#wet and wild used to have trays like this in the grocery store but I don’t see them anymore post pandemic | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

3lc3lc3lc · 4 years

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JOSHUA TREE

An excerpt from my short story collection NOWHERE FAST, out now.

“so what i’m gonna do is i’m gonna get a moped and i’m gonna ride it around the desert. and i’ll have my shotgun for if i see a rattlesnake. you think i could shoot a rattlesnake from a moped?”

“sure, prolly.”

“i’ll shoot the fuck out of a rattlesnake. fuck a rattlesnake.”

“yea fuck em.”

“anyway, you can visit me if you want.”

“hmmmmm….. maybe.”

“hey can i call you? i can’t type so good. i got fat thumbs. plus i’m on ecstasy.”

Anna was in Los Angeles, where Ray lived, two weeks later on business. The business was a magazine interview with an R&B singer whose manager stopped returning Anna’s phone calls immediately upon her arrival. The business was a free vacation. “Guess where I’m at,” she texted Ray from the hotel. They’d been messaging each other for a month, friends of friends. Ray seemed psychotic, but that was no problem.

“You should come over and help me pack. I’ve got some soju,” he replied. Ray was moving to Joshua Tree in two days to make sad synthesizer music in the desert. “Oh. One thing I have to tell you. My teeth are all fucked up. I don’t smile in pictures. Thought you should know.”

An inflatable duck the size of a Subaru was drifting across the pool next to Ray’s apartment building on Sunset. The Elliott Smith mural from the one album cover used to be around the corner, he told Anna in the lobby, but they recently turned it into a brunch restaurant. “Oh and I’ve got a present for you.” They took the elevator to his studio, which was carpeted and offered roughly nothing in the way of furniture. The teeth were as advertised, a double row of craggy gray shards that made his mouth look like abstract expressionism. She sat on a cardboard box while Ray poured little cups of soju and retrieved a bag of mushrooms from a drawer. They ate a handful of caps each. “This isn’t your present. Come on.”

She followed him to the back of the apartment building, where three of Ray’s neighbors were smoking around a fire pit. Mary was in her fifties and blessed with the virtue of persistence, as demonstrated by the portable respirator she carted around in her non-smoking hand. Jeff with the blonde ponytail and Dickies had recently come back from Afghanistan. “Jeff’s better at Jeopardy than anyone on earth,” said Ray. “Other than me.” “Thanks, man,” said Jeff. In the corner, a large bearded man was lost in the act of twisting up some sort of balloon animal. “This is Balloonski,” said Ray. “Don’t look yet!” said Balloonski, his hands swooping and squeaking like ridiculous birds. Anna turned the other way and smoked a cigarette. By the time she’d finished, the balloon was in the shape of a man playing the saxophone. “Surprise!” said Ray. She promised to keep it always. “Balloonski,” she said, “you’re going places. The world will know your balloons. You’re headed straight to the top, kid. Did you know I’m a journalist?”

They went back to Ray’s apartment and fucked on the carpet to Elliott Smith, the popcorn ceiling rippling like lava. “Yeah so I think I’m in love with you,” Ray said. “Let’s go to your hotel and see what’s in the mini bar.” Anna swaddled the balloon jazz man in her jacket, their beautiful baby boy. “Sup, chumps?” she found herself barking at the nice people drinking wine in the hotel lobby, for no special reason beside the fact that she was untouchable and would never die.

They got to work on the mini bar, starting with the Wild Turkeys, then the Bombay Sapphires, then the Titos. Ray poured the last couple bottles on the floor and hurled them at the wall. “It ain’t on our dime, baby!” he crowed. “This is on Corporate America’s tab!” She couldn’t be sure if the room charges were, in fact, on Corporate America’s tab, nor if she would continue to have a job when all was said and done, but she could admit the sentiment was rousing. Give the guy ten minutes and suddenly you’re voting him for alderman. Ray called up room service, sprawled on the bed like some sort of Ottoman aristocrat. “Good morning. My wife would like to order steak and eggs please.”

It was May when she arrived in Joshua Tree. Or it was April. In any case, Prince had died and the desert was colder than she had imagined. It was an hour drive from the Palm Springs airport in a cab softly playing the greatest hits of Third Eye Blind, the windmills off the highway waving palely in the dark like great irrelevant gods. She should check out that place, the cab driver offered as some nameless saloon slipped past, if she wanted to meet a nice Marine. That sounded good, Anna said. She could swear the mountains were flashing with faraway wet yellow eyes.

The headlights caught Ray in front of a little house made of corrugated sheet metal that looked to be held together with staples, doing what could generously be described as karate. There were no neighbors to be seen for half a mile. “Darling, we haven’t any food!” Ray greeted her. The closest store was a two hour walk along the side of the highway, and it was closed. “But Loretta left a handle of Seagram’s, so we’ll be straight.” Who this Loretta was supposed to be she hadn’t a clue, but she would take a drink. Inside Ray’s Siamese cat hunted moths around the place, which was surprisingly well appointed, decorated with woven Navajo rugs and rattan furniture and a beaded curtain that clacked when you went from the kitchen to the bedroom. They drank gin and water and Ray told her the stories of his collection of scars, this one from being smashed over the head with a beer bottle, this one from falling through a skylight. By the time the sun was coming up she was drunk enough to ask: “Who’s Loretta?”

“Oh. Loretta’s my roommate.”

“There’s only one room.”

“We trade off. Anyway she’s not here right now.”

“Well where is she?”

“Couldn’t really tell you.”

Ray went and got the gin, refilled both their glasses to the top, and put on a movie about a dog who gets terribly abused by all numbers of people. Within twenty minutes he was sobbing uncontrollably, not even trying to be quiet about it. That was her favorite thing about Ray, probably. He cried at all the dog movies.

In the daytime Ray would hunch shirtless over his keyboard, chainsmoking spliffs and endlessly writing the same wordless song. Anna lay on a towel in the baked dirt of the yard, mindlessly scrolling through apps on her phone and seeing white when she stood up. Sometimes she watched Ray work, dragging colorful little chunks of minutiae back and forth across his computer screen and fiddling with knobs doing who knows what, the room quiet but for the bass in his headphones. This kind of boredom she had always liked, the kind that reminded her of sinking into decrepit couches to watch boys shoot at Nazis or whatever with their Playstation controllers. The wonderful kind of dullness that ferried you safely from one hour to the next. In any case, she’d lost her job. What else was there to do. She had two weeks left in the desert.

They were out front watching for jackrabbits when a bandaid-colored Volvo scraped up on wings of dust. A lady got out. She looked to be in her mid-sixties, with long gray hair and a tired face, dressed in the linens of some kind of cult, maybe. And she’d brought luggage. “I stopped at the Walmart and got hamburgers and beer,” she said, hauling out shopping bags from the back seat.

“Hi mom,” Ray said.

Ray’s mother turned to Anna. “Who’s this? Are you going to help me with the groceries?”

“Sorry... Ray didn’t tell me, uh...”

“You may call me Loretta. Here.” She handed Anna a case of Miller Lite. Anna carried it inside, shoving the underwear she’d left on the floor in her backpack before coming back for the next one. She caught Ray’s eye as he grabbed a box of frozen beef patties. “It’s cool,” he said. “We’ll sleep in the living room.” He turned to Loretta. “The drive was okay?”

“Left Tucson at four this morning,” Loretta said. “I feel like hell. Where did I put my…..?” She rummaged around in the glove compartment, retrieved five or six pill bottles, and went inside. Ray followed.

The sky was going pink and orange as Loretta unpacked her things and Ray heated up the charcoal grill. Anna made slow figure eights around the yard, listening to lizards scuttle around in the rocks. There were a few things she knew about Ray’s mother. She knew Loretta had been married five times. She knew Loretta had been a teacher, and that she wasn’t one anymore. She knew Ray hadn’t seen his mother in ten years, or at least that’s what he’d said, that Loretta’s boyfriend wouldn’t let him set foot in their house.

Loretta appeared in the doorway, her white linens dyed peach with twilight. “Would you like to play a game of Clue?” she asked Anna. They went inside and Loretta set the game board out on the floor, shuffling up the billiard rooms and candlesticks and slipping three cards into the little case file envelope. “I’m always Mrs. Peacock,” Loretta said. “Hope that’s not a problem.” They drank beer and waited for Ray to come and be the third player, Loretta’s left eye twitching gently as the sun went down.

“Are you Ray’s girlfriend?” Loretta asked.

“Sort of,” said Anna. “I don’t know. Something like that.”

“For the record,” said Loretta, “you shouldn’t trust half of what he tells you.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I know Ray, that’s all. Known him all his life.”

Ray walked inside with a tray of burgers. “You’re Professor Plum,” Loretta said, handing him the purple pawn. She turned her beer upside down, crumpled up the can and rolled the dice.

Loretta was holding Anna’s hair while she hugged the toilet, hurling. “Hey, we’ve all been there, hun,” Loretta said. “Mushrooms will do that sometimes.” Ray had brought his stash to the desert. It wasn’t sitting right. Anna choked out the rest, flushed, and staggered to her feet, sweating and mortified. “I should probably lie down for a minute,” she told Loretta, weaving her way to the living room. “Why don’t you take the bed tonight,” Loretta said, digging one hand in her giant purse. “I’ll send Ray in to join you. It’s no problem.” Anna slurred a thanks and goodnight and stumbled through the beaded curtain to the bedroom, wondering how long Ray’d been gone on his endless cigarette break. Or had he only stepped out five minutes ago? It was hard to be sure at the moment, considering that everywhere she looked, her surroundings kept turning to hamburger meat. She closed her eyes and tried to will away the kaleidoscope of tentacles churning inside her eyelids. When she woke up, Anna could hear Ray and Loretta’s voices softly from the other side of the curtain. The desert was dark still, a choir of crickets like distant static.

“I don’t have five hundred dollars, Ray. If I did, I’d give it to you. But I don’t.”

“Right. You’ve just got enough to make sure Gary can sit on his fat ass all day watching Matlock. But your only son can go fuck himself. Got it.”

“Let’s leave Gary out of it.”

“I would’ve liked to leave Gary out of it the day he broke my nose and kicked me out of the house, but I suppose we can’t have it all, can we.”

“Ray…... It’s complicated.”

“Yeah, being a mother sounds pretty fucking complicated. It’s not for everyone, I guess.”

Loretta was quiet for a minute.

“You know I don’t feel good about how everything played out. If I could do things differently…”

“I was thirteen years old living on the street because you chose fucking Gary over me, mom. I’ll say you could’ve done things differently. Jesus Christ.”

“That’s why I’m here every weekend, isn’t it? To see if we can’t be friends again?”

“You barely qualify as my mother, and you’re certainly not my friend. But I will take some fucking money, if Gary can manage to spare it from his Hot Pocket fund.” Anna heard shuffling and the crunch of cans being tossed in the trash. “And by the way, those pills are making you crazy. You shouldn’t be mixing all that shit at once. Your shrink ought to be in fucking prison. Anyway. Sleep well.” Anna lay very still with her eyes shut as Ray jangled through the beaded curtain and collapsed beside her in the dark, hitting the bed with a thud like he’d dropped from the sky.

In the morning Loretta was gone, and so was her car. On the kitchen counter were two notes, one labeled ANNA, the other MY SON RAY. Anna studied Ray’s face as he read, but it didn’t change, though he did slip a handful of twenties that had been tucked inside the letter into his pocket. Anna opened hers. In bold looping cursive it said, “Dear Anna, it was nice to meet you. He’ll take advantage of your weakness if you let him. Take care of yourself. Loretta.” Ray finished reading, folded the letter back up, and walked shirtless into the desert. He didn’t ask what her note said, and she didn’t either.

She remembered she had saved Loretta’s phone number a year later, after everything—after Ray had pawned most of her belongings and disappeared to Seoul with his secret girlfriend, that is, but before the whole Korean prison incident—and decided to ask. “What did you mean back in Joshua Tree, when you said he’d take advantage of my weakness?” she typed slowly. “How did you know?” She waited hours and hours until finally her phone buzzed. “I would never say that about my son,” read the text from Loretta. “What do you want from me?”

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awayfromthedesk · 4 years

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In the soil, underwater and on the table. A look into small food production in Monterey County during shelter in place.

By Marielle Argueza, Nick Rahaim and Ivan Garcia

Standing knee deep in rows of fennel, Mackenzie Leek, a vegetable farmer, grabs a bulb by the fibrous stalk, pulling it swiftly from the soil. She inspects the plant’s pale green layers before pulling out a knife to slice off the uneven bits “Everyone grows celery here,” she says. “No one grows fennel. That’s why I wanted to do it,” she says.

Except for her fennel and some carrots, the growing is sparse, with half her lot unplanted for now. But organic farming takes time and patience—except maybe during a pandemic.

Before the economic shock of COVID-19, 27-year-old Leek, was in between decision making. Her two-acre plot which she rents from the Agriculture and Land-Based Training Association, or ALBA, is where she grows vegetables for her business Basanti Organics. But the small dimensions of her farm restrict her from expanding her business in different ways like opening a farmers market stall, or selling to restaurants.

Most of her operations are wholesale to Coke Farms in San Juan Bautista, just like of fellow ALBA neighbors.The other, much smaller side, is her CSA deliveries, or community supported agriculture, in which she prepares a box of her vegetables for customers on a weekly basis. On top of that there was a time crunch. She only has around two more years on the land before her lease runs out.

By the beginning of 2020, she started considering shutting down the CSA. “I was seriously thinking about stopping,” she says. “It didn’t make [monetary] sense. I’m only one person on this farm.”

But in early March with shelter in place orders from the county, her subscriptions to her CSA shot up. She went from having 48 customers to 59 in a matter of a couple weeks, which is big for a single-worker farm. She attributes the rise to people’s reticence to go to grocery stores and farmers markets. “I don’t know, maybe people who used to buy their food at the grocery stores are scared now,” she says. But she also thinks it has something to do with an entire demographic who have effectively stopped participating in the mainstream economy: seniors. “Little old ladies,” says Leek. “Most of my customers are these older ladies in Carmel Valley. So I drop their vegetables right on their doorstep.”

While business is good now, she is hesitant to celebrate her success, because it all hinges on uncertainty. “Yeah, it’s really weird. In a lot of ways it’s good for me, but I wonder what’s going to happen after this whole thing is over.” Sheltering in place, at least tentatively for Monterey County ends on May 3.

Leek is a very small piece of the greater picture that is Monterey County’s $4.25 billion agricultural industry. As food production is essential work during the pandemic, even she and her two-acre plot business, are exposing consumers—who may not have previously given a second thought about where their food comes from—to what it takes to put food on the table. In just a matter of weeks for Leek, it has meant making real-time decisions like keeping her CSA going, but it is also a waiting game. She’s not alone, every local food-related industry from local fishing to the burgeoning restaurant scene has been adapting, but also bracing for the impact that will inevitably follow. Many small businesses, like Leek’s farm, are predicting it will be very ungraceful on their part.

“People will really see how important it is to support local producers,” she says. “That’s my hope anyway.”

On a sunny day in early April, Calder Deyerle motors his boat back to Moss Landing with a load of sablefish. He spots a pod of killer whales feeding on a baby gray whale. Schools of anchovies rise from the depths of the water and are closely followed by hungry sea birds.

After a decade of ecological flux, spurred by the climate-driven marine heatwave, commonly called the “blob,” followed by a strong El Niño, life on the waters of the Monterey Bay has settled back into a rhythm of normalcy. It’s on land where fishermen and women like Deyerle face unprecedented uncertainty as COVID-19 has left seafood markets in disarray.

“The markets are shot,” he says. “Most of the fishermen are shut down right now, they just don’t have anyone to sell their catch to.”

The small port of Moss Landing is quiet with restaurants shuttered, the normal flow of sightseers disrupted by orders to shelter in place, and marine science institutions like Moss Landing Marine Labs and the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute closed. Commercial fishing is deemed an essential business, so fishermen and women try to stay on the water bringing sustainable, wild-caught seafood to consumers. Yet, how local catch is delivered to those customers has fundamentally changed.

Around 80 percent of seafood caught in the United State that is sold domestically is delivered to restaurants, says Noah Oppenheim, the outgoing executive director of the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations. With most restaurants closed the bottom has dropped out of the market. Some fishermen have kept their boats tied up because they have no one to buy their catch, Deyerle says. Others like Deyerle are earning less for what they harvest.

Deyerle hails from a fishing family and typically fishes around a small fleet of Deyerle boats captained by his father, uncle and younger brother. The family also owns the Sea Harvest restaurants and markets in Carmel Monterey. The markets remain open and the restaurants are serving food to-go, but business has slowed down significantly since the state imposed lockdowns to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Real Good Fish, a Moss Landing-based community-supported fishery that delivers boxes of fresh, locally caught seafood direct to consumers, has seen a sharp spike in business in recent weeks, says owner Alan Lovewell. But, the increased sales seen by Real Good Fish, and other direct-to-consumer businesses like Ocean2Table and H&H Fresh Fish in Santa Cruz, haven’t come close to making up for the lost demand from restaurant closures.

“There are fishermen who need jobs, they want to go fishing and there are still people who want their fish,” Lovewell says. “But without the restaurant market it’s still really tough.”

Deyerle sells some of his blackcod to Real Good Fish, but both he and Lovewell say there’s more fish coming from fishermen than CSFs can handle. Another formerly lucrative market for Deyerle is selling live sablefish and thornyhead rockfish to Asian buyers in San Jose, but those sales have dropped off significantly. Most of his catch is now being frozen for the Japanese export market, but it’s less profitable yielding around a third of the value as local purchases.

There’s still activity on the Monterey Bay, squid have shown up and with them most of the California squid fleet, Deyerle says. Almost all of the squid caught in California is exported and that market already faced significant shocks through President Donald Trump’s trade war with China.

Most fishermen are now looking ahead to the salmon season on the Monterey Bay, set to open May 1. After four years of wet winters filling streams and allowing returning salmon to spawn, 2019 was the best salmon season in two decades. This year was expected to be another strong season until the economic impacts of the pandemic struck. Now fishermen fear there won’t be enough buyers to support the local catch and that the prices they can sell California king salmon will leave them in the red.

“Everything with COVID-19 is so fluid it's hard to make predictions right now,” Deyerle says. “But my main question right now is ‘what the heck are we going to do with the salmon once we catch them?’”

Organizations like the Monterey Bay Fisheries Trust have stepped in to try to connect consumers to fishermen in this time of crisis. The nonprofit has compiled a local catch guide where people support the local seafood economy while also providing themselves with a tasty, nutritious meal.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced restaurants to radically change how they do businesses.

For Villa Azteca, a family-owned Mexican restaurant in Old Town Salinas, this change prompted an end to the days of packed dining rooms, chalkboard specials and mimosas for Sunday brunch.

Adilenny Alvarez, the daughter of chef and owner Susana Alvararez, usually manages the payroll and serves. Since shelter-in-place has prohibited in-restaurant dining her duties have expanded to taking orders, prep work and developing recipe ideas. The change is clear to her.

“Right now our business is totally different than when people were able to come in,” Alvarez says. “It’s obviously slower but luckily we’ve been getting support from takeout orders.”

That support comes in the form of take-out orders can't compare to the consistent business from being open. Though evenings, especially Fridays, garner a sufficient amount of orders Alvarez notes midweek, days are sometimes too slow to stay open for.

One saving grace has been an increased use of the restaurant's Instagram.

“We are managing by staying active on social media,” Alvarez explains. “This has given some opportunity for my mom’s creative side to come out.”

Susana’s menu receives praise for adding innovation to traditional Mexican dishes and she continues this practice amidst the pandemic. Recent posts on Villa Azteca’s Instagram include a tall glass of vegan horchata made from oats and coconut and beer-battered cauliflower tacos nestled in bright green tortillas made with spinach. Since the shelter-in-place orders took effect in Monterey County, their Instagram has averaged four new posts a day. The content isn’t relegated to recipes either. One post features an image of trays of rice and birria delivered to the emergency departments of the Salinas Valley Memorial Hospital as a display of gratitude.

A March 27 video post from chef Susana explains the choice to stay open.

“As you know we are living in difficult times,” Susana says in Spanish. “My main concern is my employees and for them we are offering orders for take out.”

The initial announcement of shelter-in-place compelled feelings of uncertainty from some of Villa Azteca’s small staff.

“The first few days it was really hectic here,” Adilenny says. “Me and my brother had to step up and take calls for orders because we had to cut on some floor staff.”

Now, nearly three weeks since restaurants have shut their doors to diners, Adilenny feels that she’s getting used to what is normal for now.

A reliable access to fresh ingredients has helped ease the transition amidst so much change. Fresh produce staples like citrus and cauliflower are largely bought from Fresh Market Produce off East Alisal. And with business down due to closing the dining room, Villa Azteca isn’t suffering a shortage in its inventory.

While the family behind Villa Azteca finds ways to remain open amidst this global crisis, Adilenny suggests ways the community can support their effort and their staff.

“The biggest way people can help now is just order from us if you can,” Adilenny says. “Because getting orders is what keeps us open.”

On one of the bumpy dirt roads that criss-crosses over the ALBA land, a controlled burn sends soft billows of grey smoke into the air. Two plots away, workers sit on the back of their pickup taking a break from planting, while Mackenzie Leek greets her nextdoor farming neighbor. They talk about equipment and he helps her load the wheelbarrow into the bed of her Toyota Tacoma.

“Not much has changed for them,” says Leek of her neighbors and their working conditions. She explains that though there are now new workplace rules, sometimes it’s impossible on a farm to keep six feet away, or bring a clean mask to work when there are none to buy.

She has options at least. She knows she can make an extra profit, even if it’s for the short term. Many of the neighboring farmers around her, who are undocumented immigrants, don’t have the choice of starting a public facing business.

With few lucrative economic prospects, and few other businesses open and hiring, farming to supply wholesale buyers is their only feasible option to make a living. That means, explains Leek, they can’t stop working or choose to stay home safe. “What else can they do? They have families,” she says.

She can commiserate as a one-woman farm—she is both the boss calling the shots and 90 percent of the time, the only worker. While the pandemic has forced business owners to make decisions, often without any planning, she hasn’t lost perspective. Hardwork puts food on the table, no matter who is making a profit.

She points to her neighbors from her plot. “They’re here from when the sun goes up and don’t leave sometimes until the sun is way down.”

#bottom line #Featured #_full_size

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kny-secret-santa2019 · 4 years

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From: @knybits

For: @imagine-your-party-hosts

happy holidays!! thanks for letting me be your secret santa! i hope you enjoy your gift :,,) sorry if your oc is a little ooc, but i hope you enjoy reading this nonetheless! much love, fate.

gift:

Yukiko can’t seem to recall how she got stuck in the middle of a snowstorm.

Oh wait, nevermind.

“I’m going out to buy some last minute things for Christmas,” she tells her brother, shrugging on a large red coat. The eye catching mistletoe earrings that fall upon her shoulders captures the Christmas vibe, and her brother would ask if they hurt her ears every once in a while.

Yukiya stares at his sister with wide eyes, “Are you sure? The weather forecaster said that there might be a snowstorm! And I’m on my way to Shinobu’s estate to have Christmas with the Butterfly girls, so I won’t be able to pick you up if something happens…”

“I’ll be fine.”

Yeah, not so much any more.

Yukiko stares outside the store, bag of grocery in hand, as other shoppers rush to their cars as quickly as possible to attempt to get back home before the onslaught of snow gets worse.

When she pulls out her phone, she remembers that her brother has plans of his own, and won’t be able to pick her up. She clicks her tongue, begrudgingly stuffing her coat pocket and mulling over her thoughts.

Maybe… If she books it… She can get home and maybe have hypothermia.

Yukiko puffs a few breaths into her hands, warming them up as much as possible to save her fingers. Then, she plants one foot in front of the other, crystalline eyes narrowed with determination to get home with all her fingers and toes, before a familiar voice catches her attention.

“Yukiko? Is that you?”

In all his glory, Kamado Tanjirou stands behind Yukiko with his own bags of groceries. He smiles when she turns her head to look at him, and it feels as if all the snow outside has melted.

“It really is you! I’m so glad! Are you doing some last minute shopping too?”

Yukiko nods her head, idly staring at the car keys dangling in his spare hand. When Tanjirou’s eyes trail to where she’s looking at, he chuckles.

“Do you need a ride home?”

So now Yukiko is seated in the rusty family truck that the Kamados own. The white paint is chipped and there are a few bumps around the truck, but the inside smells of baked goods and sweets that have been delivered around town.

The CD player doesn’t work because Shigeru jammed some coins in the slot when he was a baby, and Nezuko always slams her fist on the dashboard to get the radio to work, but Yukiko likes how the truck has ‘personality.’

Of course, Tanjirou apologizes for the mess of the car, tossing some of his siblings homework sheets from the passenger seat to the back, and taking her bag of groceries to leave on the back seats as well.

Then the two ship off from the market, though slow. The windshield wipers work furiously, and instead of Christmas music Tanjirou has the radio tuned to the weather station to make sure that they get home safely.

He doesn’t mind though, because he hums the tune of Jingle Bells, tapping his fingers against the wheel with a smile on his face and a blush dusting his cheeks.

Yukiko brushes this off as a reaction to the cold, but Tanjirou isn’t one to get cold all too easily.

“Could Yukiya not pick you up?” He asks to break the silence.

Yukiko takes her eyes off the wild snowstorm outside to glance at Tanjirou. “He’s going to Shinobu’s for Christmas,” she explains, and his mouth forms a small “o” with the information.

It takes a second for his mind to click, but when it does his eyes bulge from his face.

“Wait! You’re spending Christmas alone?!”

“Eyes on the road!” They almost swerve, and Tanjirou apologizes profusely when he sees her grab the edge of her seat.

Thankfully, they’re close to Yukiko’s home, so Tanjirou won’t have to worry about her any longer.

But to Yukiko’s surprise, Tanjirou drives straight past her home and continues down the road.

“Wait, Tanjirou-”

“You’re having Christmas dinner with us!” He declares happily; this time his eyes remain on the road, and he makes a smooth right turn.

Yukiko blinks once, twice, another time before she comprehends his words.

“No, seriously, that’s okay. Besides, I only needed a ride because the snowstorm-”

Tanjirou turns into the parking lot of his family’s bakery, holding his hand up to silence the girl from going on. When he parks the truck, he finally gives her his soft smile, taking her hands into his own.

“I’m sure whatever threat is out there can wait till after Christmas dinner,” he says quietly. Tanjirou then quickly hops out of the truck, rushing over to Yukiko’s side to open the door for her and help her down.

“And besides! There’s no way I’m letting you spend Christmas alone!”

Yukiko isn’t dumb.

She knows that her heart just skipped a beat.

Tanjirou quickly leads her to the back entrance of the bakery, opening the door for her as the two stumble in with snow tracked boots and snowflakes littering their hair.

“Tanjirou? Is that you?” Kie’s honey sweet voice drips through Yukiko’s ears, and Tanjirou smiles at his mother as he tugs his snow boots off.

“Yeah! I brought a guest home!”

Kie looks at Yukiko with wide eyes and a hand quickly covers her mouth.

Something is Yukiko stirs as the thought that Kie doesn’t like her enters her mind.

“Sorry, I don’t mean to intrude-”

Kie points up.

Simultaneously, Tanjirou and Yukiko look up to see the same ornament adorning Yukiko’s ears hanging above their heads.

Mistletoe.

“Tanjirou-nii is under the mistletoe with a girl!!” Takeo shouts, his head popping up from behind the doorway. Yukiko can hear the thunderous footsteps of other small children as they scream with glee, running each other over to watch the show.

Even Tanjirou looks a bit red, and Yukiko is afraid that her face mirrors the same shade as her red lipstick.

“I don’t think we have to-” she’s cut off when Tanjirou quickly swoops down, pecking her forehead as a means to slip through the rules.

“Hey! That’s no fair!” Hanako whines, and Tanjirou laughs at his siblings’ complaints. Nezuko frowns, some fruit cake stuck in her mouth.

Tanjirou quickly tugs Yukiko through the crowd of kids by the door, telling him mom that he’s going to bake a couple more tray of rolls for Christmas dinner. Kie smiles knowingly when she sees that the tips of her son’s ears are red, but she shoos the rest of the kids away and allows Tanjirou some alone time in the bakery.

Yukiko’s eyes sparkle at the various baking equipment scattered throughout the bakery. Her own parents used to own a bakery as well, but after their passing she and Yukiya realized that they couldn’t keep up with the bakery and had to close it down.

Being in the Kamado’s bakery is heaven in itself, and Yukiko finds herself breathing in the aroma of honey and yeast, red bean and apples, cinnamon, chocolate, and- is that mint? Whatever else it may be, Yukiko is in heaven.

Tanjirou watches the way her shoulders relax, and he finds himself smiling softly. She leads her to a small station, points out the ingredients, and watches as Yukiko quickly gets to work.

It’s obvious that she knows what she’s doing, so Tanjirou isn’t worried about Yukiko burning the bakery down.

Her hands dance with the dough, pulling and folding and kneading to get the right bounce. Flour dusts her hands and she maneuvers her head when Tanjirou ropes an apron around her as she works happily.

Once done, she lines the rolls up on a matted tray, Tanjirou draping a wet towel over the dough to allow it to rest and rise a bit. She wipes some imaginary sweat off her brows, but she’s happy and she’s content, and Tanjiro’s chest blossoms with the look of pride on her face.

He looks up at her forehead though, and has to stifle a laugh.

“Wh- What? Oh my god do I have flour on my face?” Yukiko groans, but Tanjirou takes his face into his hands to brush his thumbs over the streaks of white.

“It’s not that bad,” he reassures her before quietly apologizing for touching her without warning.

Yukiko quips her mouth, then waves her hand in front of her face to beckon Tanjirou closer. He raises a brow, but does as asked, bending down to her level to look at her curiously.

When Tanjirou feels soft lips on his own, his eyes widen in surprise. It’s short and sweet, but it’s enough to make his heart race.

“That’s for breaking mistletoe rules,” Yukiko mutters under her breath.

“And uhm… Also for letting me spend Christmas with you and your family…”

Tanjirou continues to blink blankly, but when everything is processed and done, a puff of smoke pops from his head and he finds himself wanting more.

By the time Kie announces that Christmas dinner is ready, Tanjirou has a tough time rubbing all the red lipstick off his face, and his siblings make a point to poke fun at the lip mark on his forehead scar.

#kimetsu no yaiba #demon slayer #tanjirou kamado #kny oc #kimetsu no yaiba oc #demon slayer oc #submission

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theflashdriver · 5 years

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Silvaze: Tending the Flame

This is a little fantasy AU Silvaze oneshot! It doesn’t play on your usual fairytale tropes though, it’s far more like a D&D AU. I hope you enjoy!

Rain was falling thick and heavy, coming down in cold sheets to batter against a thick green cloak and obscure a radius cut by weak yellow lantern-light. Silver the hedgehog, age nineteen, had been on the road for much too long. His feet were raw and soaked, his quills and fur were matted, shivers wracked his body and nought but grumbles filled his stomach. The thick bag on his back was crushing his shoulders and weakening his knees but discomfort was almost at its end. Dirt trails through uneven bogs were a mere mile behind him, a treacherous but ultimately foe-less stretch. His boots had just met with the mossy cobbles of a small village, the first true trappings of civilisation he'd seen in weeks.

It was well beyond the witching hour, the night was moonless and clouds cluttered the sky. Buildings constructed of wood with thatched or board roofs surrounded him and, though they were in the evening, sings of life were scattered. His lantern scoped out store signs, farmer's tools set on doorsteps, freshly chopped lumber and well maintained gardens.

The tiny town of Grey Larch didn't see many tourists and those who did visit typically walked straight through the town and unto the wild lands beyond it. For that reason, Silver was rather worried about finding a spot to rest for the night; if no one was using the inn then the staff likely wouldn't linger. He didn't know the town well, alike others he normally passed through with little more than a gander in the shop windows, so when a signpost caught his eye it became his first port of call.

It was difficult in the dark but raising his lantern granted a slightly clearer view. He ignored most of the pointers, they seemed to indicate local amenities and landmarks, until he found the one he was looking for. Six hundred yards ahead was a tavern and inn called The Wanderer's Haven, it was a name that Silver vaguely recognised.

As he turned, the path ahead of him suddenly seemed a lot darker. The box's light was flickering; the range of its cast light had shrunk! Silver glanced back to the sign; words he'd struggled to read were now unreadable! The flame was fading! He'd already felt desperate but that small change sent a shiver down his spine and forced speed into his step.

"Stay with me, we're almost there!" Following the rudimentary signage, Silver soon went from running to hovering; cyan magic flickered before surrounding his body and rending him from the ground, carrying him faster towards his desired destination.

Famished as he was, Silver was willing to burn what little energy he had left to spare his lantern's faded flame. The hedgehog tore across the city, gaze thrown in all directions as he sought out an inn. He struggled to slow as he caught sight of a larger building with a swinging sign, stumbling as he returned to the ground and pushed his way towards its door. A glance to the window proved that there was candlelight inside but when he went to try the door he found it locked. Teeth grit, another glance was thrown to his fading lantern before he began to pound on the door with his free hand.

"I need a room for the night, I'm willing to pay!" He yelled, desperation turning to panic.

There was no response, only the battering of rain against cobbles and wood. Silver started to panic more, pulling the lantern deeper still into his cloak, when he heard something shift inside; a chair had dragged along the ground. A few more moments past and stress continued to eat away at him but, finally, the jingling of keys and the clicking of a latch heralded his respite.

The half opened, a bright blue eye and a tuft of brown-cream fur came into view. After a moment's scanning, a voice accompanied it, "Pay you said?"

"I have money, I have goods for trade, whatever you take I'm willing to give," He pleaded, half reaching for his gold.

"Money's good enough for me, hurry inside and out of the rain. You'll die a death of cold," The door was flung fully open and a tiny yet rotund ferret came into view. Despite owning the establishment and being the only staff around, she looked both old and frail.

The promise of coin had clearly put a spring into her step though and the moment Silver was inside she'd redone the latch and bolted back behind an old wooden counter. This tavern wasn't in the best state, there wasn't a single patron in sight yet dirty glasses littered the tables and the floor was thick with dirt. Still, he was relieved to finally have a roof over his head. The floorboards groaned beneath him as he quickly followed the crone.

"Room for," He tripped on his tongue, "One?"

"I'm afraid I'll have to charge you for a double dearie, that's the smallest we've got," She apologised, drawing out a small leather-bound book and scribbling in it.

"That will be fine, thank you," Silver reached into his cloak, intent on pulling out his coin pouch, when his stomach growled. That feeling and noise served as a reminder, he'd exhausted his supplies, "Do you have any food going? I know it's late but I'm famished."

Pausing whatever note taking she was doing, the old woman ducked backwards into a door behind the deck, "Hang on. I can make no promises but I'll have a rummage in the back!"

Seconds were ticking by like hours but he didn't regret his query. Silver drew the lantern up to sit on the desk to give it a thorough inspection. The entirety of its bronze-work was in good condition, there weren't any dents that needing pushed out, and he couldn't identify any cracks in its glass. He went to wipe its outside with his cloak's interior but found it no drier than the exterior, the streaking droplets of water and general wetness of the container would have to linger for a little longer.

As the woman re-emerged Silver quickly lowered his light from the desk, the woman dropped a battered tin tray in its place. He'd been presented with two rather pitiful looking rolls (without butter, meat or cheese to go with them), a dark green bottle and a sturdy metal tankard. Despite how meagre this meal would look to most, Silver knew that it was more than enough.

"Afraid that's all we've got in at the moment, I'll be gettin' groceries tomorrow morning," She explained, "You didn't ask but I figured I'd throw in a bottle of wine, on the house, you look like you need it."

"Thank you, how much do I owe you?" Silver asked, already drawing his purse.

"For just that? Only three gold but I've got so much more I could sell you," She smirked as she boasted.

Without even blinking, Silver drew three coins and set them on the bar, "Alright, where is my room?"

"Just up there, you're the first door on the left," She explained, pointing to a set of stairs, "Washrooms are at the end of the hall, breakfast runs from nine till twelve," She continued, though the words quickly fell from Silver's ears. As she set a rusty key on the tray Silver quickly grabbed it, "Anything else you'll be needing? Extra blankets, further drink, I could wash your cloak if you want…"

"No, thank you, that will be all," Silver quickly replied.

"Are ya sure? If you want some paraffin I've got that too, won't set you back much more," The innkeeper offered, clearly trying to squeeze more profit out of her single customer, "There's a light in the room, course there is, but that lantern's looking awfully dark."

That reminder added fuel to the flame beneath Silver. Shaking his head, he rushed for the stairwell, "I have all the fuel I need, goodnight."

"G'night," The old woman croaked, surely giving him a stare for his rudeness. That was the least of Silver's concerns though; there wasn't time to be polite.

The mouldy stairs creaked and buckled beneath him, surprising considering his frail frame, but they managed to carry him safely. The second floor was dimly lit, likely to obscure filth, but a frantic glance to his lantern proved that he didn't have time to care. With no more than a moment's concentration, the gentle orange of Silver's surroundings was overwhelmed by cyan. The key slipped free from his grasp and rocketed to the door, turning in the lock before pushing open the door. The hedgehog barged into the room without hesitation, the door slammed shut and locked behind him. There was a window on the far side of the room, with no more than a thought Silver forced closed the heavy beige curtains.

"O-Okay, okay…" His mouth was dry, his soles were raw and his eyelids were heavy. The hedgehog quickly shrugged off his bag and hung his cloak on the door handle. A dingy bed in the right corner of the room, slightly better made than the one in the left, immediately caught his eye. He dared to sit but refused to relax; the meal was set beside him, everything was prepared.

Silver set the lantern down a full pace away from his bed and, quickly, popped its lid. What couldn't have been half a minute of patiently waiting felt like a full five hours of waiting, his eyes trained on the lantern's lip. Silver picked up one of the stale rolls; his stomach growled again but he didn't dare busy himself with eating, not until his duty was done. He watched intently as the lights continued to dance behind the frosted glass, shifting and shaping before, finally, emerging to sit on the lantern's rim.

Sitting beneath him, staring up at him, was a flame no more than five inches tall and half an inch wide. The fire had taken the shape of a bipedal feline; she was cast in a bright candlelight yellow and a long ponytail crowned her head. In her current state it was difficult to make out the finer details of her appearance, her expression entirely alluded him, but her form was intact; things weren't as bad as he'd worried. Still, it wasn't as though her current condition was healthy.

A sigh of relief slipped his throat and a small smile worked its way onto his face, "Hey, sorry about the rough ride towards the end there, I saw the sign and just couldn't help myself. Figured it was best to get us out of the cold and wet," To anyone else this would look insane but being able to sit with her like this, talk with her like this, was relieving him so much, "How're you feeling?"

Her response was no more than a fizzle, entirely indistinct, but the tiny figure's body language told him more than enough. Blaze's hands were clasped in her lap, the flickering tips of her ears were slightly bent and a faded orange tail kept lashing behind her back. She was concerned, about him no doubt, but she didn't look uncomfortable. A quick glance to himself, catching sight of his gloves and boots, reminded him why she was worried. He'd been cleaning and trying to maintain his clothes but he hadn't had the time or money to replace them in six months. Things had been so difficult since she'd changed; he hadn't let himself stop, not even for a moment.

"I know, I know, I look awful," He admitted, pushing back his quills in an attempt to return them to their usual formation, "I'll see what I can do about that. This town isn't very big but he inn's cheap so, if you're okay with it, we could stay for a few days?"

Blaze's ears flickered upright and her tail ceased its waving, what'd once been tense shoulders immediately relaxed. A thorough nod followed that change, making her answer clear as though it already wasn't. Well, he supposed others wouldn't have been able to read that much into her shifts; they'd been together so long, even before she was like this, it was all so plain to him. He knew fine well that shifts in his demeanour were similarly obvious to her, Blaze always knew when he was lying, but he'd often been told that his heart was affixed to his sleeve.

Silver's smile warmed again, "Alright, I'll take a look around tomorrow and see if it's worthwhile. But first…" Silver leant down, extending the roll to Blaze, "Let's get you back to your usual size."

Despite her state, his partner immediately shot him an icy cold stare; she didn't even touch the roll.

Her tiny, nigh unreadable, expression clearly read, "I know you could have bought fuel for me and had both of those rolls for yourself."

He awkwardly swallowed. This wasn't going to be easy, "Come on Blaze, you know what paraffin does to you. You wouldn't have been able to maintain your proper form and you'd be too chaotic to fit in the lamp," Silver's explanation didn't seem to have much impact, despite the concern in his voice and truth to his words. Whenever she took in wood, coal or other more typical fuels it'd return her body to size but she'd lose partial control over her form. By using real food they'd learned to increase her size more incrementally, resulting in a smoother flame, "You need to eat properly."

The flame turned away from him, now her arms were fully folded and assumedly her eyes were shut. Seeing no other option, Silver lowered himself to kneel on the grubby wooden floor. He held the bread closer still, not daring to prod her lest he disrupted her form but making the mass unavoidable for her. She paid him a glance but, almost immediately, turned away again.

Her body language read, "There are only two rolls and you haven't eaten in over a day. I can endure until breakfast in the morning or consume something else; I'll burn up some linens or a rag if I must but you need to eat."

They were fair arguments, she probably would last beyond breakfast, but his worry worked against her kind-hearted endeavour. He uncorked the wine he'd thought useless and, without so much as hesitating, doused the mass. Usually wine wouldn't burn that well but the unique nature of Blaze's spiritual flames meant they'd burn just about anything; he wasn't making the meal inedible for her, he was making it inedible for himself.

Blaze quickly realised this of course, much louder sizzles began to explode from the small figure. As he corked the bottle, Silver couldn't bring himself to meet the small woman's burning eyes. Instead, he simply held the roll out to her again, "You wouldn't eat so I had to…"

The hissing only grew louder in response to that but, a few moments later, it finally ended. Silver felt the roll start to grow lighter in his grasp, the scent of burning entered the air. He dared to glance down and found that she had indeed started to eat, her tiny mouth would close over a section and the mass would burn before being absorbed into her form. Even after only a couple of bites she was already a far healthier colour.

"Thank you, Blaze," He said, beaming down at his tiny friend.

Another fiery grumble sounded but her feasting didn't stop. She didn't eat like ordinary fire rather she bit like any normal person. When her mouth passed over an area it would burn away the mass and deliver power back to her. This meant the, as she worked further through her meal, Silver had to twist and turn his grip in order to accommodate her eating. When she was this small, this low on power, wrapping the foodstuff in his psychic aura wasn't an option; she'd never break through. Even while she was in this state, even while he felt so worried, Silver couldn't help but admire her magic.

Their combined powers made them a ferocious team, capable of competing quests that far better travelled adventurers would shirk. They'd both been born with a high degree of magical aptitude, capable of performing powerful arcane feats even during their infancy, and had thus been sent in the mage's academy in the capital city. It was there, little more than infants, that they'd collided for the first time. Blaze, a scholarly student who struggled to control her power, and Silver, a naturally gifted student who failed at all but practical work, had found themselves lost and alone in their new home. The destructive nature of Blaze's power had drawn both fear and thus ridicule from her peers but her flames had always fascinated Silver and soon, following a few scuffles with the other students, they became a duo. It was this bond more than the combination of their powers that'd made their partnership last beyond graduation; they quested as a team, working together to vanquish the world's evils and make a living.

Travel and time had left him weary, he shook the reminiscing from his head. Energy had pooled in her tiny form, eating the bread had refuelled her. Two thirds of the wine-soaked roll had been consumed; Silver knew she'd eaten enough to, at the bare minimum, return to normal. Recognising this and no long feeling the flame's touch on the foodstuff, he shifted up and onto the bed. He was giving her some distance, knowing what was about to happen.

The flame feline dropped back into the lantern, pulsing light was magnified to fill the room's entity. A moment passed, as the cacophonous crackling of flames filled the room and Silver's gaze flickered to the door. He hadn't heard anyone on this floor, perhaps the rooms were empty, but being allocated room three rather than room one was worrying him.

A twisting pillar of flame, as tall as him, exploded from the lantern's depths. The light had weakened as the flames expanded; he could watch freely. Trepidation quickly forgotten, Silver settled in; this was always wonderful to watch. The blaze was constantly warping and reshaping, growing and shrinking, exploding and imploding. Slowly but surely the energy was condensing and what many would have seen as uncontrolled and erratic mutations was actualised into her elegant regrowth. First he saw her head in the flames, eyeless and featureless, then an arm, a leg, her tail and, finally, her torso. The pieces came into alignment, connecting and congealing into a single form as the excess flames shrunk into her body and applied detail. It was almost a dance, as she fully formed his partner was practically pirouetting. Finally, clothes made from that same fire grew and granted her a degree of further personification.

Blaze the cat was fully realised; Silver's fellow sorcerer and companion had fully manifested. The flames that made up her body were sleek, warm yellow and well contained, save for a slight flickering atop her ears and ponytail. She wore the same outfit every time; it was the garb she'd worn when her body was transformed to this state. What'd once been a cropped woollen mantle hung from her shoulders to her midriff, beneath it was once a robe-like shirt with hanging sleeves that was always tucked into a set of leather trousers. Completing the outfit was a pendant around her neck, its chain was hardly visible against her body's matching colouration but what had once been a circular timepiece still hung outside her robes. He'd gifted her that just a little under seven months ago, he'd wanted to thank her for saving his life but she was livid that he'd spent so much on her. Of course, now it, alike all her clothes, had lost its colouration to the flame; her outfit was essentially her body now rather than trappings.

Having caught himself staring, Silver psychically floated the remainder of the roll towards her. Because she was made of fire, Blaze couldn't really interact with material objects so he had to be her hands. Despite the rolling of her eyes, the feline opened her mouth and reached to simulate holding the mass. With her power restored she could break through his aura as she willed and easily consume the remaining mass. It'd taken them so long to figure this all out, how to keep her housed and safely refuel her and so much more. He'd come so close to losing her so many times.

In a matter of moments the roll vanished and Blaze was cast a healthy yellow, "I could have lasted until tomorrow," Her voice, to match with her current form, took on the tone of a crackling heart. Others would struggle to decipher her words even while they were this loud but Silver was used to it, "Hunger hurts you far more than it hurts me."

"I'm sorry, I just wanted to make you a safer size. Any stray wind or water would be dangerous. That and," His gaze broke from her and his hand found the back of his neck, "Well, we've been traveling in silence for a few days. I just wanted to talk with you again."

The sighing of fire was a sound that Silver had grown all too familiar with, "You're so naïve."

In an attempt to placate her, he reached over and took the remaining roll. It was like eating a small bolder but, to be frank, it just felt good to finally be eating something. The last day and a half of travel had been performed on an empty stomach; he'd pushed her to consume the last of his hardtack following a long and particularly wet day. It wasn't that they weren't well off, their jobs provided enough coin to sustain them, but things rarely went as planned on the road.

"How are you feeling?" He piped up, forcing himself to swallow the final bite.

"A lot better," It took a moment but she managed to admit that much, "Thank you, Silver, but you know I'd much rather you tend yourself first."

"I know you would it's just… difficult, you know?" He sighed, "When there's so little of you left it scares me."

"I know it is but you're doing the bulk of the work, you deserve aid first," She'd leant in a little closer and, thus, the heat had grown a lot more intense, "Are you okay? Have you been hurt?"

"I'm fine, don't worry. Just a little damp around the edges and slightly more blistered, nothing time and rest won't fix," He promised, unleashing a small smile, "Your situation took priority."

"Well, I suppose you were being less foolhardy than I thought," She reached forward; burning fingers cupped centimetres from his muzzle but he didn't flinch. The brush of her warmth, not the lick of flames but the heat they radiated, began to eat away at the worst of his wetness, "It was still more than a little foolish though, I'm holding you to the offer you made earlier. I want you to spend five nights sleeping in a proper bed."

Her concern warmed him more than her flames ever could, "Alright, five days in Grey Larch before we hit the road again. That should be plenty of time to heal and stock up. Do you want anything?"

"The lantern's still watertight so there's really nothing to worry about," She waved him off, reaching out with her other hand to aid in the warming process, "You should get your cloak stitched properly, it's not keeping out the rain anymore. You're soaked to the bone, aren't you freezing?"

"Blaze," He closed his eyes, relaxing into on her gifted warmth more than he probably should, "I asked if you wanted anything, not if you needed anything."

There was a short pause; Silver found himself almost falling within her false grasp. A wispy sigh slipped from her throat, "Well… do you remember the little bookshop in this town? I suppose, if you're going to insist…"

His eyes flickered open and her gaze broke from him, "Anything in particular? Did you spot something last time?"

"No, no; I've not nothing in mind really. Just some new stories, something relaxing to help pass the time," She half-elaborated, still refusing to meet his stare.

"Yeah, we've only got that one romance novel left," He mused, "Maybe we should finally start it?"

Eyeballs of flame rolled within her fiery head and landed back upon his face, "We've been putting it off for a reason Silver, it's trite. By the blurb alone I know it's far too embarrassing to share."

"We won't know that till we try it though, right?" He offered again, pulling away from her touch and reaching into his bag's side pocket. The book was a little damp but still in good nick, its hard cover had protected it well.

She looked at him incredulously, her tail slowly swished to curl around her waist, "If you're so interested then you know you can read it yourself, I'll sit right here and happily watch you turn pink."

"What? I don't want to read it alone, we always read on the road together," He whined, trying not to fall for her teasing. They'd been putting off reading this one since before Blaze had been bewitched. That thought, coupled with the sight of the book's deep green cover, forced the groggy Silver back into a state of absentminded reflection.

Six months ago they'd been recommended for a quest by one of their past lecturers. A peasant town to the south had been scorched to the ground, all of its citizens mysteriously vanishing as their homes went up in flame. There had been no further attacks but repeated sightings of strange lights and will-o-wisps dancing from the depths of the town's mineshaft. The task had been proposed as a simple way to move up in the world, an easy way to get a good reference and thus access to better quests, but the fire's origin had been far more dangerous than the expert had anticipated. Minor demons weren't an uncommon sight, menageries held them and they were key to various studies, but more significant demonic entities were only to be dealt with by the most powerful of sorcerers; certainly not two new graduates.

They'd fought for their lives in that mine, first thinking they stood a chance before collapsing it as they fled. No matter how much dirt or stone fell into the monster's path it managed to push through, it managed to lay a hand on Blaze's shoulder. In a flash of red light, faster than Silver could react, purple fur and clothes alike immolated to leave only a burning silhouette. With its single attack dealt, the entity allowed itself to be swallowed by the soil and vanished from sight. Bewildered and terrified, they couldn't even consider giving chase; they'd ran free from the shaft and bolted all the way back to the academy. Cursed they'd said, the only way to undo it was to kill the demon they'd said. Having had control over fire her entire life, Blaze was in a better position than most to manage her new form than most but, regardless, a life changing, blow had still been dealt to her. No more touching; she was left unable to feel and, equally, unable to touch without causing destruction. The creature had probably assumed that she'd accidently kill him before burning out, just as the village had destroyed itself. It'd gravely underestimated her.

Catching himself spacing out again and frowning at his own tiredness, he sat the book atop the tray and set them both on the ground, "I suppose it can wait a little longer."

"A little longer might well be a lifetime," He hands had moved to clasp in front of her but her warmth was still reaching him, "I'm sure we'll find something worth reading tomorrow, you should focus on resting tonight."

She wasn't wrong, there was still a fair journey ahead, "We're still five days travel from the capital, assuming good weather. Hopefully our next job will give us some better leads on where to try next," Of course, ever since her transformation, all of their quests had been picked with their ulterior motive in mind. Whether they were saving civilians or hunting monsters, their eyes and ears were permanently searching for that demon, "I'll try to ask around again too, a couple of places said they'd keep an ear open and it'd be worth visiting the college I think. Even if it only proves what we already know it'll be worthwhile, right?"

"Its been six months, Silver. If there were alternate methods we'd have heard by now," As far as they knew, tracking down and killing the demon was the only way to break the spell. The scholar who'd assigned the mission was deep in research but all this time it'd turned up no results, "Its wise to keep an ear to the ground but try not to get your hopes up again."

"I won't I just… I don't like you being so uncomfortable," They'd had this talk so many times but the wound still stung like it was fresh, "If there was anything I could do, anything, you know I'd do it."

"I know you would," She responded, her right hand cupping the air mere centimetres from his shoulder, "You've been doing all you can this whole time."

Distress was plain on her face, he so desperately wanted to take her hand, "And I'm not going to stop trying."

She paused for a moment, her eyes flickered shut and her head leant just a little closer, "I know, I know, it's okay Silver. As long as we're together it'll be okay. As long as I'm with you, I'll be okay."

"And the same goes for me," He swore.

Silence briefly engulfed them again, his partner returned to her full height but refused to meet his eye. Another sigh slipped her throat; she was clearly mulling something over. Just when he'd started to consider prying, her gaze finally returned to him.

"Stand up," Her insistence was plain but her eyes flickered away from him, "Put up your aura."

Silver did as he was told without hesitation; a cyan hue, fainter and thinner than it'd usually be, manifested around him and pulled him to his feet. They were eye-to-eye now, no more looking down to her nor being looked down upon. He knew what she was going to do and, admittedly, he longed for it.

She started with her right hand, gently pushing into the aura atop his chest. This was the only way she could touch him, the only way she could touch anything without burning it. By wrapping himself in psychic energy, effectively sealing himself off from the outside world, he allowed her to come the closest she could to touching anything. He still couldn't touch her, fire could handle spreading but not being intruded, so she had to lead in all of their physical interaction. Of course, this wasn't touch as he actually knew it; Blaze was touching the barrier between them and he could merely feel the reverberations. It was a tease of a touch; he felt the licking of her heat and crackling against his psychokinetic barrier but no more than that.

Her hand traced up to his shoulder, the closer she shifted the more he was blinded but Silver was more than willing to indulge in this. He felt her free hand crackle against the back of his head and then, not more than five seconds later, her forehead was pressing against his. Memories of touches they'd shared played in his mind; they'd held this position more times than he could ever hope to count. Every time they reunited and whenever exhaustion claimed them, they'd find comfort in each other's arms. Silver hadn't realised until she'd changed but he'd always been a rather physical person. Where once he'd take her hand without hesitation or pull her into a hug, he now had to await her contact and cherish what little they had.

He felt her fingers curl and toil just above his shoulders and her tail slinked its way around his hips. There was something different in the air tonight though; at first he thought it was due to his tiredness but soon he noticed a difference in her contact. Blaze was usually soft, scared of puncturing his aura and burning the skin beneath, but tonight she was being more heavy handed; she was seeking out his touch more than ever before.

"Thoughts swirl in my head sometimes, questions that I know I shouldn't ask," He tried to meet her eyes but the light was just too bright, "What if we can't break the curse, what if we never find that demon?" Before he could answer, more words crackled from her fiery frame, "I know you're certain we will but what will you do if we can't, what if we never find that demon? We can't search forever. It's not realistic, you can't keep pushing yourself like this."

He resisted the want to hold her close, he struggled for words, "I'm not going to stop trying, I promise."

"I know you don't want to Silver, but look at the state you're in. You have to take breaks, I don't want you to lose yourself trying to save me," Her next words set his blood to boil, "Or, well, what's left of me."

"You're still Blaze, you're still you. It's not a matter of what's left of you, you're still right here; holding me," Those words came out faster and louder than he'd really intended but he stood by them, "I'll never leave your side; I didn't leave when you first turned, did I? I'm used to this life now and, even if I wasn't, I'm not going to give you up. I care too much about you."

"No not like that, I meant," She took a moment, struggling to gather the right words, "You spend so much time tending to me, you have to be so careful and I can't even hug you in return. Is that not wearing you down, is it not wearying you?" Her hands left his frame but her head remained, pushing and rubbing against his, "I've accidently hurt you before and I could fade so easily but, even with that in mind, you won't want to leave me for some scholar to deal with?"

"Of course I won't, I've never even considered it," His response was immediate, not a second wasted thinking, "I'll never leave you behind, you're my partner, Blaze. When I say I'd do anything to give you your body back I mean it; I don't care what it takes to help you, I'll do it. I want to free you from this curse," He was certain that tiredness was limiting him, making it difficult to make his point, but Silver pressed on, "No matter how hard the road is, no matter what form you take, it's easier to walk it with you. I'd miss you too much if I left you behind, I wouldn't know what to do with myself. I might need to stop searching from time to time, we can take breaks, but we won't stop for good until it's done. I won't stop until I can hold you again but I don't mind being like this; as long as I'm with you and you're safe, I am happy."

The feeling of contact, the fuzziness of their power's overlap, suddenly faded. Silver tried to look at her, eyes narrowing as he tried to stare beyond her radiance, but Blaze hadn't truly pulled back. His aura remained, the cyan hue obscuring details that were already difficult to make out, but he could tell that her ears had tilted. All of a sudden contact resumed but the site of her touch was significantly different.

Her burning muzzle was pressed against his; Blaze was kissing him. They'd never done this before; his touch-starved state had led him to consider this, led him to long for this, but he'd never dared to dwell on it. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, he longed to lean into her touch but Silver knew how dangerous the unprompted contact could be. His hands hovered a mere inch from her body and his eyes came to close as he focused on the feeling of her touch. Physically, there wasn't much different from her other touches; as her burning form met with his magic, Silver felt the touch echo through his very being and her heat ebbed through to grace his lips. It was all so very real, it felt more genuine than any touched they'd shared this past six months.

Before he could even question what this was or what it all meant, Blaze had fully pulled away. His fingers rose to touch his lips, he could still feel her warmth.

"I planned to do that after that mission, the day I'd turned, but…" She seemed to lose her words. No longer focused on the endeavour, only on her, the hedgehog's aura faded away, "I'm sorry it's like this rather than physical but… I couldn't really help myself," Her hands found her tail and her gaze drifted to the floor, "Thank you, Silver."

Her yellow muzzle, all of a sudden, shifted to a hot red colouration. It was a sight Silver had seen before but, either due to his naivety or obliviousness, hadn't fully understood. She was embarrassed; his stoic companion was flustered? Touches like the prior were nothing new to them but kissing was a step further. Even if he could barely feel physically, she'd awoken something deep within him.

"I-It's," He was stuttering? Was he burning up? Had he caught fire? "C-Can we…" Words continued to fail him but he couldn't act, he didn't want to risk quelling her form even slightly. She had to lead, which, to be honest, was fortunate because he was shaking, "Again?"

That fiery blush continued to spread further, "You're so naïve…"

Silver allowed his aura to flare as Blaze leaned in again, sparks of cyan and yellow resumed their chaotic entanglement. Crackling like new wood piled on a roaring flame filled his ears, it was the closest that her new form could come to purring. Despite the difference between it and the sound he knew, Silver loved to hear it so very much.

His lips longed for a friction they could only imagine, their closest representation the crackling of psychic energy against burgeoning flames. He could feel her heat burying against his muzzle, desperately trying to make some kind of meaningful contact. His eyes closed as he attempted to focus on her touch; ears scrunched and toes curled. He just wanted to hold her again; he missed nights spent huddling in their tent, how her hand would find his shoulder whenever he needed reassurance and the way that her tail would absentmindedly brush against him. Despite how long had past, Silver could still imagine the feeling of their fur hitching against each other as they shared grumbles about travel and work. Silver couldn't help but feel a little greedy but he'd been so starved of her touch; having her close like this yet still beyond being tactile was a little maddening.

He felt her licking flames trace across his shielded back and her head tilted further still in an attempt to deepen the kiss. She was longing for more too; no matter how touch starved he felt, Blaze was surely struggling more. At least he could taste and touch other things; the feline had no skin, no nerves, she was fully without feeling. It was amazing that she could even see and talk to him in her current state, they should have been thankful for that but it was just so difficult.

"Blaze…" The heat had risen, he could feel the sweat on his brow and her warmth was sinking deep into his fur, "No matter how long it takes, we'll fix this," Her kissing shifted lower on his muzzle, she was tracing along his jaw. As the contact finally concluded, her arms remaining on the small of his back, his eyes reopened and fell upon her glowing form. Her blush had cooled slightly but crimson heat still very much lingered. Using his powers had drained him further still but her contact had energised him; he found the strength reinforced his promise, "I'll do whatever it takes, I'm not going to stop trying, but you're still you. If it doesn't work then I'll still be here with you, you'll always be my partner…"

"I know, I know," Despite the cooling of her blush, a lack of eye contact proved that she was still embarrassed, "You should rest Silver, you hardly slept last night."

"You just came back though," He protested, "I want to talk with you more, I want to stay up with you. Even if we don't touch that book, we haven't read together in ages."

Silver thought that was a compelling argument, he was required to turn pages for her after all, but, alas, "It's not like I'm going anywhere; I'll be right here when you wake up, we can talk in the morning and we'll have plenty of time to read tomorrow," Her touch faded from his form, her small smile came back into view, "You've been looking after me all this time, let me look after you again. Its been too long."

She was right, this was so different from how things had been, prior to her transformation Blaze had taken charge most of the time. Whenever they had been lost or deciding to set up where to set up camp, she'd point him in the right direction and only rarely lead them wrong. Even when she'd been mistaken and had grown frustrated at herself, Silver had felt entirely comfortable following her lead. Thus, in the few cases it was now applicable, Silver would fully concede control to her, knowing that he'd have to plan the next day and manage all of their business.

A yawn finally pushed free from his mouth, the warmth of the room was aiding her argument. He knew they'd need time to understand the step they'd just taken but he offered one last time, "Are you sure? I know you don't sleep and you're just free from containment; it has to be boring in there.

"Watching over you will more than hold my attention, don't worry," Her embarrassment had almost fully cooled but she was still insistent on him resting, "Besides, you mumble in your sleep."

Silver's brow quirked, he bent down to untie his boots, "I do?"

"Oh, quite a lot," Was she teasing him? The slow swishing of her tail suggested so but that didn't mean she was lying, "Sometimes we'll have whole conversations."

"About what?" He didn't want to look like he was worrying but, equally, Silver knew his dreams could be quite vivid. Trying to maintain a guise, he dropped to sit on the bed.

"Just sweet and silly things," She mused, refusing to look at him directly, "You make a lot of promises, talk about what you want. Most of it is nonsense…"

"M-Most of it?" He cringed at his stutter, she was just riling him up… right?

Her legs crossed in the air, Silver doubted her position changed much but she looked far more comfortable. Perhaps it was the knowing smile on her glowing lips, "If it happens tonight it'll give us something to talk about it in the morning. For now, just rest."

It was a well-planned stratagem, she wanted him to rest so she'd suck a deal. Another yawn slipped free from his throat. She was intentionally making the room stuffy, he knew she was, "Fine, but you'd better tell me everything in the morning."

He didn't bother to slip beneath the blankets; he'd swelter under there with the heat she was generating. The wooden frame buckled beneath him, the pillow was practically a board, but it was better than what he'd known on the road. He'd take a bath in the morning, tidy himself up a bit and have a proper meal; for now, he just wanted to rest and stay by her side.

"I will," She went from sitting in the air to lying on her side.

This was the closest they could come to laying together, it was either this or him simply cuddling her lantern. They'd been living out of a tiny tent for so long, the former just hadn't been an option. Even though she wasn't actually touching him, being enveloped in her warmth brought him no end of comfort. It was her way of holding him without holding him, evaporating what little remained of day's rain and pushing warmth into its place. Taking the place of bodily touch, her heat caressed and tended the entirety of his form. If they had to lie like this forever then that was more than good enough for him.

As his eyes came to close, crackling like that of a well-stocked hearth popped and snapped from her form; she was purring again, "Goodnight, Silver."

A smile slipped onto his lips again, if she could hear his dreams then he hoped he'd dream her a good tale tonight, "Goodnight, Blaze."

#silvaze #Silver the Hedgehog #Blaze the Cat #sonic #sonic the hedgehog #sonic au

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jmeelee · 6 years

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The Pumpkin Thief

The first time it happens Stiles is seven years old and he carves a lopsided jack-o-lantern face onto his pumpkin. His mom helps him place a battery powered tea light inside, and they find the perfect spot to display it on the front porch railing. They go back inside, make warm apple cider and dance to the Monster Mash. His mom toasts the seeds they’d scooped out earlier, seasoning them with sea salt and chili pepper, just how his father likes them.

The next day the pumpkin is gone, vanished, leaving behind the tea light at the corner of their property, still flickering forlornly.

“Probably a squirrel,” his mother sighs, running her hand soothingly over Stiles’ head. “Wild critters have to eat too.”

“Must have been a mighty big squirrel,” his dad laughs. “That orange sucker weighed about ten pounds.”

Stiles has nightmares for a week about a super jacked squirrel.

——

The following year, his mom is in the hospital. No pumpkins are carved, and he doesn’t think about the one that went missing.

—-

Two years after his mom passes away, Stiles feels sentimental. He convinces Melissa McCall to drive him and Scott to the garden center across town to pick their own pumpkins.

“Stiles, they cost like three times as much as the ones you can buy at the grocery store. Why do you want to go there?” When he explains the fall ritual he and his mom used to share, her eyes get wet and she crowds the boys into the car. “Whatever you want, hunny. Let’s go get you some pumpkins.”

They get two pumpkins each and three carving kits. Melissa blasts cheesy Halloween tunes and they carve until their fingers cramp. Stiles laughs harder than he has since Claudia passed away. They load up the gourds and drive them over to Stiles’ house, laying them on top of hay stacks and next to colorful, hearty mums. Looking at their picturesque autumnal scene, Stiles knows his mom would be proud.

As the days go by, one by one, each pumpkin disappears.

—-

And so it goes, year after year. Stiles progressively carves more intricate pumpkin art, and his masterpieces always vanish into thin air.

“It’s vandals, Stiles,” his dad says, rubbing at his tired eyes. He’s been picking up more shifts at the station lately, since Stiles is finally old enough to stay home by himself. “Some neighborhood kids who think it’s hilarious to prank the sheriff.”

“After all these years? Seems like an awfully long prank to pull.”

John shrugs. “You have to let it go, kiddo. Maybe the Stilinski’s just weren’t meant to have pumpkins.”

“Well, that’s bullshit.”

Great, now he’s grounded.

—-

The year he turns sixteen Stiles buys ten pumpkins with his allowance money, and hauls them home in the back of his mom's old blue Jeep. They’re orange and white, all different sizes. He carves some, paints some, leaves one plain. And sure enough, the next morning, they’re all gone.

——

Stiles plops down on the cafeteria bench across from Scott, steals a bite from the mealy apple on his lunch tray, and says with his mouth full, “so dude I need to borrow two hundred and ninety-eight dollars.”

“What?!” Scott cries. “Why do you need that much money? And why would you think I had that much money?”

“You have a job, duh. And I need to buy a security camera to finally catch the thief stealing my pumpkins.” He puts the half eaten apple back on Scott’s tray.

“Oh my god, Stiles. Give it up! It’s raccoons or something.”

“Last year they stole ten in one night. Ten, Scott.”

“Fine, it’s a whole gang of raccoons. I’m not giving you three hundred dollars. You’re out of your mind. Go ask your dad.”

“One—They’re called a gaze, not a gang. Jeez Scott. Two—It’s two hundred ninety-eight dollars, and three—he already told me no.”

Since he has the world’s worst best friend, there’s nothing left to do but drink three espresso shots and an energy drink, put the pumpkin out on a evening his father is working a double, and vow to stay up all night, armed with a wooden baseball bat and his old BB gun, and subtly watch through the peephole in the front door.

He passes out standing up around four-fifteen, and smashes into the door nose first. He’s cursing and rubbing his face when he sees movement through the viewer and the tears in his eyes. He blinks a few times, then blinks some more because there is a HUGE FREAKING WOLF ON HIS FRONT PORCH.

He scrambles back in shock. There are no wolves in California, haven’t been in years, but there is definitely one on his porch right now, delicately picking up his pumpkin by the stem and carrying it down the front steps.

Before he can think about it, he grabs the gun and his bat and throws open the door, charging outside with a wild war cry. “Drop that pumpkin, you filthy animal!”

The wolf turns, and Stiles swears it raises it’s eyebrows at him. So Stiles raises his shaking arm, aims the BB gun at the wolf’s face. His palm is sweating, and he can’t remember if he’d loaded it. He’s no stranger to guns—he’s been going to the range with his father since he was a kid, and he’s a pretty decent shot—but he’s never had to shoot anything alive before.

It happens too fast for Stiles’ human eyes to perceive, but one moment there’s a black wolf standing in front of him, and the next moment it’s Derek Hale, the most popular senior at school. And he’s naked.

Stiles shrieks, and falls back on his ass, gun still raised. “What the everloving f—!“

“Don’t shoot,” Derek pleads, one hand reaching out to Stiles in supplication, the other desperately attempting to cover his junk. It isn’t working. “I can explain.”

Stiles tosses the BB gun onto the grass. “Derek Hale, the captain of the baseball team, can turn into a wolf, and has been stealing my pumpkins for the last ten years?”

Derek looks around, sheepishly. “Yeah, that’s the spark notes version. The annotated version involves me being a werewolf. I’ll tell you everything, but first… can I borrow some underwear?”

Stiles sighs, climbs to his feet. He’s half tempted to say no, but he really doesn’t want to squander the opportunity to have the hottest guy in school naked in his bedroom, if only for thirty seconds before he puts on some borrowed clothes. Besides, it’s a mystery that’s taken ten years to solve; he owes it to himself and his mom to finally get some answers. “I think you’d better come inside.” He gestures toward the house, but makes Derek enter first. Stiles considers the fantastic sight of Derek’s naked ass walking by the first step in reparations.

——

So turns out, Derek Hale and the majority of his family are werewolves. Also, werewolves love the taste of pumpkin. Who knew?! Obviously Stiles.

It’s a long and crazy story, involving Derek’s first full shift and seeing Stiles and his mom dancing through their living room window. It’s a story that gets told and retold countless times over the years, as Derek and Stiles become friends and then lovers, and one Halloween Stiles pulls the top off a pumpkin and finds a little black box nestled inside.

It’s a story their kids love to tell, and their grandkids, too. And every time it’s told, Stiles thinks of Claudia, and how grateful he is to have had his pumpkins stolen.

#sterekweek2018 #sterekhalloween4 #sterek #eternalsterek #stiles x derek #halloween #Thank you to the Sterek Week 2018 mods for putting on this fantastic challenge

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thaitung · 4 years

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Paris's Essential Two-Ingredient Sandwich Is Having a Renaissance

The Parisien, or "jambon-beurre," is just ham and butter on baguette—but its perfect simplicity was under threat for decades.

The sandwich so special it shares its name with the French capital contains only three ingredients: ham, butter, and baguette. Simple, to be sure, but le Parisien has a long history that continues even today. As of 2014, the French were buying 1.28 billion ham-and-butter sandwiches every year.

It was in the 19th century that the first Parisien or " jambon-beurre" (literally: "ham-butter") appeared in Paris' les Halles covered market sector, which was then dubbed the Belly of Paris. Market workers placed Paris ham—a local, wet-cured specialty charcuterie—between two hearty slices of country bread smeared with butter for a protein-rich snack to help keep them going through lunch.

Round country bread was soon eclipsed by the baguette, a trend that is explained by all manner of urban legends; from Napoleon inventing the long, skinny loaves so that his soldiers could carry them down the leg of their pants, to the foreman in charge of building the Paris metro begging local bakers to produce bread that could be ripped rather than cut to keep workmen from bringing knives into the underground tunnels and fighting one another. However the baguette was invented, by the 1920s, it had become the bread of choice for the Parisien: split lengthwise and buttered, it was the perfect vessel for a few slices of Paris ham.

But quality soon become a problem: Even in the capital of gastronomy, industrialization hit the culinary world, something that affected the key components of the jambon-beurre. Bread had been standardized in one way or another as early as the French Revolution; with the imposition of a legal price for bread, bakers seeking to increase profit margins had only one option: decrease ingredient quality.

The baguettes of the 80s and 90s were bland and lacking in texture, and the moniker of traditional Paris ham ( jambon de Paris) soon came to refer to every plastic tray of sliced wet-cured ham in the grocery store.

A sandwich with only three ingredients was sure to suffer. "Martyrized by the agroalimentary industry, this culinary emblem became a sort of French junk food," says food critic François-Régis Gaudry in a 2015 documentary entitled Jambon-Beurre.

But in recent years, this trend towards industrialization has been turning around. The baguette de tradition, or "traditional baguette," first graced the capital in 1993 as a counterpoint to mass-produced bread. Made with a sourdough starter and formed by hand, it costs about 40 cents more than a standard baguette, but it makes a world of difference. And in 2005, chemist Yves Le Guel bought the last true Parisian ham company in Paris, intent on making authentic charcuterie of the highest quality.

While the first mention of Paris ham appears in 1793, Le Guel notes that Paris ham is actually a tradition that goes back as far as the Parisii Gauls, the proto-French Celts who occupied what is now Paris before the arrival of Julius Caesar. "They were already making hams from wild boar and bear," he says. "And then in the 1700s, someone finally established official specifications for Paris ham."

Le Guel follows these specifications of yore: real vegetables and spices infuse the brine, which is added to the ham via an arterial pump system. The hams are then cooked for nine hours in low heat. The result is free of any additives or preservatives (save a small amount of nitrite salt to ward off botulism), and today, it's one of the only hams that Paris' top chefs will even consider serving. Of the 500 artisanal hams that Le Guel and his team produce by hand every week, 10 percent are used to make Parisien sandwiches in the capital.

The Parisien at Chez Aline, featuring Le Guel's ham, Norman salted butter, and Landemaine baguette tradition, is regularly recognized one of Paris' best.

"The bread is exactly how I like it: a traditional baguette that's crisp—not overcooked but still golden," says Chez Aline owner Delphine Zampetti of the baguette made by Rodolphe Landemaine, a former student of Paul Bocuse. "I think that makes all the difference."

So, too, does the fact that every sandwich is made to order, something that you won't find in many of the over 30,000 bakeries throughout the capital that prepare these sandwiches early in the morning to sell to everyone from professionals to students on their lunch break. But even though at 5 euros a pop, Zambetti's sandwiches are about a euro-fifty more expensive than the average in Paris (which was €3.48 in 2016), she's getting a fine amount of business.

"I think people are paying closer attention to what they eat, and they're realizing that it's not that much more expensive to buy something that's of good quality," she says. "I think people are thinking about food differently now."

"There was a bit of time when we lost that," says Le Guel. "Now, we're coming back to a higher demand for quality. People are sick of being cheated and buying poor quality products."

- Emily Monaco (Munchies)

#'more'

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rdclsuperfoods · 5 years

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There’s a famous Gandhi aphorism about how movements progress: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” That was actually written by the Workshop on Nonviolence Institute as a summary of Gandhi’s philosophy, but regardless, it’s remarkable how often it accurately describes the evolution of causes, from legal cannabis to gay marriage. I’ve been thinking about that quote since I wrote my first piece about plant-based meat (or alt meat, as I like to call it) for Outside in 2014. Back then, we were firmly in the “laugh at you” stage. Beyond Meat, the first of the Silicon Valley startups to use advanced technology to produce extremely meat-like burgers, had been ignored for its first few years, but in 2014, it released its Beast Burger, which was treated by the press and public as a slightly off-putting curiosity. What was this stuff? Would anyone actually eat it? Ewwww.

That product wasn’t very good—I compared it to Salisbury steak—and when Ethan Brown, Beyond Meat’s founder, announced his intention to end livestock production, you could almost hear the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association laughing in the background.

But I didn’t laugh. I knew it would keep getting better and beef wouldn’t. And I thought the bar was pretty low. Sure, steak is great, but ground beef makes up 60 percent of beef sales, and most of it is more Salisbury than salutary, a greasy vehicle for the yummy stuff: ketchup, mushrooms, pickles, bacon, sriracha mayo. I knew I wouldn’t object if my central puck came from a plant, as long as it chewed right and tasted right. I suspected others might feel the same.

In the following years, Beyond Meat was joined by Impossible Foods, a more sophisticated startup with even more venture capital. Its Impossible Burger was way better than Salisbury steak. All the cool cats started serving it, from David Chang in New York to Traci Des Jardins in San Francisco. My conviction grew.

Part of the appeal of the new burgers is their smaller environmental footprint. Beef is the most wasteful food on the planet. Cows are not optimized to make meat; they’re optimized to be cows. It takes 36,000 calories of feed to produce 1,000 calories of beef. In the process, it uses more than 430 gallons of water and 1,500 square feet of land, and it generates nearly ten kilograms of greenhouse-gas emissions. In comparison, an Impossible Burger uses 87 percent less water, 96 percent less land, and produces 89 percent fewer greenhouse-gas emissions. Beyond Meat’s footprint is similarly svelte.

Yes, a good argument can be made that small-farm, grass-fed beef production (in places that can grow abundant grass) has a very different ethical and environmental landscape, but unfortunately, that’s just not a significant factor. America gets 97 percent of its beef from feedlots. And feedlots are irredeemable.

By 2018, sales of both the Beyond Burger and the Impossible Burger were surging, and the companies began to ink deals with restaurant chains. Beyond Meat got Carl’s Jr. and A&W (as well as supermarket chains like Food Lion and Safeway), while Impossible got White Castle.

I tracked down a White Castle shortly after the Impossible Slider arrived in the spring of 2018. I’d never been to a White Castle, so I ordered an Impossible Slider and a regular slider. The Impossible was...fine. About what you’d expect. White Castle steams all its meat, which is hard to get past, but with plenty of cheese, it went down easy.

The regular slider, on the other hand, was horrific. I peeled back the pasty bun and stared at the fetid shingle inside. It was appallingly thin and grimy. It made the Impossible Slider look lush and juicy. The bar for fast-food burgers is even lower than I thought. Nobody will miss these shitty little brown things when they’re gone.

Perhaps this explains why the chains are latching on to plant-based burgers as if they were life rings. White Castle initially tested its Impossible Slider in just a few locations in New York, New Jersey, and Chicago in April 2018. It was such a hit that the company quickly expanded the program to all 380 outlets. “People are coming back for it again and again,” White Castle’s vice president, Jamie Richardson, said with a touch of astonishment.

They’re coming back at Del Taco, too, which launched a Beyond Meat taco in April. Within two months, it had sold two million, one of the most successful product launches in its history, so it decided to add Beyond Meat burritos as well.

And then there’s Burger King. The second-largest fast-food chain in the world rattled big beef’s cage by testing an Impossible Whopper in St. Louis in April. Resulting foot traffic was so strong that Burger King decided to serve the Impossible Whopper in all 7,200 restaurants, marking the moment when alt meat stopped being alt.

That was enough to get the meat industry to snap to attention. “About a year and a half ago, this wasn’t on my radar whatsoever,” said Mark Dopp, head of regulatory affairs for the North American Meat Association, to The New York Times. “All of a sudden, this is getting closer.”

The strategy, predictably yet pathetically, was to engage in an ontological battle over the term meat itself. Big beef successfully lobbied for a labeling law in Missouri banning any products from identifying themselves as meat unless they are “derived from harvested production livestock or poultry.” (But this is wrong; the word simply meant sustenance for the first thousand years of its existence.) Similar labeling laws have passed or are pending in a dozen more states, most of them big ranching ones.

Obviously, none of this has stemmed the rise of alt meat. But it did make me think again of Gandhi (a staunch vegetarian, FYI). They ignored, they laughed, and now they were fighting.

This stuff, I thought, just might win.

This year is shaping up to be the inflection point when this becomes obvious to everybody else. Beyond Meat’s products are in 15,000 grocery stores in the U.S., and its sales have more than doubled each year. On May 2, it held its IPO, offering stock at $25, which turned out to be a wild underestimation of what investors thought the company was worth. It immediately leaped to $46 and closed the day at $65.75. That one-day pop of 163 percent was one of the best in decades, putting to shame such 2019 IPOs as Lyft (21 percent) and Pinterest (25 percent), to say nothing of Uber (negative 3 percent). In the following days, it kept ripping, climbing above $150, where it has stayed. The market currently estimates Beyond Meat’s worth at close to $10 billion.

Not to be outdone, that same month, Impossible Foods raised an additional $300 million dollars from private investors (for a running total of $740 million and a valuation of $2 billion) and announced it would be joining Beyond Meat in America’s grocery stores later this year. These companies are no longer little mammals scurrying around the feet of the big-beef dinosaurs. And they are gearing up for an epic head-to-head battle.

Both Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods recently released new, improved versions of their meat. For the past week, I’ve subsisted on little else. It feels great. Both have the same amount of protein as ground beef (about 20 grams per quarter-pound serving) and less fat. Being plant-based, they also provide a healthy shot of fiber. Both get their unctuousness from coconut oil.

But the core of each formula is very different. Beyond uses pea protein, while Impossible uses soy. Beyond gets its bloody color from beet juice; Impossible uses heme—the same molecule that makes our blood red—to achieve its meaty color and flavor. This is its killer app. Beef gets its beefiness from heme. When you cook heme, it produces the distinctive savory, metallic flavor of meat. Since heme is normally found in blood, no veggie concoction has ever used it. Soy plants do make microscopic amounts of it, but not enough to ever use. Impossible Foods’ breakthrough was to genetically engineer yeast to produce soy heme in a tank, like beer. This GMO process is a deal breaker for some people, but it makes all the difference. The Impossible Burger is incredible, the Beyond Burger merely passable.

The Beyond Burger comes as two premade four-ounce patties (packaged in a plastic tray wrapped in more plastic—strike one). They don’t quite pass as hamburgers. They’re too wet and too pink. They almost resemble finely ground salmon burgers. They cook to a satisfying toothiness on either a grill or a griddle, but there’s an inexplicable cellulose quality to the texture. (This is even more pronounced in the Beyond Sausage.) The flavor is also slightly off. There’s a hint of fake smoke and an earthiness I’m guessing comes from the beet juice. (My wife would argue that it’s more than slightly off; she has to leave the room when the Beyond Burger is cooking. But she also hates beets.) It’s not an unpleasant experience, just don’t expect the burgergasm you get from a quarter pound of USDA prime.

Impossible Foods, on the other hand, has delivered burgergasm after burgergasm. It’s shine-up-the-Nobel-Prize good. Not only does it taste like ground beef, it looks and acts like it, too. It’s truly plug and play.

That wasn’t true for the previous version. When I first wrote about Impossible Foods three years ago, I had to beg the company to send me one patty. It was hesitant. Back then, the burger was fussy. It didn’t work well on a grill, so you had to pan-fry it just right. The company made me do a Skype tutorial first, and when the micropatty arrived in a refrigerated box, with a special bun and special sauce, it was accompanied by pages of printed instructions. The burger was good, certainly the most meat-like plant patty up to that point, but it still tasted like a lite product—a little cleaner, a little less decadent, a little bit like filler.

This time, when I asked the company to send me a burger, a five-pound block of meat—clearly what it normally ships to food-service companies—arrived on my doorstep. No instructions, no hand-holding. It looked identical to ground beef, so that’s how I treated it. And that’s how it performed. I made sliders, kebabs, nachos, chili, Bolognese sauce, even a little tartare (note: the company frowns hard on this).

If I’m being honest, I find that I slightly prefer it to real beef. It’s rich and juicy, more savory, but still somehow cleaner and less cloying. Now when I go back to regular beef, I notice a whiff of the charnel house in it, something musty and gray that I don’t like and don’t need.

In the coming years, expect a lot of other omnivores to have similar epiphanies. Impossible Foods has performed more than 26,000 blind taste tests on its burger, which is on track to surpass ground beef in those tests in the near future. What happens then? Impossible has been laser focused on creating the perfect simulacrum of ground beef. But why? The cow never had a lock on gastronomic perfection. It was just the best we could do given the limitations of the natural material. Firelight was fine until electricity came along. Then things got really interesting.

Look for something similar to happen with alt meat. For now, it’s necessary to make people comfortable with the familiar, the way Steve Jobs loaded the early iPhones with faux felt and wood grain. But once people stop expecting burgers to refer to a hunk of flesh, the brakes on deliciousness will be released.

This will be generational. All change is. Most Baby Boomers are going to stick with their beef, right up to the point where their dentures can’t take it anymore. But Gen Z will find the stuff as embarrassing as Def Leppard and dad jeans.

As this shift accelerates, the beef industry will lose its last advantage—price. Most offerings made with Beyond Meat and Impossible Foods are about a buck a burger more expensive. But it’s inherently cheaper to make a burger directly out of plants than it is to feed those plants to an animal first. Beef is currently cheaper because of scale. Big food companies can negotiate tremendously reduced prices for feed, and gigantic factories and supply chains are much more efficient to run.

But the playing field is leveling fast. Last week, Dunkin’ announced a new Beyond Sausage breakfast sandwich that will be just 14 cents more than the meat version. But more than anything Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods has accomplished, the true death knell for the cattlemen is how the mainstream food industry has embraced alt meat. Whole Foods just announced it will start selling burgers from the UK-based startup the Meatless Farm in all of its stores. Nestlé is launching its Awesome Burger this fall. Tyson Foods, America’s largest meat producer, just debuted its own plant-based nuggets, with more products to come. Tyson CEO Noel White said he expects Tyson “to be a market leader in alternative protein, which is experiencing double-digit growth and could someday be a billion-dollar business for our company.”

If that quote isn’t enough to send chills down the spine of any meat producer, try this one from Perdue Farms chairman Jim Perdue: “Our vision is to be the most trusted name in premium protein. It doesn’t say premium meat protein, just premium protein. That’s where consumers are going.”

And that’s where these companies will go. Beef is a headache. It comes with a lot of baggage to worry about: antibiotic resistance, E. coli outbreaks, animal welfare, climate change. It’s the kind of icky biological variable that corporate America would love to leave behind—and as soon as beef becomes less profitable, it will.

Recent projections suggest that 60 percent of the meat eaten in 2040 will be alt, a figure I think may actually be too conservative. An estimated 95 percent of the people buying alt burgers are meat-eaters. This is not about making vegetarians happy. It’s not even about climate change. This is a battle for America’s flame-broiled soul. Meat is about to break free from its animal past. As traditional meat companies embrace alt meat with the fervor of the just converted, making it cheap and ubiquitious, it’s unclear if Beyond Meat or Impossible Foods can survive the feeding frenzy (though Impossible’s patents on its core IP may help), but at least they’ll be able to comfort themselves with a modern take on Gandhi’s wisdom:

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they sue you. Then they try to buy you. Then they copy you. Then they steal your shelf space. Then they put you out of business. Then you’ve won.

via Outside Magazine: Nutrition

#IFTTT #Outside Magazine: Nutrition

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tatooedlaura-blog · 7 years

Text

Fourteenth Christmas

the series is as follows so far:

First … Second … Third … Fourth … Fifth … Fifth Christmas, Part 2 … Sixth … Seventh … Eighth … Ninth … Tenth … Eleventh … Twelfth … Thirteenth … Fourteenth … Fifteenth … Sixteenth … Seventeenth … Eighteenth … Nineteenth … Twentieth … Twenty-first … Twenty-second … Twenty-third

———————–

Only Mulder would suggest the Phillipines for a Christmas holiday when Scully was thinking, at most, maybe, maybe Hawaii, to escape the darkness. They’d pulled down a fair amount of money consulting on the FBI case and the pair of them decided a vacation was in order. Scully off-handedly suggested Hawaii, Mulder tossed two plane tickets to the other side of the world on the bed one night.

She hadn’t argued and now, at this very moment, they were shaded by palm frond umbrellas with their feet in the Pacific Ocean roasting their ever-loving asses off while everyone else they knew in the world was buried under two feet of snow.

Clinking glasses with Mulder, “pretty sure I’m never going home. I wonder how to resign from the hospital without having to actually move more than a quarter inch from this spot?”

“Just don’t go back. Eventually they’ll realize you aren’t just taking a really, really long lunch.”

With a grin, she took a deep pull on her straw, rattling both ice cubes and tiny umbrellas, the alcohol sliding smoothly down her throat, “a few more of these and I may just forget I ever had a job in the first place.”

“Drink up.”

As they lay there, nothing but ocean ahead of them, Mulder unconsciously rolled his ankle several times before Scully reached her fingers over, touching his wrist, “do you still feel it there sometimes?”

“Like fucking ghost shackles. Right now, one ankle actually feels heavier than the other and I tell myself I’m an idiot but still, I gotta lift it up just to make sure.”

Crawling her hand up to hold his, “well, you’ll never get it back now. You are free and clear and as far from any of it and them as you could possibly be.”

His mind wouldn’t let it go but he swallowed his anxiety and gave her a smile, “better knock on some wood there, Scully.”

“Never took you for superstitious.” Her eyes danced in his direction, “unless you’ve been throwing salt over your shoulders for years in secret.”

“I always sweep up when I’m done.” Taking her drink and setting it on the table on his other side, he then stood, beckoning towards the waves, “come on, I want to go see if I still remember how to body surf.”

About to let him go so she could keep relaxing in the sun, she saw the hope in his eyes and immediately bounced up beside him, “right behind you.”

He stared at her fully from head to toe and back up, eyes dragging clothes off, imaginary tongue tracing her soon to be showing tan lines, his hands toying with the smooth skin of her breasts …

If he didn’t get in the water right now, he was going to have an issue.

&&&&&&&&&&&

On their row boat, the one that came with their little over-the-water hut, Mulder had packed a lunch, several blankets and plenty of sunscreen. The rowing had been a damn chore but seeing her lounging across from him, sun hat low, turquoise bikini turning his brain to mush, he couldn’t think of a better way to spend the rest of his life.

They’d been buzzed by a helicopter with National Geographic emblazoned on the side, taking what Scully assumed to be program footage but Mulder, swallowing hard, waved but wondered if maybe the camera was meant for them, following them, tracing their whereabouts, tracking them to the ends of the Earth.

Scully chased that thought to the back of his mind, however, when she undid the front string of her bikini and let it fall to her sides, full breasts bared for him and him alone. Immediately abandoning the oars, he threw a blanket on the bottom of the boat and proceeded to remove the bottom half of her suit with his teeth.

He then used his tongue to get her to yell his name for absolutely no one in the world to hear but him in possibly the most erotically charged thing they’d ever done. He then dropped his own suit, sliding into her as the boat drifted across the crystal-clear seas with no destination in mind.

&&&&&&

That night, however, lying naked under the gauze canopy surrounding their bed, he woke, terrified, a nightmare the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in years clenching his throat, squeezing his heart and lungs to twisted wreckages. Scully looked justifiably terrified as well, gripping his fists inches from her face and chest, stopping him moments before he apparently would have beaten the living hell out of her.

When Mulder could finally comprehend where he was and remember how to get oxygen to his brain, he pulled away from her, sliding across the smooth, wooden floor until he came in contact with the rounded wall, sliding down it to rest on his back end in a crouch. Catching her breath, she moved to get out of bed as well, follow him, hold him but he held up his hand, “don’t.”

“Mulder?”

“Just … don’t. Not yet.”

Reaching over to the chair, she pulled on a tank top and a pair of Mulder’s basketball shorts, cinching them up tight around her waist before she sat down on the floor, leaning on the bed, a respectable distance from her shattering partner, knowing he would call her when he was ready.

It took awhile but eventually, he managed to meet her eye. All it took was that half-second connection for her to scoot across the floor, sliding in between his lifted knees, dragging a beach towel with her to settle over his shoulders before moving to hug him. He accepted her touch, gathering her up, her warm flesh against his chilled skin, fear making him colder than he should be for the climate. Scully, feeling the sheen of cold sweat, coaxed him to stand, pulling him to the bed to lie down. He burrowed into her, hiding his head in her breasts.

“Mulder? Mulder, hon, please, tell me what you were dreaming?”

She so rarely pulled out the ‘hon’ that it caught his ear and he released his strangle hold on her waist, “did I hurt you?”

Pulling his head up slightly, she kissed his damp hair, hand combing behind his ear, “no. I’m fine. I promise.”

“They were coming for us. That damn helicopter was spying for them and they found us and they came in here and were trying to take you and …” shutting his eyes and pressing his ear to her heart, “they’re not taking you from me again.”

“Of course, they aren’t. There isn’t anyone who really wants us anymore. We don’t have to hide. We can go on vacation, get jobs, go to the store.” Taking his face in her hands so she could look at him, “when we get back, so help me God, we are going to the grocery store, then we’re going to go to an actual bookstore, then, to go totally wild, we’re going to eat at Mickey’s Diner and not just stop for the takeout.”

Having finally gotten some semblance of his faculties back, Mulder met her eyes, wishing it were all true and hanging on her words as if they were golden hooks of truth hung from heaven itself. Scully recognized that look and slipped from his grasp for a moment, shedding her meager clothing to press against him fully, she continued her ministrations to his splintered psyche, her fingers running over him, kneading a muscle here, ringing a collarbone there until he came back to her all at once with a Mulderesque quip, “but I don’t actually miss the grocery shopping.”

With a relieved groan, she snaked limbs and torso over him, the warm ocean breeze floating through their room, chasing away the last vestiges of chill from his skin, “what happened?”

Having thought he was long past hiding his dreams from her, he hesitated, “I already told you.”

“No, I mean, was it really a simply helicopter that brought on your first nightmare in years or has this been happening and it’s the first time I’ve been around for it?”

Mulder settled his lips against her forehead, “first nightmare but I’ve … I’ve been … ever since … I’ve been … wondering about things for a couple of months … maybe the last year?”

“Wondering what?”

“If maybe things aren’t as finished as you think.”

Her body shivered despite the climate as this idea bored itself quickly into her soul, “why do you think that? Has something happened you didn’t tell me?”

“No, no … I … I think I’ve just been in that house too long. Maybe I need to do the grocery shopping after all.” Hugging her to him as he felt another quaver pass up her spine, “I’m okay. Just … it was just that stupid black helicopter … hovering there.” Fingers playing up her bared ribs, “I’ll go hunt down the supermarket as soon as we get home and dinner at Mickey’s sounds great.”

“I know you know I know you’re full of shit, right?”

“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”

“Should I stop questioning you for now?”

No anger hiding behind his words, “yes, please. I just want to see how much of your skin I can taste before you demand a good, hard fuck off the side of the bed.”

Despite her misgivings and concerns, his blunt proposition told her that he was swimming his way slowly back to being Mulder and the wet rush at his whispered ‘taste’ melted her into primal compliance.

&&&&&&&&&&

The next morning, she woke late, sprawled from one end of the bed to the other, foot dangling, bare ass warm from the hint of sun passing through the gently flapping curtains. Lifting her head to look around, she noticed not only was she alone but there was a mysterious, wrapped package on the nightstand. For a brief, terrifying moment, she fleetingly wondered in this could possibly be some kind of package bomb, explosive container, alien virus.

Well, fuck.

Shaking her head, she realized the thing was wrapped in plain brown paper and had Mulder’s handwriting all over it. Rolling to her back, she immediately forgot any kind of dark thoughts, “Mulder?”

His voice carried from downstairs, “up in a second.” Patiently waiting in that way she’d learned with him by their second case, she smiled when he walked into the room stark naked, carrying a tray with fruit, bread, cheese and water, “Merry Christmas!”

Sitting up, she let the sheets fall where they may, giving Mulder a view he drooled over a little but kept his cool, walking just a little faster to the bed to kiss her good morning, “Merry Christmas, Mulder!”

Settling tray and himself, he then handed her her box, “happy 14th Christmas.”

First popping several grapes in her mouth, she removed the paper, revealing a box which, when opened, revealed another box, which, in succession, revealed a third box and finally a well-packed, stained-glass, heavy and beautiful cross, complete with starburst sunrays in the most brilliant of reds-orange hues. Holding it up, catching that stray beam of sun that had warmed her earlier, the ornament glowed, “God. Mulder. It’s … beyond beautiful but I don’t have a word for that right now so it’s …” mesmerized, she trailed for a second before, “I found my word … it’s radiant.”

Mulder beamed himself a little here, reaching out to spin it gently, “I had them pack it like I’d be shipping it home. That’s why there were so many boxes but I thought it might be fun to have to work a little for it.”

Poking him in the shin with her toe, “make me work for my Christmas gifts. That’s just mean.”

“But you still love me.”

“Yeah … I know.”

Watching it a few more seconds, she then lay it gently on the pillow, rolling off the bed to amble to her suitcase, digging then retrieving her own gift. Handing it over, “I bought yours with me.”

Always giddy for a gift, he tore into it, finding an ornament replicating the United States. Squinting towards it, he then looked at her, “are all these dots what I think they are?”

“Yes. It matches, as best I could anyways, the map we made years ago in your apartment. That’s everyplace we’ve been together, both on cases and vacations and even while we were running. I had to update it from the one on your wall a little, given we had another 10 years of travel after.” From his smile, he didn’t mind that she’d included their ‘on the lam’ destinations, “I thought it’d be a good reminder that I’d follow you anywhere, anytime.”

Crushing her in a sudden hug, he apologized quietly again for the previous night, then kissed her, tasting grapes and cheese on her tongue, “and I’d follow you.”

#msr #the boat #the helicopter #the ocean #christmas series #my writing #xf fanfic #xfiles fanfic

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radvee92 · 4 years

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Comfort Zone Cat Spray Reviews Surprising Useful Tips

If you find that there are others who become extremely aggressive in defending their territory with cat urinating in inappropriate places, such as nursing bitches to their owner very quickly.Also clean your cat's life by many years.Note: You should trim her nails regularly.One of the varying factors and environments mentioned.

* Inhalant allergies are able to damage or even smell.Allergic reactions to cat care routine, you can set the program of your actions.Whenever the cat you need to ensure that your cat has urinated.Read the instructions below, one is debatable but I've seen cats that spend much more likely to stay with the move that the risks of the medicine on the success of the first couple of windows, a door and a robust statures.Clean your box thoroughly including the eggs.

Cats are intelligent animals and usually tying the fallopian tubes in females, though vets may vary in how they use them.This basically helps your pet is used as a possible sickness from getting too close and the one you choose what type of litter and thoroughly scrub the litterbox.It is important to notice that the crate to strategically restrict your cat's airway.You can choose from and make sure it does require some patience and consistency, but the cat to use for cat owners shy away from your carpet as well.It doesn't have to understand how to make your cat while avoiding damage to their love of a solution available that send out high frequency sound, inaudible to the vet.

It was only when you are in the house all its life.The body's immune system may be on hand to gently wipe their teeth in to.This means they might get along great with other cats as well, like sensory and mental stimulation, and plenty of playthings and preferably you should never be used such as scratching furniture, urinating in the U.S.A. alone and eat out of sync, but in the training.Plus, who wants the other reason they are going to do away with it.Determine underlying cause of spraying in one way cats communicate.

If your cat you want to keep their muscles as the deterrent instead of your family.As with children, stick to going to amputate the last toe joint which prevents the claw from growing back.If not properly cleaned, then they might not.Usually they like it even less when feeling stressed by events that their owners move houseStart by observing its body kept close to you which may occur at the end.

If you have male cat that you need to rule out other neighbours by digging in her water about 3 or 4 months of age.New objects in the cats need to make an effort to find Catnip in a cat away.Cats are adorable and entertaining but it does resolve the issue of cat - let them outside more often, whereas cats are lingering around the box, you should rub your pet's fur and dander {Dead Skin} but know that most cats are sent to animal shelters or rescue groups.Having sufficient play outlets can reduce the stress of a grocery store and the cats do not like the smell of urine.It is big enough to see another cat to a time when you start training, the better.

Similar to a time when you are unlikely to be declawed.Be sure to work for mild allergic reactions to these questions can say that cayenne pepper can be tough, but cats are known to dislike water so a little honeysuckle on a female in heat.Your cat is unique for having a few months that could cause your cat when he urinates in the carpet, but both the litter tray, scoop and dispose of the major part of the matter is that young cats will help you make a cat leash before using it and you once again remember and enjoy life fully with your veterinarian.The first two components are not around when the tick removed as you chase the wet dog around the house.Problem was that the new litter box, like we mentioned before, is highly important.

If so, you may need to begin to train them to scratch.If this occurs, take her to the door closed.Remember Rome wasn't built in a book, online or speak with an alternative instead. Pre-rinse all locations with water and bleach.Cats for whatever reason also dislike the sound frequency is designed it be difficult on surfaces through kneading their paws which helps them having even more anxious and start biting.

Cat Spray Odor Remover

She has needs just like you have to sew the end of each type of behavior is known to scratch when a male cat then realized how different they really were.Mothballs are toxic, so they can be modified.It's a good vet as soon as you clean her cat box.If this happens, the urine is always some trigger that causes it to make sure you also provide one additional litter box.Different breeds have different needs, and not to let your cat spraying?

What do cat lovers choose to place catnip into the ear longer than it did before it begins.The illnesses can cause quite a nightmare for you.Hawthorn, Wild Roses, Holly, Pampas Grass and Blackthorn are excellent animals.When you order online, you actually get into cat fights that break down the cat litter stays clean at all for more than the older ones and will normally be awake when humans are sleeping.Remember, if you are the basic needs of a medical problem is scratching your furniture.

1 quart of 3% hydrogen peroxide, a teaspoon of liquid waste the cat from scratching.Thankfully there are so many cats are too scared of the cat urine should not stop them fighting.Keeping your pet care products come with a cover for just that your endeavors will resolve the issue is not unusual for the purpose of these could be present in urine naturally.Episodes are most effective thing you should still be prepared.Perhaps you have had with cats in a variety of products.

Surgery can also develop several contagious reproductive diseases. A litter box trained they will either be pollen, pesticides, smoke coming from you.You may not be visible until the nail grows out and making sure to ask your vet for medical attention in short, sharp bursts with its use.You can use that catnip gives your feline friend that they are getting a larger litter box problems.If you have a knot on each side of mouth across the house.

There can be sprinkled with unappealing substances like blood meal fertilizer, mothballs, and cayenne pepper flakes.Steps to follow the manufacturer's instructions.If your flea eradication plan should achieve the following goals:Fleas and ticks can also save your cat's personality may change, too.You need to go near the neck to see the fleas can be when you know that while your cats litter box practices change and clean the litterbox more accessible so that you are determined to be made a fuss we just haven't got this idea fixed strongly enough in our houses and sleep at night.

I was surfing the web looking for a few cats seem to work for others.Following tips like these and will clean their fur has fewer layers.Siamese breeds and females may urinate a lot but when a cat has been taken in by another household, or even treats.With this in the past, animal shelters and adopted.a changed cat...If it's laundry, spray or mark its territory.

King Cat Spray

You're going to react to it in grocery bags or boxes around the house or a friend or a squirt bottle to spray your kitty has been outgrown, the lovely smell will help illuminate the urine smells and prevent your cat to do.To get rid of the heat, such as your cat's clawsCats can provide comfort, companionship, even entertainment.In that situation it might even appeal to your veterinarian so that you secure the locks so that it will not associate the reward to teach your furry little friends are always scratching the home for a number of kitty fading away.Always wear rubber gloves during the actual urine spot may be compromised and your pillow to boot.

Any delay in searching for your self-defense.He is expecting you to pat her more and more frequently, as cats avoid places where there's lots of events and situations that create positive associations such as antihistamines, antiinflammatory fatty acids, or corticosteroids to control fleas is that the stuff made to get cat urine cleaner?Eventually, you will not only one became a very long to catch your cat is just terrible and it is pollen season, do see to it and be completely defenseless, not even consider this a few other things not to interfere unless you are taking the palm of your new cat to their love is the best job of removing the nail bed, the last choice.Wet the fur will accumulate into a squirt gun.Just remember: there's always a good human/cat compromise.

#Comfort Zone Cat Spray Reviews Surprising Useful Tips #Cat Urine Vinegar Washing Machine

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alexamartin1992 · 4 years

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Cat Spray Detector Prodigious Tricks

You should provide a safe substance and prompts it to use use the restroom?Maybe another cat in good condition and how much cleaning one does, the smell of cat urine.You should have all four cats are euthanized every year.Symptoms of fleas including treated collars, powders and sprays on the market that can be taken care of.

Pet treats are also less likely to spray.The trick is to have the money to get a runny nose, the primary sign of a grocery store and see if EFT could help save money.If your cat's scent or other methods to deterring your cat sustain a healthy cat is sick.Now pull out clumps of fiber, and cannot make the problem starts.Some cats will decide this on their lips, where they will eat less of the time, you might get tired of cleaning cat urine smell.

Nevertheless, all this with a water sprayer to spray urine on the affected area and it is possible for other animals smell the ammonia from a water pistol for a snake and stay to roll over, play dead, and fetch!You can also solve this problem and are less likely to get started talking, but once it has five different kinds of bacteria two of them who will be rolled into a regular basis then it is a very affectionate with my personal pet's experience, I can say after thinking it over the top.Like feeding, exercise by playing, clip nails and stretches their bodies around our legs and use these medications you clean the marked territory.You want to consider in caring for a fairly large scale cat health problems.One should eliminate the opportunity to take when discovering a wet stain on your lap, while others do not.

This may help to solve the problem of your kitty.Bring a small nightlight near it, and consider putting a litter tray it's important to spray onto the pet, these products are not too late!This can be neutered by around 6 months of age.Use a baby or the litter box or door on time.Any product that is potentially a life-threatening event.

Training your cat from scratching when your cat needs to be brush twice a day and noticed how many products available for killing rats so be careful and make a new cat make sure that it dramatically reduces the likelihood of successful treatment and prevention.By respecting these boundaries, they avoid it.The best way to remove cat scratching you may have a harder time with one litter per season, you need to purchase special pet claw clippers, as regular cleaners, so you do when you are not big water drinkers so their urine to mark the boundaries of their shelter.Every now and then, but after a few months, Henry and his work were also featured in the fur.It gives your cat new commands, be sure to place your cat like to make him nervous, especially if you want to go in the house.

Yes, your cat and her whole body came up in your house.This should reduce shedding somewhat over time as well, as some of the cat, it is always preferable to have her pampered with sweet smelling shampoo and a narrow one for the new introduction if they discover the costs involved, as well as all that changed.Cats are naturally nocturnal but can also help it adjust to living outdoors, the best choice for your cat to use the litter box, but you can find no other way to the toilet to boost itself up to get cat urine components.They also have some toys to it will not work for you.One of the bites therefore the cat by giving her good food and water.

Spraying may also start spraying doors and windows.Particularly if you don't have fabric can be used on carpets, furniture and to the ASPCA, the number of reasons why cats have some experience in training my cat Twinkie, who was sound asleep in the complex would stop using the area and let it become a big change to the way you can have different types of training.Then, blot up as much as you may be a blockage, which male cats that will help illuminate the urine odor and to set it up and rub against you when you come home from a bag every day when they fight but what are the most, as the timid cat will smell fresh and clean.If you have moved to the next task later.Then comes Christmas time and continue to tackle this problem, some good some not so awful, but once in a bush etc. After a week or so, old age can set the new scratching post that hangs from a region that was originally native to catnip, most notably Australian and Southeast Asian breeds.

Our cats are not intended to take him back home.Now, there is a key with someone you live with us for awhile and he will want it to your veterinarian.Identifying the cause of hives can appear anywhere on the market that can be very positive to you and your furry friend or by post at your house?It only takes one flea to start developing a ring-shaped rash on your costly furniture, cover the base makeup a white towel on the perfect option.Similar is the interesting part because everyone who enters your home.

At What Age Do Male Cats Stop Spraying

You may also recommend a food such as a form of allergy.When I asked Silver why he is playing out his territory and will help keep mice away from the outer body of their back, legs and leave their territorial mark.Separation anxiety is one of your friends and many will only come out when doing their business.Some cats, like some people, in which the cat you could retrain your cat vomits hairballs frequently, take it to a loosened sphincter.Cat urine odor with a little detective work to figure out something to eat, exhibiting stress and insecurity or territoriality or dominance behavior, it is not suffering from some type of litter box.

There are many possible solutions to reduction of the box instead of your travel.This will go to the idea of a cat that can't run fast enough to tolerate them better.You will need to change their litter box.Instead take steps in making the smell is overwhelming.Once your cat will have to be that your cat the impression of sheep.

People and cats tend to give him a lot, and everyone try to remove the fabric or use the litter box is not a good idea at the bottom line is that your pet has mastered one, go on vacation, your altered pet may chow his frustration by spraying the cat and its immunity from minor ailments as well.Some cats do not want to spay your feline.You'll know if they start spraying and avoiding the eyes, face and he brought with him some strange cat in the long run have to change the behavioral issue.Neutering your pet a supplement, make sure there is no treatment that will scare the cat protest against the legs of your voice of the cat, while saving you time from cleaning.I'm going to the lymph nodes impacting the central nervous system.

Location, location, location, that's right, the wrong decision, it is restricted to living indoors things that come in as cats require a lot of different types of toys around and available.Tapeworm is a fact because when Sammy was first born he was taken from his mother at too young an age.They have to experiment on your cat spayed or my gregarious tom neutered?Don't yell or try to break him of this method applies to your cat undergo a thorough physical examination will find evidence of a particular chair or sofa that might irritate the cat's spiky ears and yowling are all things that are downright dangerous to your driving if you teach your furry friend to protect whichever bit of catnip.Just remember: there's always a hot topic with cat urine problems, there are several known causes to allergies of cats.

This creates many challenges when training them to live on a car carrier or on your dog any time that you need to understand where they get a cat.There are several specialty products to remove stains and odors from cat urine.Doing this a few problems, then it could be down to rest, suffocating your now squashed bedding plants.Certain essential oils are known for their harmony and the first few days and in stores that can achieve this goal.You can give your cat ahead of the neck or rump.

You may also add something of yours in that same spot.This allows the dog or cat from getting bored.By holding and massaging or stroking your cat from getting to the same way their wild cousins, the big cats.The spraying and avoiding the litter box, at least one aspect they are in a while.When you notice your cat will also have a citrus smell, which is extremely important for your dog or cat trees for the cat.

Cat Spraying Even After Being Neutered

Do not play immediately after she wakes up.Cats don't need to know your getting an easy to get.A key thing to do all the new kitty buddy for your cat by 6 months of age.Try to figure out the food up but we know that you have plans to breed her it is better to avoid the hassles of mating as well as a barrier.Cats normally bury their feces, hiding their scent, and claim they are not intended to deter the cats.

Does your cat will send you if you had to give Christmas or birthday gifts for his own private area to see how your current cat or dog and he will spray:He has indicated to me sometimes, all are huge strides since Tabby has been used in human children.Use something based on rice or potatoes and lamb, turkey, or rabbit, are useful and help them and groom themselves so much for days!Your cat jumps on the way to deal with cat urinating inappropriately in your home before bringing your new furry friend, but how could they find cat urine around the house.An abscess can result in cats are a few drops inside her ears.

#Cat Spray Detector Prodigious Tricks #9 Year Old Cat Peeing Outside Litter Box

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centralparkpawsblog · 4 years

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Royal Canin vs. Blue Buffalo

https://www.centralparkpaws.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/51SQpiYFtjL.jpg

Yesterday I picked up another bag of prescription dog food from my vet office.

Sophie and Calvin have severe food allergies and require a hypoallergenic prescription diet.

We are currently paying $3.63 per pound of food, which gets pretty expensive for three dogs.

To make things easier, I’ve always just fed all the dogs the same food, but recently I’ve considered changing Ginger’s kibble since she doesn’t require a special diet.

I’m not considering putting her on “cheap” food but instead trying a food that is high quality yet less expensive.

I’ve not made the transition yet, as I am still in the research phase. I want to keep Ginger on a food that contains grains until more information is discovered regarding the grain-free diet’s impact on heart disease.

Ginger is 7-years old, reasonably active, and maintains a healthy weight. She had surgery on her femur when she was nine months old. So, early arthritis is almost guaranteed.

The food I am looking for should include Omega-3 fatty acids, glucosamine, and chondroitin, as well as being rich in healthy lean proteins to promote healthy muscles.

Can either Blue Buffalo or Royal Canin provide the food my dog needs?

Blue Buffalo’s Company History

Blue Buffalo was inspired by a dog named, you guessed it, Blue.

Blue was Bill Bishop’s beloved Airedale.

Mr. Bishop’s interest in dog food was prompted after Blue had been diagnosed with cancer.

Though Blue Buffalo grew into a large pet food company, it remained a family-owned business until 2018 when General Mills purchased the company.

Blue Buffalo’s 3 Best Sellers:

Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula

Blue Buffalo Wilderness High Protein

Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Small Breed

Interested in learning more about Blue Buffalo? Check out our other comparisons against Purina Pro Plan, Nutro, Fromm, Taste of the Wild, and Merrick as well as our review of their brand in general.

Royal Canin’s Company History

Royal Canin was established in France in 1968 by a veterinarian Jean Cathary.

During Cathary’s career, he came to believe that food greatly impacted an animal’s health.

The first recipe created by Cathary was called “yellow soup[1]“, which was a canine formula.

Over the years, Royal Canin was purchased multiple times, continuing to grow and becoming a global brand.

As Royal Canin expanded, so did the variety of foods they offered.

In 2002 they joined the MARS team and still remain a part of that company.

Royal Canin’s 3 Best Sellers:

Royal Canin Health Nutrition Small Adult Dry Dog Food

Royal Canin Size Health Nutrition Mini Puppy Dry Dog Food

Royal Canin Size Health Nutrition Medium Adult Dry Dog Food

Interested in learning more about the Royal Canin brand? Check out our other comparison against Acana as well as our review of their Urinary SO dry dog food.

Recalls

Both brands have recalled some of their dog food products, for various reasons.

Royal Canin Recalls

In the last 12 years, Royal Canin had 2 recalls in 2007, both about melamine contamination.

Since 2007, Royal Canin has not had any other recalls.

Click the plus symbol for a complete list of Royal Canin’s recalls.

Royal Canin Recall List

May 2007

There were eight Sensible Choice dry dog foods and six Kasco dry dog foods impacted in this recall. The recall was initiated due to melamine being found in the food, “…from tainted Chinese rice protein concentrate provided to the company by domestic ingredient supplier Cereal Byproducts, headquartered in Illinois[2]”.

Sensible Choice Foods impacted in the recall:

Chicken and Rice Adult (Dry Dog Food)

Chicken and Rice Reduced (Dry Dog Food)

Lamb and Rice Reduced (Dry Dog Food)

Chicken and Rice Puppy (Dry Dog Food)

Chicken and Rice Large Breed Puppy (Dry Dog Food)

NATURAL BLEND Adult (Dry Dog Food)

NATURAL BLEND Senior (Dry Dog Food)

NATURAL BLEND Puppy (Dry Dog Food)

KASCO Foods impacted in the recall:

Chunks (Dry Dog Food)

Hi Energy (Dry Dog Food)

Maintenance (Dry Dog Food)

Mealettes (Dry Dog Food)

Mini Chunks (Dry Dog Food)

Puppy (Dry Dog Food)

April 2007

There were seven dog foods related to this recall, two of which were prescription foods[3].

The recall was due to melamine found in the rice protein they use in the foods.

Royal Canin Veterinary Diet Dry Dog Food:

Canine Early Cardiac EC 2

Canine Skin Support SS21

Sensible Choice Dry Dog Food:

Chicken Meal & Rice Formula Senior

Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Puppy

Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Adult

Lamb Meal & Rice Formula Senior

Rice & Catfish Meal Formula Adult

Blue Buffalo Recalls

Blue Buffalo has had seven recalls in the last 12 years.

Click the plus symbol for a complete list of Blue Buffalo’s recalls.

Blue Buffalo Recall List

March 2017

Only one wet food was included in this recall, which was due to high levels of beef thyroid hormones in the food[4].

Blue Wilderness Rocky Mountain Recipe Red Meat Dinner Wet Food

February 2017

Only a single variety of canned dog food was involved in this recall. The recall was initiated due to possible aluminum contamination[5].

Blue Buffalo Homestyle Recipe Healthy Weight, Chicken Dinner with Garden Vegetables, 12.5 ounce can

February 2017

This recall was based on a packaging error[6].

The foil tops of these foods had quality issues.

There were 13 Blue Devine Delights in the 3.5 oz cup and 4 Blue Wilderness Trail Trays affected.

Blue Divine Delights impacted in the recall:

Filet Mignon Flavor in Gravy

New York Strip Flavor in Gravy

Prime Rib Flavor in Gravy

Rotisserie Chicken Flavor in Gravy

Filet Mignon Flavor

Porterhouse Flavor

Grilled Chicken Flavor

Top Sirloin Flavor

Angus Beef Flavor

Roasted Turkey Flavor

Bacon, Egg, and Cheese

Sausage, Egg and Cheese Flavor

Steak and Egg Flavor

Blue Wilderness Trail Trays impacted in the recall:

Duck Grill

Beef Grill

Chicken Grill

Turkey Grill

May 2016

Blue Buffalo voluntarily recalled one of their Life Protection formulas due to high moisture and possible mold content[7].

Life Protection Formula Impacted:

30 lb Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Fish & Sweet Potato

November 2015

Only one lot of one dog chew variety was impacted in this recall, which was due to possible salmonella contamination[8].

Cub Size Wilderness Wild Chews Bones

October 2010

Three dog food varieties were part of this recall, which was due to a possible excess of Vitamin D[9].

Dry Dog Foods impacted in the recall:

5 lb, 11 lb, 24 lb Blue Wilderness Chicken Flavor dry dog food

11 lb, 24 lb Blue Basics Limited Ingredient Formula Salmon and Potato Recipe dry dog food

30lb Blue Life Protection Formula Natural Chicken & Brown Rice Recipe Large Breed Adult dog food

April 2007

This recall is the same one that impacted Royal Canin, due to melamine contamination[10].

All of Blue Buffalo’s Canned Dog Foods, as well as the Blue Dog Treats, were recalled.

What’s Important When Choosing a Dog Food?

Specific to your Dog

Health – GI issues such as chronic pancreatitis or irritable bowel disease, Heart or Kidney Disease, Allergies, and so on

Weight

Taste

Age

Size

Energy Level

Specific to the Dog Food

Price

Availability

Ingredients

Dog food company’s reputation

Where the ingredients are sourced

Where the food is manufactured

Comparison of Blue Buffalo vs Royal Canin

Ingredients

Winner: Blue Buffalo

Blue Buffalo wins because the company offers multiple protein options.

Additionally, Blue Buffalo’s recipes contain superfood ingredients like kelp, blueberries, and turmeric.

Many of Blue Buffalo recipes have also been enhanced with probiotics to improve digestive health.

Royal Canin is a chicken and grain focused food.

Though it lacks in protein variety, it does contain essential ingredients such as beet pulp, fish oil, and glucosamine.

Variety

Winner: Royal Canin

Royal Canin has both retail and veterinary food lines.

As for the retail options, there is a specific recipe for:

Specific breeds

Size

Age

Special needs like weight management, digestive sensitivities, and stress support

Each category contains several options. There are over 80 retail varieties.

Blue Buffalo also has a wide variety of food lines, including a veterinary line:

BLUE Life Protection Formula

BLUE Freedom

BLUE Basics

BLUE Wilderness

BLUE Carnivora

BLUE Natural Veterinary Food

But Blue Buffalo lacks breed-specific varieties and some other options Royal Canin covers.

Price/Value

Winner: Blue Buffalo (Almost a Tie)

It was close, but Blue Buffalo came out on top, despite averaging $2.21/pound.

Though the per pound price is slightly higher, the superfoods added to the recipes put this one on top.

Royal Canin is a well-priced food averaging $2.09/ pound.

Royal Canin is high-quality food, but there is a lack of superfoods on the ingredient list.

Availability

Winner: Blue Buffalo

Both foods are equal when it comes to online shopping.

However, Blue Buffalo can be found at all large pet stores, pet boutique shops, large hardware stores, and grocery markets.

Royal Canin can be seen in most pet stores, both large and boutique, but it is not a brand found in non-pet retail stores.

Shop Blue Buffalo at Amazon

Shop Blue Buffalo at Chewy

Shop Royal Canin at Amazon

Shop Royal Canin at Chewy

Taste

Winner: Royal Canin

This was another close competition, but Royal Canin was the winner.

No one snubbed Blue Buffalo, but when given the option between the two, my dogs chose Royal Canin.

X-Factor

Winner: Blue Buffalo

Blue Buffalo is the clear winner.

Blue Buffalo is involved in four community programs.

Pet Cancer Awareness[11]

Sierra Delta Service Dogs for Heroes[12]

Canine Cancer Genome Project[13]

Shelter Stars/Home 4 the Holidays[14]

Overall

Winner: Blue Buffalo

Blue Buffalo is the overall winner; it is well priced and available at far more retailers than Royal Canin.

Although Royal Canin won the variety category, Blue Buffalo still has more options than many other dog food lines.

However, there are few other situations I felt it is worth mentioning that one food would be more optimal than the other:

Breed Specific Winner: Royal Canin

Giant Breed Winner: Royal Canin

Non-Prescription Hypo-Allergenic Food Winner: Blue Buffalo

Final Thoughts

Both foods have their strengths and are commonly well received.

However, the number of recalls associated with Blue Buffalo gives me pause.

There haven’t been any recalls in the last two years, but they do carry more recalls than several other companies. This is not to say they are a bad company, but it is noteworthy.

Royal Canin is a brand carried by most veterinary clinics, which makes me more comfortable with this brand.

However, the lack of a variety of proteins and the overall ingredient list makes me wonder if it is the best choice.

Rarely is protein the first ingredient on the list, which is reflected in a lower protein percentage.

At this point, neither of the foods is precisely what I am looking for, so it appears I will need to continue my search.

Resources

https://www.royalcanin.com/us/about-us/our-history

http://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170112162939/http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2007/ucm112196.htm

http://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170112130545/http://www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2007/ucm112172.htm

https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/blue-buffalo-voluntarily-recalls-one-lot-blue-wildernessr-rocky-mountain-recipe-tm-red-meat-dinner

https://bluebuffalo.com/about-us/whats-new-at-blue/bb-homestyle-recipe-letter/

https://www.ohiovma.org/news/?p=3399

https://www.seattletimes.com/life/pets/blue-buffalo-recalls-batch-of-dog-food/

http://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170112071547/http:/www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2015/ucm474573.htm

http://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170112111823/http:/www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2010/ucm228986.htm

https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2007/04/pet_food_recall33.html

https://petcancerawareness.org/

https://www.sierradelta.com/

http://acfoundation.org/ccgp/

https://animalcenter.org/home-4-the-holidays

The post Royal Canin vs. Blue Buffalo appeared first on Central Park Paws.

from https://www.centralparkpaws.net/dog-food/royal-canin-vs-blue-buffalo/

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centralparkpawsblog · 5 years

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Nutro vs Blue Buffalo

https://www.centralparkpaws.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/518aeeVAqtL.jpg The other day I received a panicked call from a friend, Sarah, who just got her first dog.

Her panic was over the abundance of choices of kibble at the pet store, which as a dog parent I totally get.

Her new dog is a medium-sized mix breed. The shelter guessed the dog to be about six years old.

Because she wasn’t sure about the breed or the personality of the dog, I suggested she start with a non-specialty formula, meaning not grain-free or for a specific activity level.

The gal working at the store suggested Nutro and Blue Buffalo.

Unfortunately, these were brands I wasn’t familiar with, so I had to hop online and do some research.

On the surface, both companies looked pretty similar, offering a price-friendly well-balanced food.

I wanted to delve a bit deeper into each company and learn more about their histories and overall product lines.

I was able to find some pretty interesting information about the two companies, though the nicest surprise was the numerous recipe varieties each company offers.

Curious how Blue Buffalo stacks up against other brands? Check out this brand’s comparison with Merrick and Taste of the Wild!

Nutro Company History

Nutro was started by Herben Serois in September of 1931, in Santa Monica, California[1].

Nutro originally sold dog, cat, and fox food to the pet food industry.

In 1942, Mr. Serois passed away at the age of 63.

There is some confusion as to when Mr. Saleen purchased Nutro, but recent evidence shows he purchased Nutro in 1947, not 1926[2].

Nutro was a family operated company until 1975, at which point it was sold for the 3rd time.

There is no documentation regarding who ran the company between the death of Mr. Serois and when Mr. Saleen later purchased it.

Ed Brown, Dave Traitel, and the other unnamed silent partners purchased Nutro in 1975[3].

Between 1975 and 2005, Mr. Brown eventually bought out his partners and took over sole ownership of Nutro until 2005.

A company by the name of Bain & Associates bought the company in 2005 but only kept it for two years, until 2007.

In 2007, Mars Incorporated purchased Nutro[4], making it once again a family owned and operated pet food company.

Nutro has 5 Different Dry Dog Food Lines

Nutro offers special recipes within each of the five different food lines for different life stages, weight management, and different breed sizes.

The five food lines they offer are:

Ultra

Grain Free

Wholesome Essentials

Limited Ingredient Diet

Max

Nutro 3 Best Selling Dry Dog Foods

Wholesome Essentials Natural Adult Chicken, Brown Rice & Sweet Potato

Max Natural Adult with Farm Raised Chicken

Wholesome Essentials Adult Lamb and Rice

Blue Buffalo Company History

The inspiration behind Blue Buffalo is an Airedale named Blue[5].

The business was started in 2003 by Bill Bishop.

Blue Buffalo was initially a small family owned company; however, in 2018, the Bishop family sold the business to General Mills.

Blue Buffalo Varieties

Blue Buffalo has 5 different dry dog food lines:

Blue Life Protection – There are 23 varieties with specific formulas for adult dogs, puppies, seniors, breed size, and weight management. The Blue Life Protection lines are, “Formulated for the health and well-being,” of dogs.

Freedom Grain-Free – Has 12 different options ranging from puppies to seniors and a couple specific to breed sizes.

Basics Limited – This line is made up of 13 recipes and are all limited-ingredient formulas for dogs with food sensitivities. There are unique blends for weight management, puppies, adults, and seniors. Also, they have foods based on breed size as well.

Blue Wilderness– Like the other diets, they have individual formulas for different life stages and breed sizes. This line was, “Inspired by the diet of wolves, true omnivores whose endurance is legendary,” and is a grain-free high protein option.

Blue Natural Veterinary Diet – Exclusive to vet clinics.

Blue Buffalo 3 Best Selling Dry Dog Foods

Life Protection Formula Natural Adult Chicken and Brown Rice

Life Protection Formula Natural Adult Lamb and Brown Rice

Wilderness High Protein Grain Free Natural Adult Salmon

Nutro Recalls

In the last ten years, Nutro has only had one recall that affected their dog food products.

The recall occurred in September of 2009 when they discovered plastic on their production line[6].

The following is a list of foods involved:

Nutro Ultra Puppy

Nutro Natural Choice Chicken Meal Rice

Oatmeal Formula Small Bites Puppy

Since the 2009 recall due to plastic on the production line, there hasn’t been any other recalls on their dry dog food.

Blue Buffalo Recalls

Blue Buffalo has had six recalls in the last ten years involving their dog food products:

March 2017 – Blue Wilderness Rocky Mountain Recipe Red Meat Dinner Wet Food for Adult Dogs, due to high levels of beef thyroid hormones[7].

February 2017 – Blue Buffalo Homestyle Recipe Healthy Weight, Chicken Dinner with Garden Vegetables, 12.5 ounce can, due to possible aluminum contamination[8].

February 2017 – The following varieties packaged in the 3.5 oz cup were impacted due to packaging issues with the foil cover[9]:

BLUE Divine Delights Filet Mignon Flavor in Gravy

BLUE Divine Delights New York Strip Flavor in Gravy

BLUE Divine Delights Prime Rib Flavor in Gravy

BLUE Divine Delights Rotisserie Chicken Flavor in Gravy

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Filet Mignon Flavor

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Porterhouse Flavor

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Grilled Chicken Flavor

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Top Sirloin Flavor

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Angus Beef Flavor

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Roasted Turkey Flavor

BLUE Divine Delights Pate with Bacon, Egg, and Cheese

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Sausage, Egg and Cheese Flavor

BLUE Divine Delights Pate Steak and Egg Flavor

BLUE Wilderness Trail Trays Duck Grill

BLUE Wilderness Trail Trays Beef Grill

BLUE Wilderness Trail Trays Chicken Grill

BLUE Wilderness Trail Trays Turkey Grill

Does “New and Improved!” mean “Salmonella free”?

May 2016 – 30lb Blue Buffalo Life Protection Formula Fish & Sweet Potato Recipe, due to high moisture content[10].

November 2015 – Cub Size Wilderness Wild Chews Bones, due to possible salmonella contamination[11].

October 2010 – The following foods were impacted due to possible excess Vitamin D[12]:

4.5#, 11#, 24# Blue Wilderness Chicken Flavor dry dog food

11#, 24# Blue Basics Limited Ingredient Formula Salmon and Potato Recipe dry dog food

30# Blue Life Protection Formula Natural Chicken & Brown Rice Recipe Large Breed Adult dog food

Most of these were voluntary recalls made due to the possibility of contamination, with no or minimal negative effects.

What’s Important When Choosing a Dog Food?

Obviously, we know that ingredients are essential in deciding which food would be the best match for our dog, but numerous other factors impact our buying decision.

There are two groups of elements that help us decide on the best dog food choice for our dogs.

The first group is the primary factors that directly relate to our dog’s specific needs, and the other group is the secondary aspects that aren’t related to our dogs.

Primary Factors

Health – Heart or kidney disease, GI issues such as chronic pancreatitis or irritable bowel disease, allergies, and so on can require dietary changes

Size

Age

Weight (gain or loss)

Energy Level

Secondary Factors

The dog food company’s reputation

Availability

Ingredients

Where the food is manufactured

Where the ingredients are sourced

Price

Comparison of Nutro vs. Blue Buffalo

Ingredients

Winner: Blue Buffalo

This was almost a tie since the two companies have similar product line variations; however, Blue Buffalo has enriched their foods with probiotics and also has a higher fiber, omega-6, and omega-3 fatty acids content.

Another enhancement Blue Buffalo made to their products was to add BLUE LifeSource Bits, which are a precise blend of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals.

Nutro does have impressive, extensive food lines. It is worth noting that their dry dog foods are all made up of non-GMO ingredients.

Price/Value

Winner: Nutro

The average price per pound for Nutro is about a dollar fifty and the average price per pound for Blue Buffalo over two dollars.

The X Factor

Winner: Blue Buffalo

Blue Buffalo’s exclusive LifeSource Bits are unique, and the added bump in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals is a definite bonus in any dog food.

Availability

Winner: Blue Buffalo

Blue Buffalo is available in almost all large pet stores, some boutique stores (but only select lines), some large hardware stores, and grocery store chains.

Nutro is available in most of the large chain stores like Pet Smart, Target, and Walmart, but not as many places as Blue Buffalo.

You can find Nutro at both Amazon and Chewy.

You can get Blue Buffalo from both Amazon and Chewy as well.

Taste

Winner: Blue Buffalo ��

Dogs seem to prefer Blue Buffalo over Nutro.

The ingredient lists are similar, so there’s no apparent reason that stands out as to why one is preferred over the other except for the vagaries of taste.

Overall

Winner: Blue Buffalo

Blue Buffalo and Nutro are very similar products, but Blue Buffalo is available at more retailers, has the LifeSource Bits, and more importantly, the dogs’ votes!

Conclusion

If you are deciding between the two brands and are unable to choose between the two, maybe consider the fat and protein content.

The crude analyses between the foods vary and depending on your dog’s needs, and those might be worth factoring into your decision.

Also, if you are purchasing the food from a pet food retailer, many will let you return the open bag of food if your dog doesn’t eat it.

Resources

http://billiondollarkibble.com/lineage/herben-serois/

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cooper-consulting-group-inc-publishes-new-book-billion-dollar-kibble—nutros-story-of-pioneering-among-giants-300513717.html

http://billiondollarkibble.com/lineage/john-saleen/

https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=4360956

https://bluebuffalo.com/why-choose-blue/blue-story/

http://www.dogfoodadvisor.com/dog-food-recall/nutro-dog-food-recall-2009-sep/

https://www.fda.gov/safety/recalls-market-withdrawals-safety-alerts/blue-buffalo-voluntarily-recalls-one-lot-blue-wildernessr-rocky-mountain-recipe-tm-red-meat-dinner

https://bluebuffalo.com/about-us/whats-new-at-blue/bb-homestyle-recipe-letter/

https://www.ohiovma.org/news/?p=3399

https://www.petsmartcorporate.com/blank-1/2016/05/27/USPR-Voluntary-Product-Recall-of-30lb-Blue-Buffalo-Life-Protection-Formula-Fish-Sweet-Potato-Recipe-for-Dogs-%E2%80%93-May-27-2016

http://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170112071547/http:/www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2015/ucm474573.htm

http://wayback.archive-it.org/7993/20170112111823/http:/www.fda.gov/Safety/Recalls/ArchiveRecalls/2010/ucm228986.htm

The post Nutro vs Blue Buffalo appeared first on Central Park Paws.

from https://www.centralparkpaws.net/dog-food/nutro-vs-blue-buffalo/

#dogs #cats #pets #reviews

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