travel cakes

Travel cakes are a staple food of made of dried or preserved meat ground into small pieces and mixed with a fatty paste.  They are dense, easily portable, and filling, popular with women whose work takes them too far from home to enjoy a freshly cooked midday meal.  Travel cakes are the primary source of food for boys traveling between villages, especially during the 3-6 day walk from Berry Seed Village to Moon Wish village.  Because of their density and ease of transport, when food is sent from one village to another it is usually in the form of travel cakes.  The women of Moon Wish Village, in the early years of establishing that settlement, depended heavily on travel cakes from Star Flower Village.  The habit stuck, and travel cakes are more a part of the daily diet there than in any other village.

Execution

The meat can be any kind of fish or game, sliced thin and dried or smoked to brittleness, then pulverized in a two-stage process of breaking and grinding.  The surrounding matrix is a paste made of fat mixed with seeds or berries.  If fat is scarce certain plant roots can be ground and substituted, but the resulting cakes do not store as well and should be eaten quickly.

Components and tools

The dried meat is broken up on a flat mortar with a rolling pestle until it is in pieces smaller than the palm of the hand.  Then it is transferred to a bowl mortar with a smooth pestle and ground into fragments the size of grass seed.  The vegetable ingredients are prepared similarly, depending on how big they are to start with.

View from the future

Compact, nonperishable rations remain staples on long ocean voyages, although this exact recipe is rarely followed anymore. Improved methods of food preservation have made possible a wider and healthier range of choices.