I Burned Barley Cakes Beside My Keep

I cooked barley cakes beside my keep this morning, pressing the dough thin with the flat of my knife and setting it on an iron plate over the coals — the first side browned well, but I turned away to check the gate and came back to a black crust.

The recipe I will not share uses barley meal, sour milk, salt, and one spoonful of rendered fat, though the true secret is apparently leaving it unattended until the smoke reaches the watchtower — even the kitchen boy declined the second cake.

You may call it a poor breakfast, but I grew up where a failed harvest could shrink to half its promise, so I scraped the edible middle from both cakes and ate it beside the wall — hard luck is easier to swallow when you refuse to waste what remains.