Parsnip
Admiral Biscuit
Parsnip unclipped her market wagon from her harness and stepped out from between the shafts. Her saddlebags were hung over the front board, and she draped them on top of her harness, shifting her shoulders until they sat right.
Two additional clips on her belly band held the saddlebags in place.
“Good evening, Lou.”
“Evening, Miss Parsnip.” The rent-a-cop tipped his hat at her. “Busy day at the market, seems like just about everybody was out.”
Her ears drooped, then perked back up. “I’m sure I’ll find something.”
The best selection was in the morning. That was when the food was the freshest, when it was as farm-fresh as it could be in the city. Some of it was from the city, grown in micro-gardens and community gardens in parks or on rooftops. Other food was trucked in from farms in the outlying areas.
The widest selection and the best-looking produce were available in the morning, but that wasn’t what Parsnip was interested in. She wanted the food that wasn’t selling, the unsold food that might go in a dumpster rather than be trucked back to the farm.
Sometimes when the crowds were sparse, some of her regular salespeople would call out to her. When they weren’t—it was easy for a pony to get lost in the crowd.
They’d look for her, just the same. Every day, she was at the farmer’s market right around closing time.
Already some booths had packed up for the night, the ones that had done well in sales. Some of them left business cards for people to take, others were stripped bare.
Parsnip weaved her way through the diminishing throngs of people, visiting each booth in turn. Cora sold her peppers, Andy sold her Indian Corn, Dwight had several loaves of bread. She got onions from Maggie and asparagus from Armando, trotting back to her market wagon every time her saddlebags got full. Lou always kept a close watch on it. Nobody at the market had ever tried to steal anything out of it, but some people were very interested in it.
That had seemed strange to her; back home, market carts were so ubiquitous they faded into the background, but here in the city, she might have had the only one.
She visited Woodrow last. While one of the younger Chandlers handled the sales, the old man was nearly always at the market, sitting on a cheap folding chair with his cane leaned up against the seat. He was never distracted by customers, and that gave the two of them time to chat.
They’d bonded over her cart harness, of all things. Woodrow had spent much of his youth behind horses in harness, and she privately thought he missed those days.
Parsnip nuzzled him and let him run his hand through her mane, and then she settled down on the concrete and accepted a cup of burned coffee.
“How was your haul today, young lady?”
“Good . . . nobody had any tomatoes left, though. I’ll just have to do without. How’s the farm?”
“Our new tractor’s broken again. Once Fred gets the fool thing fixed, I’m going to sell it. At least the Oliver is reliable.” He sighed. “I should have taught my kids better, maybe they wouldn’t have gotten taken in by a slick salesman convincing them that all the computers on it were a good thing.”
Parsnip nodded in sympathy. “Tried and true technology is better. Some of my friends told me that I should get bicycle wheels on my wagon with rubber tires. They’re lighter and it would ride better, but those wheels are flimsy and a pneumatic tire might get a flat.”
“Heavier wheel will keep you in business for a long time,” Woodrow agreed. “I hope you don’t mind, but I brought you something.” He reached around behind his chair, finally locating a plastic Wal-Mart bag. “Celery, stuff we can’t sell.”
“How much?”
“Just take it.” He opened the flap on her saddlebag and tucked it in. “I know you’ll get good use out of it.”
“Thank you.”
•••
She had her own parking spot for her cart, an alcove behind a support pillar in the underground parking lot. The building didn’t even charge her for it, which was nice. To get a car-sized space would have cost her an extra hundred dollars a month.
It took three trips to get all the food up to her studio apartment and, by the time she’d finally unloaded her saddlebags and taken off her harness, she was already tired.
Parsnip took a quick shower, mostly just to rinse the day’s grime out of her coat, then settled on her floor pillow to dry off and relax. The floor pillow had been meant as a dog bed, but there was no rule saying a pony couldn’t use it.
The Walnut Street Library, only a few blocks from her apartment, had plenty of books to loan; she was currently reading through Night Probe. Dirk Pitt reminded her of Daring Do, even if he was mainly a seaman instead of an archeologist.
Three chapters later, her coat was dry, so she put a bookmark on her page, set it aside, and went to bed.
•••
Parsnip was up at 4 AM, and the first thing she did after getting out of bed was arrange all the produce she’d bought at the farmer’s market on the kitchen counter, everything lined up in a neat rank.
Once she had everything fixed in her mind, it was time for a morning shower. She could plan in the shower, that was a good thinking place.
Sometimes that was also a good singing place, although her neighbors didn’t always think so.
•••
Instead of drying off on the floor pillow, she draped a towel across her back and went into the kitchen to go to work. All the produce needed to be cleaned and some of it needed to be cut to size, and, once that was done, there were plenty of other ingredients to prep.
Parsnip kept staples in her cupboards and grew herbs on her tiny balcony. She’d decided what she was going to make when she was in the shower.
There was also breakfast to consider; some days she got so focused on what she was going to sell for lunch that she forgot to eat. More than once she’d only remembered on the way to her food cart, and had to weigh the convenience of eating a few bites of what she intended to sell or stopping at a fast-food restaurant for a quick snack.
When they were left over, eggs went cheap at the farmer’s market, and she had a decent stockpile. Most of her breakfasts wound up either being egg-based or oat-based if she was out of eggs.
She was still prepping ingredients when the eggs were cooked, and she slid them on a plate before they could burn, took the opportunity to get her Keurig to make her a cup of coffee, and then went back to prep work.
•••
By the time the sky had lightened, her eggs were cold, her coffee was tepid, and her saddlebags were crammed full of Ziploc bags full of produce, with more on the counter. She ate a few bites of scrambled eggs, sipped her coffee, and then put on her harness.
Only after the last buckle was fastened did she remember that she hadn’t curried her coat after getting out of the shower. Whatever. Parsnip wasn’t going to take her harness back off to do her coat; she ran a brush through her mane and tail and that was good enough.
Finish eating breakfast, wash the pan and plate, along with her cutting board and her knives. Rinse out the coffee mug. Coffee stains in the mug were added flavor. Everything on the drying rack, and then hoof everything down to her cart.
She had a pair of Yeti coolers bolted to the front of the cart. The first set had been stolen while she was working; some people couldn’t be trusted. Now they were held down with four carriage bolts each, screwed through the deck of her wagon, and she’d flattened the threads on the bolts with her shoes to make the nuts nearly impossible to remove. Someone who was determined and who had a toolkit could still take them, but so far, that hadn’t been a problem.
•••
The morning commute was about an hour, sometimes less if she wanted to disobey the traffic lights and risk getting a ticket or getting squished by a car. Parsnip ran over the ingredients she had two more times before crossing the river, and then stopped thinking about it. There wasn’t time to go back to her apartment and get something she might have forgotten. She could further improvise, if the need arose.
•••
Her food cart was right where she’d left it.
Back home, she might have towed her cart to and from whatever spot she chose to set up. That was one of the advantages of a food cart versus a restaurant, after all. Here, there were all sorts of regulations about that, about where she could have her cart and where she couldn’t. There was really no point in complaining, it was too heavy for a single pony to tow very far and anyway she’d gotten a good clientele with her current location. The curious locals who worked nearby had come first. Then word-of-mouth–and word of TV and word of internet–spread, and she had as much business as she wanted. Parsnip couldn’t remember the last time she hadn’t sold all her food.
She couldn’t have a proper wood stove, she had to use a propane one. It was easier to get going and came up to temperature faster, but it wasn’t quite as good. She’d had to adjust a few recipes. Which was fine; making human food had required adjustments anyway. Many of her favorite dishes had hay, and she’d substituted rice instead.
She twisted the gas valve on the propane cylinder open, unlocked the door, and backed her market cart into position. A couple latches on her tugs and the shafts dropped away, followed by the singletree.
Her first order of business was to open the big shutter over the counter to let in the light. She had LED fixtures inside but they were harsh and it was too expensive to replace them. In the winter, when it took a long time for the sun to rise, she hung a pair of oil lamps for light and the illusion of warmth.
Containers of veggies made their way into her food cart, neatly stacked into her tiny food prep area. When she’d first started, she had come out to the cart early and prepped everything there, but it was foolish when she had so much space at home that she could use instead.
Once that was finished, she pushed her market cart out of the way, set a pan on the stove to get it heating, and started measuring out rice.
•••
Parsnip had long since gotten used to the noises the city made as it woke up. There was always road traffic, of course, sirens rushing in the early hours, horns honking in indignation, but the tempo changed as the sun rose. She usually beat the first wave of morning traffic and was behind the stove when the second started, when the business-people started arriving for another day’s work in their shiny towers.
A few of them, her best customers, would greet her on their way in.
“Morning, Parsnip.”
“Morning, Billy.” She looked up from her stove as he walked over. “No, I’m not telling you what I’m making today, you’ll just have to come down for lunch and find out.”
He chuckled, and tipped an imaginary hat to her, before continuing on.
•••
When she’d started her business, she’d been worried about the lack of foot traffic during the day. After the morning commute, the sidewalks emptied out of all but the tourists. Her first couple of days had been constant worry about how much food she was making, how much she might sell, and if the first trickle of customers would become loyal, or if they were just curious about the pony-run food cart and once they’d tried a meal or two, move on to something else.
•••
“Hello, Lilian!” She looked up from the stove and waved a hoof at the woman walking by.
Lilian didn’t reply for a moment—she was looking down at her phone. Parsnip could see the stress etched on the woman’s face, and then it fell away as she slid her phone back into her purse and walked over to the cart.
Parsnip perked her ears. “Bad day?”
“Our client completely fu–” She took a deep breath. “It’s fine, it’s what I get paid the big bucks for, am I right?”
Parsnip nodded. She wasn’t entirely sure what Lillian did, but it revolved around contracts and a lot of money and people who weren’t always trustworthy.
It didn’t sit right with her that some people would lie and cheat to get an advantage when it would be better if they all just got along. Especially in a city that claimed to be filled with brotherly love.
“I hope it works out,” Parsnip said.
“Thank you.” It was hard to read humans sometimes, but Parsnip thought Lillian had a little more bounce in her step as she continued on to her office.
•••
She’d had to adjust her prices a couple times as she learned the market. Too cheap, and nobody trusted her food. Too expensive, and she couldn’t get a good crowd. Too variable, and customers just got confused. She’d settled on a nice, even ten dollars: it let them pay with a single bill if they wanted to, and it kept her from having to keep a bunch of change. Fifteen on Saturdays, at least for the tourists. They’d pay it.
They’d even give her extra money sometimes, which she’d spend on pricier ingredients, the things she could never get at a discount. That way, people’s generosity made the food better for everyone, which was as it should be.
•••
Her ears perked as she heard a familiar rumbling exhaust, followed by the squeal of brakes. Parsnip slid the pan off the burner and then turned the flame down. Faiyaz came by every morning with big plastic packs of bottled water for her cart. She thought they were stupid, but people wanted them with their meals.
He had a nearby store and, after he’d helped her load her wagon a few times, he’d offered to just bring the water to her food cart every morning. He’d also taught her about all kinds of spices and dishes she’d never heard of, and told her where to get the ingredients he didn’t sell.
Faiyaz was willing to stock the water in her cart for her, but she didn’t like the idea of him doing all the work for little more than he would have been paid for the water if she’d just bought it at his store, so they’d worked out an arrangement where he passed it through her door and she piled it–and the ice he’d also bring her–in her ice chest.
She always set aside a meal for him. If he could get out of the store for a lunch break, she’d give it to him then; if not, she’d carry it back to him after she closed.
•••
There was no menu; each day’s meal was whatever she cooked. Ten dollars a plate, with a single bottled water, and people just lined up to get what she had to offer. She opened at 11:30 every single day and closed when she ran out of food. Regulars would start queuing up ten or fifteen minutes before she opened, and she usually made it through the lunch rush before closing up for the day.
Every now and then, tourists would grumble about her being out of food, or complain that she didn’t deserve to run a food cart that didn’t always have food for sale.
She’d considered that one night on her way to the farmer’s market; she could buy more fresh food but it might go bad before she could sell it. Or she could get it frozen, in bulk–a lot of it she could even get pre-prepared if she wanted to. Food supply stores sold bulk bags of pre-diced frozen vegetables, or flats of canned food. Some of them would even deliver to her apartment or her food cart, and it wouldn’t go bad if it stayed in its can or its bag for days, or even weeks.
She could make a regular menu, sell the same things every day of the week–a few people had asked her when they could get a favorite dish again, and she honestly didn’t know. When the right ingredients were for sale at the right price at the market.
What was the point, though? If she’d wanted to have a boring restaurant that always served the same things, she’d have started one. Her talent was in improvisation, in getting the food that nobody wanted, the food that might wind up in a dumpster at the end of the day, and turning it into food that people did want. Eating the same meal every day was boring, and most of her customers knew it.
•••
When she’d gotten her cart, it had been boring. Unremarkable. It had cost more than she wanted to pay–especially for something so mundane–and she’d had to pay for it to be towed to its location, and she’d had to pay more for a permit to operate it. She’d had to deal with inspectors nosing through it, as if she didn’t know how to safely cook food. She’d had to fill out forms and then fill out more forms, and she got to know a few bureaucrats on a first-name basis as a result. Some of them now came by for lunch when they could.
After all of that was settled, she took several bus rides to hardware stores and lumber stores and craft stores and started customizing it. A shingle by the serving window with her cutie mark on it had been the first thing added, then she’d painted the cart in bright, cheerful colors, working into the night after she’d finished sales and cleanup. Just like her menu, the cart had changed every day until it had evolved into its current form.
A few little windowboxes filled with hearty plants and succulents made it even more cheerful, and while the health regulations wouldn’t let her paint the inside, that didn’t really matter all that much. She had a nice view out the ordering window.
Last solstice, she’d made Summer Sun Celebration food as closely as she could replicate with foods which were both available on Earth and edible for humans, and she’d given it all away to her customers, a tradition she was going to continue this year. She’d already started ordering some of the more exotic ingredients, the ones with a decently-long shelf life.
•••
Near her opening time, people passing through would sometimes stop and try and order food, and today was no exception. She was finalizing her prep work, all the burners on the stove going, pans piled high with food.
“Whatcha got for sale?” He sounded like a tourist, although she couldn’t place his accent.
“Open at eleven thirty,” she said. “You can order then.”
“You don’t got a menu.”
“Don’t need one.” Parsnip bent her head and gave the veggies a stir. “It’s whatever I make. Today it’s a biryani with peppers, asparagus, celery, corn, and toasted sourdough bread on the side. Ten dollars a plate, and that comes with a bottled spring water for free.”
“Never heard of a biryani. What if I don’t like it?”
She shrugged. “Don’t buy it, go somewhere else and get what you do like.”
“Seems like a bad way to do business.”
“Could be.” She heard that a lot from people who didn’t like the idea of a menu that varied every day. “But it’s my business.”
•••
The first time she’d been asked about a menu, she’d been confused. Not at the idea of wanting to know what food was being sold, but at the idea of a food cart selling many different things instead of just one or two.
And human food carts usually didn’t sell that many different kinds of things, either; a lot of the variety came in what kind of toppings you wanted.
Parsnip could hardly get a new menu printed every morning once she’d decided what she was going to cook. She could have gotten a chalkboard or one of the clever white markerboards that humans had . . . but that meant giving her creations a name, and sometimes she didn’t have one. Sometimes it was a dish inspired by, sometimes it was a dish in homage, and sometimes it was something she put together because the flavors worked well or it brought out the color and scents of the food. It might be a stir-fry or a curry or a salad or maybe a combination of those things. Maybe hash or pilaf or stoofpot.
For people who knew, or people who were willing to take a chance, they could get a meal that was different every day. Tasty and hoofmade and only ten dollars.
Most of her regulars wouldn’t even ask her what she was serving, although she was always happy to tell them if they wanted to know.
She watched as the annoyed tourist walked off, no doubt looking for the nearest Burger King or Chipotle. Maybe a hot dog cart that had a sign that said it sold hot dogs with and without condiments.
People were already coming towards her cart, some familiar faces and some new ones. They formed a ragged line, one that she serviced as quickly and cheerfully as she could. Each regular customer and old friend was greeted, and each new one welcomed—it was easy to know who was new, because they’d ask if she had a menu.
•••
Some people needed a cheerful face as much as they needed lunch. A few moments to talk, a smile, maybe even a hoofbump. Parsnip watched her stock run out, all but a single portion she’d saved for Faiyaz and would deliver on her way by his store.
Some people had to be turned away, but that couldn’t be helped. She had food until she was sold out, and that was that.
That was another thing people had complained about, maybe thinking that she could somehow make more food materialize in her food cart. Unfortunately, she could not.
Doubly unfortunately, since the first person to not get food was another one of her favorite customers, Melody Love.
A name that was more pony than her own.
“Sorry, Melody, I’m all out.”
“Nothing in your super secret stash?”
Parsnip shook her head.
“Your super super secret stash?”
There was Faiyaz’s meal, but she couldn’t sell that. He’d brought her the water; as far as she was concerned he’d already paid for it.
“Nothing at all, not unless a baggie of chopped-up peppers or an asparagus spear got free and hid in one of the Yetis.” Parsnip leaned over the counter for her OPEN sign, and Melody passed it over.
“That’s too bad. Although now I don’t have to feel guilty tying up the line.”
“Do you need to talk? Or do you need a hug?”
“Well.” Melody reached into her purse and pulled out a card. “I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t put it in an envelope. Figured it would be easier for you this way. Me and Max are getting married. And you’re invited.”
“Really?”
Melody nodded.
“That’s so awesome.” She leaned over the counter and gave Melody a big hug. “Nopony’s invited me to a wedding before. Are human weddings like potlucks? Do you want me to make something for it?”
“All the food’s provided, it’s real low-key. You won’t have to do anything.”
“What if I want to?”
“Tell you what, how about the bridesmaid’s dinner? Once I know if anybody has any allergies, or anything they just won’t eat, I’ll give that to you so you can plan something.”
•••
If there was a low point to her day, it was cleaning up after work. It did give her a chance to focus back and reflect on how the day had gone, to think about if she had any staples or supplies she needed to get from a big grocery store.
And propane–her cart could hold two tanks, and as soon as one of them ran out, she got it refilled. She’d tried to tap them with a hoof to see how much was in them, but they sounded almost the same when they were mostly full or mostly empty.
Sometimes it would leave a ring of condensation that showed the level, but that wasn’t a sure thing.
Parsnip piled the trays on the counter as they were washed–that should have been a sign to people that she was closed, too. Every couple of days, somebody would ask her if she was still selling food, once even asking as she was lowering the awning over her cart to close up for the night.
So far, nobody had run after her while she was towing her market wagon away, but it was only a matter of time.
•••
Her cart was clean and everything was put away. Parsnip took one more look, just to be sure, and then closed and locked the back door. Fiayaz’s dinner was balanced on top of one of the Yetis, and a bag of trash was in the back of her cart. There wasn’t much; she didn’t like making trash since it was wasteful. Everything she had to buy was something that someone had made, that she’d bought, and then decided to discard. Unfortunately, it was just unavoidable with some things.
She backed between the shafts and once she was in position, kicked the shafts up.
It took her a moment to get the appropriate buckles fastened, and then she had it in position and started to walk down the street.
•••
Traffic was heavier in the afternoon. People on the sidewalks, cars and buses and sometimes trolleys crowded in the streets. On some blocks, she could feel the subway rumbling under her hooves; other places in the city it ran above-ground.
All the public transportation was nice on Sundays when she wanted to see the town, but when she was on hoof, it wasn’t so great.
Sometimes she got yelled at for not being in the bike lane, where there was one. She’d also gotten yelled at for being in the bike lane and getting in the way of bicycles—people had forgotten that the streets were supposed to be for them, not the stinky cars or screeching buses.
She reached an intersection and tapped her hoof on the button to make the lights change in her favor. Cartless, she might risk trotting across the road in a break in traffic.
Parsnip sighed and shifted her weight until the light finally changed. A crowd of people swarmed around her, some of them familiar sights on her journey. She wasn’t the only one who had a routine in her day.
A small purse on the front of her harness held a few small bills for the street musicians she’d encounter. She didn’t like waiting for traffic, but didn’t mind pausing to listen to them, sometimes singing along if it was a song she knew.
Another red light; she waited for the light to change in her favor and then a moment longer as a bicyclist zoomed across the intersection in defiance.
The streets were full of a baffling number of stores, selling an insane number of products. It could be overwhelming, all the shelves full of shiny items that weren’t very useful, preserved foods and junk foods, an almost unimaginable wealth of clothing for sale at cheap prices or expensive prices.
Buying junk food on Sunday was a guilty pleasure. Just one thing to try while sitting in the park, a bit of the human experience. Foil bags of potato chips covered in fake flavors, or waxy-wrapped ‘pies.’ Pre-made cheese and crackers, chocolate bars and delicious ice cream sandwiches, perfect for a hot day. Bubbly colas and ginger ales, refreshing sports drinks and energy drinks that made her skin flush and her heart feel funny.
•••
By the time she got to the farmer’s market, foot traffic had dwindled, but the streets were as clogged as ever. Now it wasn’t people leaving work so much as people going out to the movies or the store or restaurants—could she buy more food and also cater to the evening crowd? The afternoon could be used for prep, too.
Parsnip shook her head. That wasn’t a new idea, she thought it about once a week, and she could, but then when she was finally done the farmer’s market would be closed, and she’d have no food for the next day.
Food was supposed to mean something. It wasn’t just sustenance, it should be an experience, have a story. A potato dragged out of the ground, machine-sliced, and factory fried had no substance; by design it was the same every single day in every single package, delivered by uncaring trucks to every single store in the city. It was a formula.
Not so her food. As she made the final turn to the farmer’s market, she didn’t know what she’d find or what she’d serve tomorrow.
•••
“Good evening, Lou.” She reached back and started unclipping her wagon from her harness.
“Good evening, Miss Parsnip.” He tipped an imaginary hat at her. “How was business?”
“Can’t complain. How’s the market been?”
“Not as hopping as it was yesterday.” Lou turned to wave at another regular, someone that Parsnip recognized but had never spoken to. “You hurry in there, you might come away with something nice today.”
She shrugged. “Everything’s nice if you know how to treat it.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
Author's Note
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