Herbs and Oils (Part 1)

L'orlei collects the ingredients needed for a new product, and makes the first part.

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Home of the Konti people, this ivory city is built of native konti stone half in and half out of the sea. Its borders touch the Silverwood, and stretch upwards towards Silver Lake, home of the infamous konti vision water. [Lore]

Herbs and Oils (Part 1)

Postby L'orlei on May 3rd, 2013, 8:53 pm

Timestamp: 77th of Spring, 513 AV

It was the nearing end of the season, and time to work on a new project. L'orlei knew of many useful plants around the island from her studies at the Opal Temple, and she had an idea for a new product for her shop. The first thing she needed was to collect a few things, and that was why she found herself once again out in the wilderness of the Konti Isle. Luckily, Mura was not a particularly dangerous place, so her ventures into the wild were rarely met with any hardship.

What she was looking for on this particular trip was Caplium grass, a common variant of the natural grass that grew throughout the isle. Caplium was not hard to find, and L'orlei did not have to venture far to find it either. After a short bell or two of walking she eventually came across a large patch of the grass. Thanks to the spring showers the island had been experiencing, the grass was growing tall and plentiful. What she was truly after, however, were the seeds.

Caplium was unique in that its seeds were contained between two blades of grass sprouting from a single root. All one had to do to get the seeds was split the blades and pull them out. The only hard part was that it was time consuming, especially since L'orlei had no special tools to complete the process. And to accomplish what she would wanted to accomplish, she would need a lot of the seeds. At least a few pounds worth.

The konti began the slow process of harvesting the seeds, splitting blades with her knife and pulling the seeds out, before tossing them into her bag. The process went on for a couple of bells before the bag was finally full of the seeds. She had harvested not even a fourth of the field, but it had taken her nearly all of the morning. By the time she returned to the city, it would be time for lunch. She doubted she would have time to do anything more with the seeds that day, but there were still other things to be done.

OOCCaplium can be found on the Flora of Konti Isle page in the wiki.

Last edited by L'orlei on June 13th, 2013, 2:59 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Herbs and Oils (Part 1)

Postby L'orlei on May 3rd, 2013, 9:39 pm

When L'orlei returned to the city she went straight to the square, a place ironically enough called Unity Circle, where everyone gathered to swap stories and sell their wares. L'orlei was in search of a few things, but primarily, she was wanting to upgrade her supplies. She already had a several of the basics needed for her trade, a mortar and pestle, an alembic, but she wanted a full set. She had two options, she could commission a full on philterers lab, something she could not afford, or she could purchase a philterers kit, which came with the majority of what she needed. She had done well the previous season, but not so well as to be able to have a lab built, and so the kit would have to do. She also needed a few other things, ingredients and the like, as well.

Finding the kit was hard, and L'orlei had to ask around to several people before she finally located someone who had what she was looking for. The kit came out to a total of one hundred and fifty gold mizas, more than she was hoping to pay, but L'orlei wasn't going to argue considering how difficult it was to find the stuff.

After the kit was purchased, she went to round up the other ingredients. Olive oil was the first thing she was looking for, and it was easy enough to find. She could buy it from just about any merchant who sold vegetables, and soon enough L'orlei had purchased a couple gallons of the stuff. After that, she went in search of almond oil.

Almonds were not native to the island, and their oil was expensive. She did find one merchant who was selling the stuff, but it was too much for her to consider buying. In the end, she settled on buying a few pounds of the almonds themselves, and would extract the oil later when she got home. With all of her shopping complete, L'orlei lugged everything home, kicking the door open with her foot before stepping inside and dropping everything on the ground.

Ledger :
-150gm for Philterer's Kit
-10gm for 2 Gallons of Olive Oil
-9gm for 3 pounds of Almonds


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Herbs and Oils (Part 1)

Postby L'orlei on May 3rd, 2013, 10:04 pm

The next thing on L'orlei's to-do list was to turn the almonds into almond oil. It was a process that was.. not very fun, and very time consuming, but doing it herself was cheaper than buying it already done. Since she did not have an actual oil press, something she should probably get eventually, she would need to boil the oil out. The would require a lot of prep work before hand, however, and so it was time to get started.

While she might not have a press, her herbalist toolkit did come with a few grinders. They were not large capacity, but they would get the job done. It wasn't very difficult to use, either. L'orlei picked up her bag of almonds and began scooping them into the grinder with her hand until it was full. It held probably only a few cups worth of the almonds. After that.. she closed the lid and began grinding. It took a while to grind the almonds up, and once they were all done, they still weren't fine enough. It was amazing how much three pounds of almonds condensed down to when grinded, however.

The next step was to grind them further by hand, using her mortar and pestle. She wanted them to be almost a paste, and so, scooping as much as she could at a time, L'orlei worked until her arm went numb, grinding the almonds more and more, until all three pounds of them were a thick, grainy paste. It took her several bells to complete the process, and by that time Syna had long left the sky. Once it was done, however, L'orlei let out a sigh of relief.

The only thing left to do was in fact rather simple. She scooped up all the almond paste and stored it in a container, sealing it shut, before washing up and going to bed. The final step was to let the paste sit. Since she did not have a paste, she would have to simply let the oil separate itself from the paste naturally. As it did that, L'orlei could scoop the oil out and store it in its own container, but that was a very slow process that could take many, many days. If she had a proper oil press, or perhaps was more skilled in philtering, she could have completed the process much quicker, but she did not. With the paste tucked away on the shelf, L'orlei decided it was time to tuck herself away, and went to bed.

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Herbs and Oils (Part 1)

Postby Traverse on June 14th, 2013, 11:58 am

Image

L'orlei

Skill XP Earned
Botany 1 XP
Endurance 1 XP
Philtering 1 XP


Lores Earned
The Unique Quality of Caplium
A Kit for Now, a Lab for the Future
The Tedium of Oil Extraction


Inventory

+ 4 Lbs of Caplium Seeds

-150gm/ + Philterer's Kit
-10gm/ + 2 Gallons of Olive Oil
-9gm/ + 3 pounds of Almonds

Additional Comments :
Nice to see L'orlei stocking up on supplies! There wasn't a whole lot to through out here XP wise as this was a supply gaining thread, so I am excited to see the process of what she does in what I can only assume is going to be part 2.


Yes, I Bite.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding your grade, please send me a PM and we can figure it out. :)
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