After the other ingredients are harvested and prepared, it just comes down to adding them into the meal and letting the salt, broth, and Sprite grass do it's job, and you'll have a simple yet filling meal in no time.

History

A warm, filling meal has always been one of, if not the biggest priority for travelers of all stripes. Noble battallions of soldiers, plucky adventurers on the move, merchants going from city to city, or your simple minstrel wandering the world, everyone needs to eat. So, with simple storage solutions and only needing a campfire and the natural surroundings, the collective culinary invention known as Grab-Brew Stew was made!
The food gains it's modern name from the fact that the stew itself starts with an easily, and cheaply, made soup stock, with all of the most essential pieces coming from what travellers can scavenge around them. In a dense forest? Hunt for some squirrel or rabbit meat, and add in some nuts or berries. Grassy plain? Sure to find a deer, or perhaps some passing birds! Mountainous region? Goats will be most common along with larger avian species! Any environment can be the right one, leading to the universality of the product. In fact, it's so universal that no one in all of Edda can pin down who did it "first", although fierce debates take place over who does it best.
Despite the modern day having plenty of speedy modes of travel, paired with many more developed settlements for people to wander into, loads of people still travel and prefer life on the road, so the meal carries on in popularity, with inns, general stores, taverns, and adventurers guilds selling loads of the base stock for a pittance of coin.
Despite the stock itself having plenty of variety based on location, the most commonly used one is the Central Magnian variation, which gained popularity as Magnian merchants traveled to-and-fro both within their country and outside its borders. As mentioned earlier, it uses the nations Reintuber as the main starchy stock maker with a simple seasoning of salt, pepper, and Sprite grass to ensure it's the best flavor-enhancing stock on the market.

Significance

Grab-Brew Stew is a rare piece of Pan-Eddan culture that sprang uniquely without any additional influence. Every person in Edda can find some level of common ground with each other, even if it's as simple as needing a good meal and making use of whatever you can. While the good stew hasn't been any revolutionary influence, it's been a beacon of familiarity even in unfamiliar lands, and a helpful piece of survival that anyone can make good on, no matter who they are. It's also been an evergreen dish, being made and eaten since the dawn of cooking! It's a cross-cultural cornerstone that isn't going away anytime soon.

Item type

Consumable, Food / Drink

Creation Date

Impossible to narrow down

Rarity

Exceedingly common

Weight

around 12 lbs with a full pot

Base Price

2 copper for the base stock