The Great Applesauce Expedition
Admiral Biscuit
Inside the kitchen it was warm and toasty, a stark contrast to outside where the snow was blowing and drifting.
Golden Harvest and Noi were hard at work in the kitchen, the filly standing on an upturned apple crate so she could help out. She didn’t get to do any chopping—she was too young for that. Dinner would be a pleasant surprise for their parents; bandages on the youngest would not be.
Still, there was plenty she could do. Noi got to mix up ingredients, trot back and forth to the pantry to find them, and sort through the untidy cupboards crammed with cookware to find the right bowls and dishes.
Their carrot casserole was coming along nicely. All the ingredients were layered in the baking dish. “Now we have to put cheese on it,” Golden Harvest said. “What’s your favorite?”
“Doesn’t the recipe say?”
It did, but Golden Harvest shook her head. “Just how much, like with everything else. Remember, it told us how many carrots to use but not what kind they should be.”
“And the nonyons. I remember there’s sweet nonyons and bity nonyons.”
“Onions.”
Noi nodded, then furrowed her brow. “We’ve got lots of cheese.”
They did have lots of cheese, some of it homemade and some of it bought at market.
“Sometimes Mom makes soup out of leftovers,” Noi continued. “And sometimes it’s not very good but usually it is, and it’s always unexpected.”
“Like a dinner surprise.”
“Yeah. There’s a lot of cheese down there, and some of it is just little wedges or whatever’s left over, and I bet it feels sad that it’s not getting used for anything except if I snack on it.”
“Are you sneaking down in the pantry to snack on cheese?”
Noi’s eyes widened, and then she shook her head. Golden Harvest hid a smile; she wasn’t old enough to be above the occasional foray into the pantry when she was feeling peckish.
“So that’s your idea, some of the leftover cheese that’s down there?”
“Yeah.”
“I like it. Go and pick some, about a cup’s worth, give or take.” Golden Harvest tapped the measuring cup, to remind her little sister how much that was.
•••
“Now what?”
“The casserole’s in the oven and it needs time to cook and them time to cool, so now’s when we start to wash all the mixing dishes.”
“That’s boring.”
“It’s got to be done,” Golden Harvest insisted. “If we let all the dishes get dirty, then what would we use?”
“Could just eat pasture grasses from the field.”
“Even now?” Goldie gestured to the window. A rime of frost was creeping around the edge of the panes. “Tell you what, we could make a dessert, too.”
“Dessert?” Noi started wagging her tail. “I love dessert. What should we make?”
“I don’t know.” Golden Harvest carried a stack of dishes over to the sink and set them down. “What do you want to make? What do you think would be a good surprise for Mom and Dad?”
“We . . . um, I really like Auntie Cup Cake’s cinnamon applesauce cookies, but I bet you don’t know how to make them.”
“I do, because she told me how.”
“Nuh-uh. I asked her and she said that she wouldn’t tell me until I was older.”
“I am older and she told me, but it’s a secret and you can’t tell anypony.”
“I won’t.”
“Promise?”
“Cross my heart and hope to fly—”
“—stick a cupcake in my eye,” both mares finished.
“Alright.” Golden Harvest went over to the kitchen bookshelf and selected a slim notebook. “I’ll trust you, but you’re going to have to do a lot of work together.”
Noi nodded.
“And if Cup Cake ever teaches you how to make them, you can pretend you don’t know how, right?”
“It’s bad to tell lies.”
“There are bad lies and good lies,” Goldie assured her. “Like, if Dad asks if his new manecut looks stupid you should say no, even if it does.”
“But it did.”
“I know.” Golden Harvest sighed. Was Noi ready to be an adult? And more importantly, was she ready for Noi to be an adult, and all the implications that carried?
Nopony had ever told her that she’d have to teach life lessons as a big sister. Especially when she was attempting to bake cookies. “Sometimes ponies don’t want to hear the truth, and I guess you have to decide if you’re going to be honest and tell them what you think, or tell them a little lie that will make them happy.”
“How will I know?”
“I think you’ll figure it out. You’re a good pony.” Goldie reached up and mussed her little sister’s mane. “You’re going to have to find the ingredients, okay? How many can you remember at once?”
“All of them.”
“Are you sure?”
Noi scuffed her hoof on the floor. “Three?”
•••
Most of the ingredients were either in the pantry or already in the kitchen. Supplies that had a long shelf life were bought in bulk; her parents hadn’t brought home flour by the barrel yet but it wouldn’t have shocked Golden Harvest if they did. As long as it was kept dry and free from pests, it had a very long shelf life.
Indeed, nearly everything had been gathered in the kitchen, and Golden Harvest had already started mixing the dough, one bowl for the dry ingredients and one for the wet. Noi was still gathering supplies, and the kitchen looked like a war zone, with boxes and tins of supplies scattered around the kitchenware.
“There isn’t any applesauce,” Noi reported, like a colonel giving bad news to her commander. “I looked everywhere it might be, and even some places it might not be and I couldn’t find any jars of it.”
Golden Harvest’s mind was already going. No applesauce meant no cinnamon applesauce cookies. It would have been nice to know that they didn’t have any applesauce before she’d started, but that was a staple, too, something that was always on the shelf in the pantry.
Except when it wasn't.
“You’re sure?”
Noi was tenacious, and if she said there wasn’t any that meant that there wasn’t. She could repurpose the dough to make non-applesauce cookies. That would require some tweaks, but they all involved ingredients she knew they had.
“Sometimes that happens.” She said that with more cheer than she felt; Golden Harvest could almost taste the fresh-baked cookies and to be denied midway through the mixing process was a harsh blow. But they weren’t without options. “How badly do you want cinnamon applesauce cookies?”
“They’re really good.”
“Feel like braving the cold?”
Noi glanced out the window. The wind had dropped and the sun was occasionally shining through the clouds. “Sweet Apple Acres has lots of apples and so they’d have applesauce.”
Golden Harvest nodded.
“Even if it’s not a market day.”
“Wear your earmuffs and your boots,” Golden Harvest suggested. “It’s cold out there.”
“Are you going to come with me?”
“I have to watch the casserole.” She tilted her head towards the oven. “Besides, you’re a big filly, you can do it on your own.”
“Will you help me with my boots?”
“Bring them to the kitchen.”
“Mom says I’m not supposed to wear them in the house.”
“It’ll be okay just this one time.”
•••
Noi hesitated at the door. The wind was mostly gone, but what was left of it tossed spicules of ice at her, and she could see the spume off the tops of the drifts.
Sweet Apple Acres wasn’t far, just down the road a piece. Easy enough to travel when she wanted to visit Apple Bloom but now the familiar path was covered with drifts and uncompacted barrel-deep snow, now it was a formidable obstacle.
Plus, the kitchen was warm and the smell of cooking food and cookie dough was comforting. Outside was windy and cold and snowy. And her earmuffs were pinching her ears.
Noi hesitated at the door. She didn’t have to go. Goldie was smart, Goldie would know something else she could make out of the dough instead, and if she didn’t she could put a cloth over it and Mom would know.
Sometimes it was hard to think outside of herself, but she could imagine the smile on her Mom’s muzzle when she smelled the freshly baked cinnamon applesauce cookies, and she could imagine Carrot teaching his little sister how to make cookies. Did Goldie ever have to trek through the wilderness to get ingredients?
She had admitted once that she didn’t like baths when she was a filly and that was hard to believe.
Noi hesitated at the door, thinking about the Daring Do novel she’d read where Daring had flown serum through a snowstorm to needy ponies in Gnome. Noi didn’t know what serum was, but Goldie had explained that it was a kind of medicine, something she also didn’t like because it always tasted bitter or came in a needle. It was good for her when she was sick, along with soup and tea, along with buttered bread and sitting in front of the fireplace wrapped in blankets. Goldie had gotten sick once and that had been really stressful, her sister was always supposed to be strong and take care of her.
How much did Golden Harvest want cinnamon applesauce cookies? Noi was smart enough to know that sometimes Mom asked if she wanted the last slice of cobbler even though they both knew Mom really wanted it. Noi didn’t fully understand that sometimes being a good pony meant offering things she didn’t want to give up, but did anyway.
Noi hesitated at the door, then set the first hoof forward into the untrodden snow, already sinking halfway up her leg. Goldie was bigger, Goldie could make a trail and she could follow in her big sister's hoofsteps . . . or she could make her own.
The second hoof followed, and then she was all the way out the door, out in the cold. The snow muted some smells and made others more pronounced, and she flared her nostrils then winced as the cold air made itself known.
Daring could do it for serum, she thought, and took another step forward. In the summertime, Sweet Apple Acres was practically in her backyard, but in the winter snow? A major expedition, and she was just the mare for the job.
She couldn’t remember the scene from the book, not exactly, but Daring had heard the plea from the mayor of Gnome and had decided to strap on her saddlebags and take flight in a big feral storm. She’d been huddled under her covers as she turned the pages, imagining the pegasus flying through a blinding blizzard, and now here she was on her own quest for applesauce.
Making a trail was hard work. The snow was heavy and before too long it started to soak through her coat, chilling her. Her boots weren’t much use; the snow was above their tops and every step she took just got more snow in them—she might have been better off attempting the journey bare-hooved.
For all that, she was better off than Daring had been; there was no blizzard blocking her vision. She could see Sweet Apple Acres in front of her, so she pushed through the snow, keeping her eye on fencerows so she would know where the road was supposed to be.
A familiar route was different under snow cover. Usually when she went to school it was already clear, or Goldie accompanied her into town. She remembered that Daring had fought against Windigos, who had tried to hide the route from her, and Noi looked back to make sure that her home was still visible.
It was, and the ragged set of hoofprints from the door were easy to see in the snow.
Up in the Crystal Empire, the snow really blew around and ponies put sticks in the ground that they could follow, since any path could be obscured. She didn’t have any sticks to mark her path, but the split-rail fences that lined the fallow fields were a good enough marker.
•••
Golden Harvest split her attention between the casserole and her little sister’s journey. The kitchen window gave her a good view of the trek, and she watched as a gust of snow blew across the path and Noi stopped, then vanished from sight.
•••
A gust of wind blew snow across the path, briefly obscuring Noi’s vision. In her mind, it was a blizzard, and she thought back to the Daring Do book. If she was a pegasus, she’d be able to feel the storm’s currents or fly above it, but she was stuck on the ground, at the mercy of whatever weather the pegasi brought or what drifted in from the Everfree they couldn’t stop.
Sometimes she wanted to be a pegasus, to be able to fly, to soar among the clouds and bring the rains. Or a unicorn, they could all do really cool magic. Dinky couldn’t do much yet, but she was still young. In time she’d be a powerful mage. And where would Noi be? Hooves on the ground, not able to cast a single spell.
“If I was a pegasus, I’d fly over this,” she told the blowing flakes. “And if I was a unicorn, I’d make a spell to clear the path.”
What had her sister told her? Earth ponies were strong, Earth ponies could feel the Harmony of the land. All she could feel were ice spicules on her muzzle and cold snow in her boots.
She would never make it as an adventurer, all the ponies in Gnome wouldn’t get their serum if she was the one who was supposed to bring it. Maybe there wouldn’t even be cinnamon applesauce cookies . . . she could turn around now and at least warm her belly with casserole.
Daring hadn’t turned back because of a storm. Noi squared her shoulders and stomped her hooves and marched her way out of the blowing snow, back to a clearer spot on the road.
Mistress Marevelous was an earth pony and she wouldn’t let a little snow get in her way. Noi had read all the comics even though they weren’t supposed to be for a filly. She’d saved all of the Power Ponies more than once, using her smarts and her strength and her immunity to some magic. She hadn’t saved anypony yet with carrots, but it could happen. Carrots were tasty.
Mistress Marevelous would bust through all the snow, and she’d get that jar of applesauce. . . .
Noi would, too. Even with wet boots and barrel-high snow and blinding gusts. Ponies were depending on her. The cookies were depending on her.
The road took on a new appearance: no longer was it a snow-covered path, now it was a journey filled with obstacles no other mare could overcome. She, Noi, had been sent on this mission because nopony else could do it. And she would not fail.
No longer would she deviate when the wind put a drift in her path, she could feel where she needed to go in her hooves.
•••
That thought lasted until she encountered the next drift, mounded up high enough to obscure the fence on one side. It was taller than she was, and had started to compact.
She snorted and charged into it.
The drift was not impressed, and she backed off with a muzzle full of snow. Earth ponies persevere. She could hear her sister’s voice in her mind, a wise sage. Another run at it, and she was halfway through. She shook the snow out of her mane and off her back and tried again. Head down, charge at it, and it would yield.
And it did; just when she thought she’d have to take another run at it, she was through. She flagged her tail in triumph as she trotted down the path, wary of any monster that might jump out of the snow. Yetis hid in the snow and pounced on ponies, and one of them could be hiding and waiting.
She’d buck it in its face and let it know what she thought about it.
•••
There wasn’t much challenge to acquiring the applesauce. She didn’t have to solve any riddles or barter for it, instead Applejack invited her in and offered her a mug of mulled cider to warm her up.
Apple Bloom was at the table doing her homework, and after an overly-embellished tale of how she’d gotten to Sweet Apple Acres for a jar of applesauce, the two started comparing notes. Apple Bloom had done her math homework and gave Noi a few helpful hints, while Noi had breezed through her literature assignment and told her classmate the answer to several questions. That wasn’t cheating; just like each tribe had their own skills, each pony had their own strengths when it came to classwork, and it was good to help another pony out.
Goldie might have said differently, but Noi knew for a fact that her coltfriend-at-the-time had helped her on every single history assignment.
Goldie said she was too young to have a coltfriend to help her in math.
Applejack produced a jar of applesauce and the promise of cinnamon applesauce cookies in the future, and then she made her way out the door, back into the cold snowscape.
The trip back would be more difficult because it was uphill, but her belly was full of warm mulled cider and she could follow the path she’d made on her way to the apple farm.
Goldie might not have been good at history, but Noi was. History was like literature but it had really happened, and there were real ponies having real stories. She wasn’t on a quest for cinnamon but a few hundred years in the past she might have been; instead of trekking through snow she could have been on the poop deck of a schooner, navigating through the waves and the sea-storms with a precious cargo of spices, or going overland across the great inland sand sea with camels for companions.
What if the jar she held in her mouth was not full of applesauce but exotic spices instead? And the snow was sand, blowing and drifting, as changing as the ocean?
The path became a duality in front of her, sandy sunny stretches when the sun shone, and piling waves when the wind blew. Spray, snow, sandstorm, all were obstacles in her path that would be vanquished; serum or spice the jar in her mouth would arrive intact.
Pausing to wave at Big Mac briefly broke the fantasy, and then she was back in a hostile world with only her moxie to carry her on.
Most of the way she could see her own hoofprints or trails through the drifts she’d been too stubborn to go around, but the snow was shifting and sneaky, some drifts had already reformed as if she’d never been there.
She could see her house, but what if she didn’t? What if she was still on the path when night fell? What would she do then? The yakut ponies lived in homes made of snow, and she’d learned how to make one in Filly Scouts. They hadn’t actually ever built one, but she knew the principles from her handbook. There was plenty of snow to work with and the door should be downwind. Evergreen trees provided shelter of their own, and when the snow was high a pony could hollow out a nest by the base.
There were a pair of evergreen trees by the path, their branches drooping with snow, and even though she had a mission, it was too tempting to try, to see if what the Filly Scouts Handbook advised actually worked in practice. So far it hadn’t let her down.
•••
Without a shovel, making an entrance wasn’t easy. She set the applesauce aside and dug through the snow, working it carefully when she got to the lowest branches of the tree. Too much of a hole and the heat would get out; not enough and she wouldn’t fit in, and it was hard to visualize where the tree was when everything was covered in snow.
Just like the book had said, once she got through, there was a small clear spot near the trunk, and she pushed some snow aside to make it bigger. A cozy little nest, and it did feel warmer than being outside with the wind blowing. Sounds were muted, which was both a blessing and a curse. Just by herself it was lonely, and not enough light came through the snow to really see, but with a couple of ponies in here, it would be a nice escape from the winter. Almost like a burrow.
But it wasn’t a proper home. She had that, and it wasn’t much further. She’d lost track of time, surely the casserole was done, and the cookie batter was languishing without any applesauce. Goldie was surely looking out the window by now, wondering where her little sister had gone. If she hurried she might get to pull the casserole out of the oven and set it on the cooling rack.
Noi bit off a sprig of evergreen and let the flavor coat her mouth. Pine trees were bitter like serum, and had lots of good vitamins in them. It would be enough to carry her through to the end of her journey.
•••
She stomped her hooves off on the mat, then pushed the door open, the jar of applesauce held triumphantly in her mouth.
There wasn’t much she could do about the snow that had gotten in her boots. Goldie helped her take them off and then pushed her in the kitchen to help her warm up.
The casserole was already on the cooling rack. She’d been too late to help with that, but got a mug of hot chocolate with a tiny splash of cherry brandy after promising not to tell Mom and Dad.
Noi was still warming up as Golden Harvest mixed the applesauce into the batter, and she wasn’t completely dry when it was time to arrange the cookies on the sheet, but she got to help just the same.
And even better, once all the cookies were made, there was a little batter left over, and the two took turns licking it off the spoon. Mom said that eating snacks before dinner would spoil their appetite, but Goldie said it was okay.
The kitchen was warm and cozy, safe even from the occasional gusts of wind that rattled the windows. Noi nuzzled her big sister and then went back to watching the oven, ready to pull the tray of cookies out when it was time.
Author's Note
Y’all are gonna have to wait for a blog post; that’ll be along. And it’ll be worth the wait, you’re gonna get not only cute pony pictures (who doesn’t love those?) but also tasty recipes.
