Chapter 6 – Animal Husbandry, Dairy Farming, and Air Loner Misgivings

<– Previous Chapter | Glossary | ToC | Next Chapter –> | Jump to Volume 19 –>>

“Milk and dairy products are fine and all, but Earl Baumeister, men are all about meat!”

“Haah, I see…”

“The meat is great since the cow originally was a monster and had been fattened!”

Given that Doushi had contacted us that he has some presents for Friedrich and the other children, we held a barbecue party in our garden today. While also using the opportunity to test the meat of the cows and goats which Bruck had re-domesticated and fattened up, we were grilling a large amount of meat slices on a netting that was heated from below. Doushi was especially wolfing down that meat with great relish.

“Wend, the goat meat has a rather peculiar taste, doesn’t it?”

“Hrmm…”

Since the goats grew up in a rather harsh environment, their meat and milk would have a peculiar taste, despite being cattle that was often kept on Earth as well.

The goat meat of this world also has a somewhat weird taste… I’m slightly bad with that flavor.

“Doushi is eating the meat without minding it, though.”

“Well, Doushi happily eats monster meat that hasn’t been processed properly, so yeah…”

It’s not like his taste buds are busted. He simply likes dishes that overflow with a wild flavor.

Erw and I remembered how Doushi had delightfully eaten monster meat after just sprinkling it with salt in the past. Erw could eat such meat without a care as well, but to be honest, I could do without.

“So, what kind of presents have you brought, Doushi?”

“I am sure Friedrich and the other babies will love it! They will most certainly scramble to get on!”

Doushi praised his own present while kind of answering Erw’s question.

“(Doushi is a dangerous man at times like these)”

“(Indeed…)”

“(Right)”

Burkhart, who was visiting today as well, and Therese regarded Doushi’s present for the babies as dangerous without having even seen it yet.

Not even taking a look at it would be rude…is nothing I believed, though.

“In a little while, you will be able to take out the babies on your walks. I can tell since I have watched my own children grow up! Accordingly, I asked a craftsman friend of mine and had him build a baby carriage!”

Baby carriages exist in this world as well. It might be the perfect example for people building the same things, despite belonging to different worlds, as long as the intended use is similar.

However, because this would be a baby carriage used by nobles, the material, design, and ornaments had to be extravagant. And it’d be adorned with the family crest to show it off to the people spotting the carriage.

Doushi had apparently brought a baby carriage for my kids as a present. I got him to immediately take it out of his Magic Bag and show us.

“Baby carriage? My babies will happ…bfft!”

“Umm…Uncle-sama?”

The instant he presented the baby carriage to everyone, we all became speechless. It definitely looked like it had taken quite a lot of time and effort to produce. If you looked at the materials used, it was obvious that it had also cost lots of money.

I’m very grateful, but the crappy…eerie design robbed everyone other than Elise and me of their voices.

“I personally told the craftsman how to make it so that Earl Baumeister’s children would grow up healthy and strong!”

“You came up with this design?”

“I was not very familiar with this, but I did my best!”

“I feel like you mistook the direction to channel your efforts…”

Not familiar…no, even if he’s not familiar with it, the craftsmen are professionals. They should have been able to follow the client’s request in regards to design and form.

In short, Doushi’s artistic sense is the worst…moreover, it’s the worst in various ways, but as might be expected, even Burkhart-san found it hard to give it to him straight.

“Wend-sama, kinda scary.”

“(It’s definitely ghastly…)”

Doushi’s present was doubtlessly intended for boys. I could sense a will to make babies and small children happy by having the whole carriage look like an animal, but it used a design that seemed like it’d make anyone run away in terror.

“It’s got three heads.”

“It is awesome, is it not, Ina-jou?”

“Is…it?”

Given that it was intended to be like an animal, its exterior was covered by an animal pelt. Going by the size, it had to be a bear pelt or something like that. It possessed stuffed heads at its front. The bear cub, boar, and horned buck heads made it rather look like Cerberus, the watchdog of hell.

The tails of a bear, boar, and deer had also been installed in its back.

Looking at such attention to detail, you could tell that this baby carriage had been made to be elaborate. But, the question whether its elaborate make would suit the user’s taste was another story altogether…

I could strongly feel the relevance and discrepancy of that question when I looked at this carriage.

“Friedrich and the other babies will also consider it 『awesome』!”

“(Really?)” Luise tilted her head in doubt.

You could find tons of baby products modeled after animals in Japan as well, and I think this carriage had been built with the very same intention.

But, Doushi’s artistic sense and taste was simply too different from any normal person. Usually you’d aim for a cute, distorted animal design for children, but unfortunately that thinking still hasn’t spread in this world, it seems.

Since they had used the animal materials just like that, the whole thing became too realistic, and thus completely missed its goal of being some adorable animal-look-alike. Though it seems like the person himself hasn’t noticed it at all…

“(The thing’s craftsmanship is so pointlessly decent. All because Doushi has enough money to spend)

『So pointlessly』 is obviously an expression of Therese’s true thoughts on this. I’m sure it wouldn’t have turned out like this if he had simply entrusted the making of this carriage to the artistic sense and technical ability of the craftsman.

“In addition, I also prepared this!” He said and started to retrieve a merry-go-round for babies out of his Magic Bag.

It was a toy to be hung up over the heads of the babies. Given that we received several of those at the time when my babies had just been born, we had installed them over their cribs in turns, but Doushi had apparently brought a new merry-go-round with him, too.

“(Hubby, I have a bad feeling about this)”

“……”

I couldn’t deny Katia’s anxiety at all. Doushi had already pulled out such a weird baby carriage. Hence, the probability of him not pulling something similar with the merry-go-round was zero.

“It is something like this! After I heard your opinion in the past, Earl Baumeister, I used it as a reference!”

As we were currently in the garden, Doushi made his merry-go-round float with 『Telekinesis』. He had probably matched it to fit with the room used by my babies. The considerably huge merry-go-round…had the same flaw as the carriage…

Instead of using deformed, cute animals, stuffed birds, bugs, and other small animals hung from it. To be honest here, its outward appearance was way too grotesque.

It caused us to be lost for words once again. I felt like screaming, 『Such baby items exist as well!?!』

“(Wend, you know…),” whispered Erw to me, apparently guessing from my expression what my heart was yelling.

“(I didn’t say it with such an intention!)”

Explaining the concept of cute, distorted animal characters to the people of this world was hard. I don’t know how they’d interpret it, but either way, I’d like them to not simply hang up stuffed animals on a merry-go-round. Any normal baby would cry at that sight, and it’d do a really shitty job in teaching them aesthetic sense and so on.

“(Hasn’t it been a mistake to leave it to Doushi-sama’s senses in the first place?)”

“(True. It also looks like it’d become a sanitary issue…)”

The idea of placing stuffed animals in a room with babies can be regarded as highly questionable. Amalie-san was correct here.

Also, as Lisa says, I also bear some responsibility for not having explained things in detail while believing that Doushi’s senses would be similar to those of an ordinary person.

“Earl Baumeister! I am positive that your babies will rejoice over this as well! Right, Elise?”

“Yes, you must be right…”

Elise’s personality wasn’t one that would allow her to say, 『As if that could ever be true!!』.

But, in the end, the baby carriage and merry-go-round, which Doushi had brought over as presents, were quickly stowed away in a storehouse to rot there for eternity.

＊　　　＊　　　＊

“Oh, cow meat! This is delicious!”

“Indeed. Some time ago, a noble served it for me, but the meat was sinewy and it didn’t taste all that good.”

Setting aside the issue with Doushi’s presents, we held a barbecue party in our garden, using the beef which Bruck had brought over for us today.

We immediately dished out the beef after roasting it over charcoal, and Doushi as well as Burkhart-san enjoyed it very much.

“Is it because they used to be monsters?”

“That also plays a role, but mostly it is an issue of fodder.”

“The fodder?”

The meat of bred cows was treated as high-class food by nobles, but the fodder used for those cows was grass.

I think there also exist opinions that it’s only reasonable for cows to eat grass, but many of the cows raised on Earth for consumption were also fed with grain. Otherwise, the cow meat wouldn’t have such a tender texture, not to mention the marbling. I’ve heard that it was common in the past to use beef for stew and other cooked dishes.

An acquaintance, who ran a butcher’s shop, told me so in my previous life, but the beef of some places was used as a source of cheap meat since they raised their cows by only feeding them grass to obtain lean meat that would be then mostly used for processed goods. According to him, that meat had 『a truly grassy taste, if you ate it just like that』. Of course it meant such meat wasn’t anything you could roast and then eat just like that.

Then again, it seems like beef and butter of grass-fed cows is being highly evaluated as healthy among celebrities, and those people are willing to pay big sums of money for those products or some such. I recall that you could especially sell butter of grass-fed cows for a rather decent price.

However, this world shouldn’t have any meat…catering towards celebrities and rich people fussing over the fodder being grass because it’s organic and tastes well. There’s no way that beef of grass-fed cows can win against monster meat. And the rich are partially buying it as a means to show off their vanity.

“The cow, who provided this meat, was given grain.”

“That sure is a luxurious treatment.”

Given that this world has no excess in food, it’s common to not turn grain into animal fodder. If I remember correctly what I’ve heard in my previous life, you need ten grains to produce one meat, so it’s impossible for many fiefs which aren’t as big and wealthy as my earldom where we have recently increased the production output by expanding the farmland at a fast pace.

“Wend-sama, another serving.”

“Sure, here you go.”

“Delicious.”

“Uoooohhh! I cannot afford to lose!”

Triggered by Wilma’s pace of eating, Doushi kept wolfing down large quantities of roasted beef. At this rate, the meat of one whole cow…can be devoured easily by those two. Amazing.

“And we also prepared new dishes to go with it.”

Because I got my hands on beef at long last, I tried my hand at making roast beef. It took a bit of time and effort, but it’s a dish that can be done well by anyone as long as they invest the necessary care and time.

“Dear, the meat is still red. Is it going to be alright like this?”

“Yes, it’s supposed to be like that.”

Eating raw meat was regarded as dangerous in this world. Even in the Mizuho Dukedom, they only ate fish raw while sticking to eating meat after heating it up.

For this reason, Elise was worried whether it’d be okay to eat the roast beef which had a red core.

“This is a meat dish that’s cooked at low temperature.”

“Cooking at low temperature? It is my first time hearing of such a cooking method.”

Meat is known as an ingredient that can be superheated in a minute at 75°C, but over here it’s commonplace to thoroughly grill, cook, or steam meat. Because of that, the meat will become hard, dry or disgusting, depending on the cooking method you use. Low-temperature cooking is a method to amend that.

First, you put the beef into a vacuum pack…and that’s where I already stumbled. This world doesn’t have any plastic bags to store ingredients. Low-temperature cooking is about improving the heat conduction by placing the meat in a vacuum pack, and yet…

Just as I was about to give up and prepare the beef normally, I suddenly remembered. During the civil war in Urquhart, we happened to defeat the master of a monster domain called Shore Turtle King Rainbow Assault with a special magic gun, but its cord was protected by a pseudo-gum material. That material was processed from the mucus of huge slugs which inhabited the northern forests.

It might work with that material.

I quickly contacted the Duke Mizuho House and had them process the slug mucus into the shape of a vinyl sheet. Moreover, they did it for free.

Once I explained to Duke Mizuho that I’d use it for low-temperature cooking of meat, he told me that they’d try it as well, and I got them to provide me with many vinyl sheets as collateral for the idea.

Nothing less of Mizuho people who fuss so much over food.

After I put a lump of beef into a newly-obtained vinyl bag, I warmed it at low temperature. In Japan, you’d have all kinds of cookware for this, but this world didn’t possess any magic tools which could provide low heat over an extended period of time.

Fortunately, we had found a thermometer among the excavated items of the Ancient Magic Civilization’s era, so I filled hot water into a big pot, and put the lump of meat, which I had hermetically sealed in the fake-plastic bag, into the water.

I had sprinkled salt on the meat, but as far as I’ve heard 0.9% was the ideal ratio for that. If the salt concentration exceeds one percent, food will taste salty to humans. On the other hand, if the salt concentration falls beneath 0.7%, humans will regard the food as stale. Even when roasting fish or boiling pasta, this rule applied.

Since I’m not that skilled a cook, I measured the amount of salt and meat with a magic tool, but people like Betty’s brother do this by eye. Even if you might say this or that about him, in the end he’s a professional cook.

Also, salt had the attribute of drawing excess moisture from meat and condensing the umami.

Next came the heating, but since the water would heat up too much if I heated it with fire or the magic stove, I heated it with magic while keep an eye on the temperature through the thermometer. 55-60°C for around an hour is considered ideal for the low-temperature cooking of meat. This allows it to kill all the germs which could cause food poisoning while keeping the meat tender and juicy.

I forgot the precise names, but it seems like there exist two types of proteins. One type increases the umami if you heat the meat while the other causes the umami to escape while hardening the meat’s texture. In other words, the temperature range from 55 to 60°C makes it possible to heat the meat while increasing the umami and avoiding a hardening of the meat texture. In exchange, I had to heat it for an extended period of time, but as a result of that, I completed a soft, delicious roast beef.

Given that it was roast beef, I grilled it over open fire before eating it. This added some fragrance to the beef, making it taste even better. I also treated boar and fowl meat to the same low-temperature cooking, and placed the various types of meat on a plate after cutting them up.

I tried them with salt only, after sprinkling them with salt and citrus juice, and with a sauce that used soy sauce and miso, but as the meat was tender, all of those combinations were very good.

At this point, I can label this as a great success, I’d say.

“The fowl meat isn’t dry at all and tastes wonderful.”

“Fowl meat becomes tough if you heat it for too long.”

This especially applies to the chest and tenderloin meat. Since those have little fat, the proteins end up coagulating too much if you overheat. Given that you don’t run such a risk with low-temperature cooking, Wilma enjoyed the meat processed with that method very much.

“Uoooohhh! It is absolutely delicious!” Doushi tried to compete with her.

“Hmm, so you kept the temperature of the water level with magic, huh? As master of your master, I can evaluate you highly for having improved your ability in controlling your magic, Earl-sama. But, I’d like you to display such finesse for a lot of other magic spells.”

Even though he said all that, Burkhart-san seemed to also like the low-temperature-cooked meat. Because he worked as an adventurer, he should have had plenty of opportunities to grill the meat of hunted game and eat it. I’m sure there were times when he got stumped by meat that had become hard after being overheated.

“Wend-sama, another serving.”

“One more serving for me as well!”

“There’s none left anymore.”

The entire process of low-temperature cooking took quite a bit of time and effort since I had to cook it with my magic alone. Given that it’d be too much trouble to low-temperature-cook meat for another hour, I placed one piece of meat, which had been pickled in whey, after the other on the grill net.

Doing it like this allowed the lactic acid in the whey to affect the meat proteins, making the meat tender.

“Good grief, you’re really the perfect housewife, Wend.”

“I don’t really mind being called that.”

A full-time house-husband, huh…

“I feel like that’d be nice as well. I could take care of my babies, and even if I holed myself up in my own territory, it’d be fine since I’m the local lord here. In reality, there’s lots of nobles where you don’t even know what they usually do all day long.”

“No, no, no, that’s not good! Wend, you have a name to uphold! Luise, don’t give Wend any stupid ideas!”

“Ehhhhh!? My words didn’t even suggest anything like that, okay?”

“The nobles of the royal palace will not allow for that to happen anyway!”

“Right. The same can be said about my master.”

“…That doesn’t make me happy at all.”

“We share a fate here. It is the karma of all those who possess a tremendous amount of mana!”

“Magicians are being worked hard for sure. Though it also comes with lots of profits. Anyway, let’s enjoy today’s barbecue party.”

I had objections towards the opinions of Doushi and Burkhart-san, but either way, the barbecue based on the beef and dairy products provided by Bruck was a huge success.

◆◇◆

“Ee───eh!!? You completely finished all that meat in half a day? And even the dairy products?”

“We had Wilma and Doushi with us.”

“For humans who eat more than cows to truly exist…”

Even Bruck, as someone well-versed with animals, couldn’t predict, or rather, understand the amount of food these two would scarf down, without having seen it with his own two eyes.

＊　　　＊　　　＊

“Moo───oh!”

“(The cows of these are mooing as well, huh? …Well, I guess that’s only natural though)”

“They’re quite obedient despite having originally been monsters.”

“Is it because they have no magic stone?”

On the next day after the barbecue, I went on a ranch inspection with Roderich, just to spot Bruck examining the cows medically. He did so as it’d be impossible to wring out good milk if they weren’t healthy.

Looking at him from a distance, Bruck gives one the perfect impression of a veterinarian.

“Milord, Roderich-sama, the cows have mostly calmed down, and nowadays, the amount of milk they’re producing is increasing, too.”

“That’s great to hear.”

Given that I created all kinds of trial dishes, it might soon be time to distribute the recipes to the restaurants in Baulburg. But before that, it’s necessary to guarantee a stable supply of dairy products. That’s the part where I’d like Bruck to pool his efforts.

“As the scale of the ranch is going to only grow from now on, the number of people working under you will also increase, and your responsibilities will become increasingly heavier, I think.”

Since he had been raising and managing horses in his previous job, Bruck was actually treated as retainer with a fairly high rank within the Earl Baumeister House. He was properly carrying out the work I asked of him as family head, and since Bruck himself was a son of the Viscount Hofen House, his pedigree was reasonably good, too.

People complaining about him publicly didn’t exist. And yet, it looked like he had no human friends as always…no, wait, wouldn’t he be envious since he doesn’t have a single human friend?

“Ah, but…”

“Milord, is something weighing on your mind?”

“Bruck, are you unmarried?”

This world’s rules forced Bruck to make children in order to strive in his management and development of the ranch belonging to the Baumeister House. So is he going to be okay with that part if he doesn’t have a single human friend?

There’s no way that he’s going to marry an animal like in some fairy-tale, so I got a bit worried whether he’d be able to find a fiancée.

“Me? Milord, please do not worry. I have had a proper fiancée to begin with, and although it only happened the other day, I was able to bond with a daughter of Baron Beckener’s vassal…”

“Seriously?”

“Quite so.”

When I reflexively looked at Roderich, his expression told me, 『I’m aware of it, but is there anything wrong?』. I couldn’t hide my astonishment at Bruckner being able to shrewdly secure himself a second bride during that busy time.

“(Why is Bruck so popular while not having any friends?)”

Is it because he’s so capable at his work? How did he land that young woman during all the hustle-bustle around the catching of cattle when he’s not that handsome a guy?

My head was filled with question marks.

“I would like you, Milord and Roderich-sama, to attend our wedding ceremony, if possible.”

“I have already freed up my schedule, so you can count on my participation. Milord, you are okay with this as well, right?”

“Sure…of course, I’ll gladly take you up on that offer. Congratulations, Bruck.”

“Thank you very much, Milord.”

Just now while answering, I thought of this, but even though Bruck is claiming that he has no friends, he’s quite close to Roderich, and he’s also popular among women.

I gradually started to believe that him having no human friends might actually be no more than a lie.

“Do you really have no human friends?”

“Yes. This is yet another fate of my family, I’d say. We quickly get along well with animals,” Bruck answered my question with a smile, but gradually the doubt that Bruck might be an Air Loner in reality took shape in my head.

◆◇◆

I mean, the one who knows best about true loners is me. Though that’s nothing to brag about.

<– Previous Chapter | Glossary | ToC | Next Chapter –> | Jump to Volume 19 –>>