Ah, a topic after my own heart. The foods of different fantasy races is a well of jokes that never runs dry. I've touched on the perils of buying caviar from mermaids, how dwarves invented waffles, ghoul cooking techniques (braising is preferred), why cookies are 'elvish food' (due to the Keebler forest elf tribe) and the opening of my first book is a discussion of dwarven cuisine.
“Moles on a spit!” Gammi said as he handed Durham a skewer. Durham had his mouth half open before the words caught up to his brain.
“Ermmm...what?”
“Classic dwarven dish. Very traditional,” the dwarf said. His bald head gleamed under the noon sun and his beard seemed to have acquired as many ingredients as the lunch. “Stuffed ‘em with diced-up wormies, just like me Elder used to,” he whispered theatrically at a volume precisely calculated to make sure everyone heard. “That's me secret ingredient. Don't tell!”
“My lips are sealed,” Durham said. He gave the moles another look and closed his mouth tightly to demonstrate.
There was a sound from across the knoll that resembled a coughing goat. Durham realized it was what passed for Thud's notion of laughter.
“Not what ye was expecting for lunch, eh?” Thud said.
Thud made his way through the scattered groups of dwarves and plopped down on the grass next to him. Somehow he made the action grandiose. The dwarf always seemed to move and act as if he were standing on a stage. He looked the part, with a curled waxed mustache, crisp black kilt and colorful layers of shirts and vest beneath a long black coat with tails. Thud reached out and took the skewer from Durham's unresisting grasp, navigated it past his mustache and happily sank his teeth into it.
“It's like this, lad,” he said, wiping mole juice off of his chin with his sleeve. “What's yer favorite food?”
Durham paused, having not expected a direct question after an explanatory lead-in.
“Well, sausage, I guess. And cheese,” he added, casting a longing glance toward Ruby's wedge. She scooted the cheese closer to herself without looking up from her journal.
Thud nodded.
“Aye, aye. Fine choices I'm sure.” He chewed his mole thoughtfully. “Cheese, where you takes liquid from a cow lady's business parts, mix it with a bit o' juices from a baby cow's fourth stomach and then let it grow all fuzzy-moldy for a few years, eh?”
“I suppose...” Durham said, not having really thought about how cheese was made before.
“And sausage,” Thud continued, “where you takes all the bits with the tubes and orifices and grinds 'em up together. Then you takes an intestine, squeeze the turds out of it and stuffs the ground-up tubey bits in.”
Durham actually had seen sausage made once but had heretofore successfully repressed the memory.
“Have you ever had a bananer?” Thud asked
“Banana,” Ruby corrected. Thud ignored her.
Durham shook his head, figuring that since he had no idea what Thud was talking about that 'no' was a pretty safe answer.
“Fruit from down in Akama. S'like a yeller boomeroo, kinda, except round and sometimes it's red or green.”
Durham mentally fished through that sentence for a bit.
“Boomeroo?” he decided on, response-wise.
“Kangarang?” Thud muttered to himself. “Don't recollect exactly. Looks like a crescent moon. Comes back at ya when you throws it.”
“The moon? Or the banana?”
Thud narrowed his eyes at him as if speculating on his intelligence.
“Boomerang,” Ruby said. Thud ignored her.
“No matter,” he went on. “Me point is that you never ate one so it can't be your favorite food, now, can it?”
“No!” Durham said, happy to finally have an answer he was sure of.
“Your favorite food is sausage and cheese. Why?”
“They...they taste good?”
“So do bananers but they ain't your favorite. Why ain't you never had one?”
“Well, I don't live in Akama, I guess.”
“Precisely!” Thud beamed at him as if an important point had been made. He frowned after a second or two as it became obvious that Durham had missed whatever that point had been.
“I'm trying to explain cuisine to you, lad. Work with me here.” There was an edge of exasperation in his voice. “You have cows and pigs where you’re from, eh?”
“Yes.”
“So you have sausage and cheese. You don't have nanner trees though so you ain't had one o' those. Where you live determines your cuisine, is me point.”
“Right.” Durham felt like he'd finally caught up to at least part of the conversation.
“Now, where do dwarves live?”
“In the Hammerfell Mountains, in Kheldurn.” Durham answered. Several of the other dwarves promptly adopted slightly misty-eyed expressions.
“Yes! Literally IN the bleeding mountain.” Thud said, jabbing enthusiastically with his finger, presumably in the direction of Kheldurn. “Think we has cows or pigs or nanner trees down there?”
“No?” Durham guessed.
“What we has is moles and worms and shroomies. Fungis and lichens. Wiggly white fish, bats and bugs.” He waved his skewered mole demonstratively, much of which he'd somehow managed to consume through the conversation. “So this right here? Fine example of dwarven cuisine, this is.”
“Obliged!” Gammi called out. He was under the great oak, chopping more worms.
“Some o' the things I've eaten across the world...well, make ya right happy for a mole on a stick,” Thud said.
“You must travel a lot,” Durham quickly commented, hoping to change the subject before Thud could launch into a discourse on things he'd eaten in foreign lands.