Inspired by Yochai Gal’s The Demon Tree, a folk tale and Tibbius’s The Princess and the Salt I thought I’d share my own pseudo folk tale. I’ve shared this before in one of my Maximum Recursion Depth Play Reports but here it is in isolation:
There was a fine chef who every morning would prepare a meat pie for his king. The server would collect the ingredients; the richest butter, the ripest vegetables, perfectly marbled lamb, the most fragrant herbs and spices; he would give these fine ingredients to the fine chef, and wait on the king until the meat pie was prepared, and he would serve it to the king.
The king loved this meat pie and would lavish praise every day upon the chef, whereas the server would receive only the king’s impatience and contempt as he waited for his meat pie. The server grew jealous, and so one day he slew the chef and made the meat pie for the king himself.
When the server brought his meat pie, the crust was greasy and wet from too much butter. The meat was tough and gamey, as it had not been well tenderized. The vegetables were bitter, they had been chopped coarsely and were undercooked. The pie was under-salted, but also overbearing with too many herbs and spices.
The king was furious and demanded to know why his meat pie was so foul. The server, bewildered and confused, explained that he had made the pie himself, with the same ingredients as the chef had always used, but the king would hear none of it and banished the server from the kingdom.