“She got along well enough with the cook. Umma would slap a knife into her hand and point at an onion, and Arya would chop it. Umma would shove her toward a mound of dough, and Arya would knead it until the cook said stop (stop was the first Braavosi word she learned). Umma would hand her a fish, and Arya would bone it and fillet it and roll it in the nuts the cook was crushing.
The brackish waters that surrounded Braavos teemed with fish and shellfish of every sort, the kindly man explained. A slow brown river entered the lagoon from the south, wandering through a wide expanse of reeds, tidal pools, and mudflats. Clams and cockles abounded hereabouts; mussels and muskfish, frogs and turtles, mud crabs and leopard crabs and climber crabs, red eels, black eels, striped eels, lampreys, and oysters; all made frequent appearances on the carved wooden table where the servants of the Many-Faced God took their meals. Some nights Umma spiced the fish with sea salt and cracked peppercorns, or cooked the eels with chopped garlic. Once in a great while the cook would even use some saffron. Hot Pie would have liked it here, Arya thought.”
— A Feast For Crows, George R.R. Martin
***
“She found Lord Robert alone in the Morning Hall above the kitchens, pushing a wooden spoon listlessly through a big bowl of porridge and honey. ‘I wanted eggs,’ he complained when he saw her. ‘I wanted three eggs boiled soft, and some back bacon.’
They had no eggs, no more than they had bacon. The Eyrie’s granaries held sufficient oats and corn and barley to feed them for a year, but they depended on a bastard girl named Mya Stone to bring fresh foodstuffs up from the valley floor. With the Lords Declarant encamped at the foot of the mountain there was no way for Mya to get through. Lord Belmore, first of the six to reach the Gates, had sent a raven to tell Littlefinger that no more food would go up to the Eyrie until he sent Lord Robert down. It was not quite a siege, not as yet, but it was the next best thing.
‘You can have eggs when Mya comes, as many as you like,’ Alayne promised the little lordling. ‘She’ll bring eggs and butter and melons, all sorts of tasty things.’
The boy was unappeased. ‘I wanted eggs today.’
‘Sweetrobin, there are no eggs, you know that. Please, eat your porridge, it’s very nice.’ She ate a spoonful of her own.
Robert pushed his spoon across the bowl and back, but never brought it to his lips. ‘I am not hungry,’ he decided. ‘I want to go back to bed. I never slept last night.’
[…]
‘Be a good boy and eat your porridge,’ Alayne pleaded. ‘Please? For me?’
‘I don’t want porridge.’ Robert flung his spoon across the hall. It bounced off a hanging tapestry, and left a smear of porridge upon a white silk moon. ‘The lord wants eggs!’
‘The lord shall eat porridge and be thankful for it,’ said Petyr’s voice, behind them.”
— A Feast For Crows, George R.R. Martin
Literary Larder 