A little bit of this, a little dash of that

Briar gave an amused chuckle as she watched her daughter begin to stalk up and down the rows of the various meats and supplies that they kept on hand down here, her awe at the vast array of options obvious on her adorable face. "There are!" she agreed at Ember's exclamation about how many options there were. Eventually the midnight-colored girl landed on a nice piece of venison as her choice and Briar nodded approvingly as she came over to pick up the large piece of meat. "Good choice!" Venison was always a crowd pleaser and she did know how much Ember in particular liked that meal. Glancing over to a section of shelving that had baskets and trays of vegetables and such that had been pulled from the garden, she hummed with thought and added, "Why don't you grab that bunch of carrots and a head of lettuce to go with it? There's a couple baskets to the side over there to carry them in." Gathering up the centerpiece of their dinner, she began to head back up the stairs while Ember gathered their sides.

Once they were both back in the kitchen, she sat the venison roast on the counter that took up the middle of the room. Once Ember's vegetables were placed beside it she turned back to Ember with a smile. "Okay! Now that we know we'll be roasting a big piece of meat, we need to get the oven prepped for it." Walking over to the large, brick oven, she began gathering some logs from the pile near by and placing them inside. "Since it's a larger roast, we want to get it nice and browned on the outside so we'll need one side of the oven to get really hot for the searing and we'll want the other side to be a little less hot so it can warm through without getting burned," she explained, passing Ember a couple of the logs and letting her nudge them into place. "See how they're stacked on one side like that? That'll help us get the effect we want. The fire will be really hot regardless, but even a little bit of separation makes a big difference!"

She slid a blackened, metal grate into place over the logs then before going to get a smaller twig of wood and once she had lit it on a near by fireplace she used that to ignite the wood they had placed in the oven. After giving it a few good blows of air the fire began to crackle in earnest and began to spread through their stack of firewood. "There we go! Now while that heats up we can get our ingredients ready." Stepping back over to the counter where the food was waiting, she asked, "What do you think we need to do to them first? Chop or season?"

"Briar Carpathius"