Chapter 5: Hop Luck

So, where to begin this latest episode of my life? I suppose it all started when Sprig made his most recent attempt to smash my phone and free all the little people inside. He's still not quite clear on the whole concept of photos, so when I was showing him pictures of Domino, his immediate response was to grab a rock and crack open my phone so she could get out. At some point, we are going to have to have a long talk about this.

(Is she okay? Does she miss me? I know there's a lot of talk about how cats are super-independent and don't really care about humans, but those people never met Domino. She's the sweetest little kitty anyone's ever known, and I miss her like crazy. I'd like to think she misses me too.)

Well, the shenanigans were interrupted by a stench so foul it could have emanated from the very depths of Frog Hell itself. Had something died? Had the gates of the underworld opened, releasing the foul odor of a billion years of torment? No. It was much, much worse than that.

Hop-Pop… was cooking.

Now, I know that my culinary tastes don't exactly align with the locals, but it turns out that even in a town where bugs and mold are considered the staples of cuisine, Hop-Pop stands out as a giant of truly bad cooking. And that's not just an opinion, it's a fact bolstered by years of evidence. Every year, the town has a cooking competition. Every year, Hop-Pop enters. And every year, he loses spectacularly, and his whole family is forced to spend the night in the Shame Cage (which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like). And today, he's about to do it all over again.

Well, I am not letting that happen this year.

The problem immediately became obvious. Hop-Pop's been using his great-grandmother's cookbook all his life. And his great-grandmother was clearly a terrible cook. Hop-Pop's all about "tradition" and the "old ways", but when they clearly don't work it's time to chuck 'em down a hole and start from scratch. We're not going to win with the same old ideas. We need a fresh new idea… and luckily, I, being from another world, am chock full of those. We're going to introduce this sleepy town to a taste sensation that'll knock 'em off their webbed feet and on to their little froggy butts. We are going to introduce them… to pizza.


I figured we'd start simple and go with the classic Margherita. No need to get all fancy, especially, since we're on a deadline. The Margherita has just four elements: dough, cheese, tomato, and basil. Should be easy enough to acquire those, right?

First ingredient: dough. Seems easy enough since there's a baker in town, right? Well, I didn't take into account that Hop-Pop has literally no money. Fortunately, the town baker had an alternative payment method in mind, and bonus, Sprig has a girlfriend now! Okay, so, maybe it's a bit old-world to make Sprig marry someone for pizza dough, but it's not like it's a bad thing. He's set for life, and Maddie isn't that creepy and disturbing… I'm sure they'll have a very happy life together until she inevitably sacrifices him to her dark god.

…hmmm, maybe I'm going too far just to make some pizza? Nahhh… hey, if it doesn't work out, I'm pretty sure frogs have no-fault divorce.


Next up: Cheese. That meant a trip to the local dairy farmer, Mrs. Croaker, and lucky me, I got to learn where milk comes from in this crazy world. Hint: not cows. Not sheep or goats, either. Caterpillars. Big, big caterpillars. I can't even begin to guess how the biology of it all works, but the bottom line is, to pay for the cheese, we had to wrangle a bunch of these things into their corral, which was a lot easier said than done.

But we eventually managed to do it, and with all our limbs more or less intact. In return we got a hunk of… well, it ain't buffalo milk mozzarella, and it smells a bit suspect, but beggars can't be choosers. And oh boy, are we beggars.

We could have picked up dried basil at the Grub n' Go, but the fresh stuff is so much better, and it grows wild, so it's also free. There's a patch of the stuff just outside Wartwood, right there for the taking… if you can fend off the swarm of giant aphids that like to snack on it.

I wish I could describe the battle, but words simply cannot capture how epic it was. I saw valor that day. True valor. I feel privileged just to have borne witness to it.

Well, three ingredients down, one to go. All we need is tomatoes. Funny thing, though… I don't think I've ever seen tomatoes around Wartwood. Hop-Pop doesn't grow them. None of the other farmers seem to grow them. They're not on sale anywhere. Seems odd…


Well, now I know why I've never seen any tomatoes around.

Asking around town, everyone was really hesitant about answering me. I figured they all just didn't want to give the competition any help. The only one willing to share any information was Loggle. He said he had a map to a tomato plant, but he wouldn't show it to us until we paid him. Guess he got wise to my phone camera. Anyway, for some reason he wanted a pair of Hop-Pop's dentures in payment. Don't ask me why. He's a weird dude.

So, apparently, the reason why nobody grows or sells tomatoes in this world is because in this world, tomatoes are "dangerous vegetables"… by which I mean GIANT FLESH-EATING MONSTROSITIES. Seriously, these things are nightmares. They almost put me off Italian food for life. Almost.

At this point, I was considering just cutting our losses and trying an Alfredo pie, but then Hop-Pop, who'd been trying to get me to use ideas from his grody old recipe book the whole time, suggested using prunes as a substitute. Prunes. That's even more insulting than pineapple. So instead of giving in to reason, I doubled down, because now it was about pride.

So, we tried to sneak up on the thing, but somehow, despite having no eyes, ears or noses, this thing somehow detected to us and next thing we knew, we had intimate knowledge of the inside of a tomato plant's digestive tract. And if that wasn't enough, we'd been stupid enough to not stash the other ingredients somewhere safe; no, see, that would have been common sense, and as we've demonstrated, we have none of that. No, we brought all the ingredients along with us. And managed to drop them into the plant's digestive acid, so all of this was for nothing. There would be no pizza. And in moments, there would be no us. All because I refused to listen to reason. I should have listened to Hop-Pop in the first place. We'd be stuck in the shame age, but we'd get to live, at least.

At this point, I was ready for ancient wisdom, any ancient wisdom, and Hop-Pop was willing to share it.

And that, dear diary, is how we ate our way out of a live monster's stomach. See, it's a monster, but it's still a vegetable, and its throat is particularly tasty.

Well, our pizza dreams were over. But we do have access to an ingredient no one's ever tasted.

Maybe we have a chance after all!


Well, the good news, the Plantar family did better in the Wartwood Potluck than ever before!

The bad news: "better than ever" was still much worse than everyone else. When you start out at rock bottom, any improvement counts as "better than ever", and toxic sludge is still toxic sludge even if you put a slice of tomato on it.

Still, they were just amped that they'd made any improvement at all. And even if you have to sped the night in the Shame Cage, at least we're doing it together. I just wish they'd stop flinging mudballs at us.

At least I hope they're mud.

Please let them be mud.


A.N: Thanks to Jose and Team Gophers for your reviews!

Next: Stakeout