Hot and Sour Silage Soup

This morning I went to the market with Spike and Starlight Glimmer. Starlight still isn't used to having so many friendly ponies wishing her well and waving hello, even though she did save all of us from a Changeling invasion. But before long we arrived at the food kiosks where we looked around at what was available and debated what dishes we could prepare for the pot luck. We picked up a few jars of second cut hay silage, some butter, rolled oats, fresh alfalfa sprouts, poppy seeds, dried lemon zest, dried spearmint, raisins, turnips, wide whole wheat noodles, alfalfa cubes, dried apple slices, sesame seed snaps, pickled beets, pine nuts, beet jam and hot sauce. We settled on making a hot and sour silage sour with whole wheat noodles and pine nuts, as well as a few loaves of lemon poppy seed bread, served with butter, beet jam and apple butter. Plus a grated turnip, alfalfa sprout and sunflower seeds salad. Since we're the hosts, we of course served plenty of third cut hay.

We bought all that and headed back to the castle. Spike cooked while Starlight and I moved furniture to the lobby, got out the games and brought down a few flakes of third cut hay. The Hearth's Warming decor has all been removed, including the tree and the wreaths. By the time that the two loaves of fresh bread were cool enough to slice, all our guests had arrived and were filling their bowls and plates from the assortment of dishes everypony had brought. The twins turned up their noses at the hot and sour soup but everpony else liked it. The bread went so well with the soup that I don't think anypony touched the beet jam.

We ate and played games. The foals ran around with Owlowiscious keeping a close eye on them until they grew cranky and tired. The Cakes left early with as much of the leftovers that we could get them to take. Eventually it got late and we called it a night. We left everything down in the lobby. We'll sort through the spoils and put away the games, dishes and cushions tomorrow.