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Everything had gotten a lot more… complicated, since the, uh, ‘Fluvius Incident’, to say the least. With the entire town transformed, everyone’s lives had been thrown into complete disarray. Stan personally had his whole livelihood upended, given that he ran a tourist trap. The town was sort of… cut off from the outside world at the moment, which was very bad for business.
Gravity Falls as a whole often depended on tourism, so pretty much everyone was left in the lurch. It was worrying, anxiety inducing to the highest degree, and Stan was doing his very best to not think about it too hard. Everyone else in town was doing enough thinking about it without him adding to the pile, and for the time being, he was fine.
There were more immediate problems caused by the transformation, afterall.
Stan had never been the healthiest person. He had things to do, he’d eat what was cheap and what tasted good, and he hadn’t really had the spare energy to care more than that in about thirty years. Then of course, he’d been handed the incredible opportunity to host his niblings for the summer. He didn’t care about his own nutrition, but the kids? Well, he couldn’t neglect them like that, he owed it to their parents… and himself.
He’d spent a considerable amount of time before their arrival doing research into everything he’d needed to properly take care of a couple of twelve year olds, and a lot of that was practicing some actual cooking for once. He’d gotten pretty good at it, if he did say so himself! He could even say that it might even be something he enjoyed. Heck, he might keep at it even when the kids left!
…Then, of course, the transformation had hit them all, and all of Stan’s vigilant training became sort of null. Suddenly, the nutritional needs of every single denizen of the shack- both permanent and transient- had gone from mostly the same, to wildly different.
He couldn’t cook a pancake breakfast for everyone, with leftovers for the staff, if half of them were carnivores, one of them was vegetarian, and one of them ate rocks. Well- he wasn’t entirely sure what Soos’s current palette was, but rocks were definitely part of it.
So, if one meal wouldn’t work, then Stan would just have to make multiple.
It was early, early in the morning, early enough that it was still very dark out. That was good, it meant Stan could move around without any risk of… freezing. That was always very annoying. He really wished that the sun didn’t hate him.
In order to take full advantage of the early morning shadows, the first thing on his chopping board was fish, for Mabel. She could catch her own meals from her place in the lake, but, uh, he didn’t really trust the quality of anything over there. He’d been fishing that place long enough to know that. So, he’d bought some nice frozen fillets, and he’d cook up the good stuff for her.
The smell of frying fish didn’t quite do what it used to for him. It was great, but… well, it wasn’t what his own body craved. It was too…. Cooked. Still, he could tell that the spices were working, and the sizzling was just right.
He’d originally thought that maybe Mabel would like her fish better raw as well, and while she did enjoy it that way, apparently merfolk had been cooking their own food on ocean vents for hundreds of years. The more you know. Having an actual expert on mermaids around was proving to be very helpful. Now, if only they had that kind of resource for the rest of them.
Speaking of that resource, Stan set aside some of the fried fish. Mermando- or, just Mando really, would appreciate it later.
He packed the remaining fish into a nice, insulated lunchbox, and began the task of flying it over to the dock. It had Mabel’s name on it, and she’d find it when the sun rose. If anyone else tried to snatch it, they’d face his wrath. They all knew that of course, so it wasn’t much of an issue.
Carrying on with the carnivore side of things, once he’d returned to the shack he began work on Wendy’s meal. Technically speaking, he didn’t have to make anything for her, but, well… He knew that things had been a little weird at her place since the transformation, and since her needs were so different from everyone else’s, she was sort of falling by the wayside. So he was going to make sure she had at least one good meal in her. She uh, wouldn’t be as effective as an employee, otherwise. Yeah.
They’d done some research, and the most common staple of a wolf’s diet was… deer. That obviously wasn’t going to fly, with Wendy herself having been appalled at the idea (even if he knew her family had been venison fans long before all this) so he’d had to get creative. That was why he was roasting a whole rabbit.
It had been in the oven since before he’d started on Mabel’s, and it was finally ready. Wendy liked her food cooked as more of a matter of principle than anything, he was sure, but she still needed a lot more of it than a normal person might. A whole rabbit per day was the happy medium they’d discovered.
He pulled it out, set it carefully in Wendy’s assigned tupperware, and stuck it in the fridge. She’d warm it up at lunch if she wanted to- sometimes she did, sometimes she didn’t. He didn’t care.
Speaking of people he didn’t need to make food for… he checked the mouse traps he’d set around the perimeter of the shack. They were all completely natural, using no chemicals or poisons, to make the mice and rats they caught as edible as possible. He took the haul of three mice back to the kitchen, and began preparing them.
Miss Pacifica Northwest had taken to hanging around the shack more often than not, recently, and she was another whom Stan was sure wasn’t getting what she needed at home. She was the only cursed person in her family, and was also the only cursed member of her entire household- army of servants included. Apparently, those uppity jerks had fired any unlucky enough to touch the river water before it had been caught. Her parents were ashamed of her, so there was no way they were actually taking care of her needs.
The only reason he was properly preparing the mice at all was for the girl’s pride. He knew that if she let herself, she’d happily swallow the mice whole- bones, skin, and all, but… well, he supposed all of them were clinging to the shreds of their humanity, weren’t they?
He still didn’t cook them, but he skinned and deboned them, preparing them as you’d prepare any other animal. He stuck those too in the fridge, putting them in a spare tupperware and writing the date on the lid. She’d know to look for them.
Next was Soos. Soos was an anomaly, even by their current standards. They'd come to the conclusion that he was some sort of… clay golem? That’s what Dipper said, at least, and Stan trusted him to know this kind of stuff. Whatever he was anyway was completely in-organic. Soos could probably eat just about anything, if he needed to eat at all, but they figured that rocks were probably the healthiest for him- to make up for any material that he lost in his day to day activities. Stan knew he cleaned up a lot of stray Soos after a long day, anyway.
He wasn’t sure which rocks would be best, but when he was out and about he made sure to pick up the ones that looked the most… clay-ish. He did not know what he was doing, but it sure was his best. Soos seemed happy with it, anyway.
He put the bag of rocks on the counter, with the tag addressed to Soos front and center.
(Stan had kind of wondered if he could eat rocks too, but no, for some reason gargoyles were pure carnivores that thrived on violence and the thrill of the hunt. It was stupid. At least he didn’t have to eat all that often.)
Last, but absolutely not least, was Dipper. Dipper was hard to cook for because he was so… particular? No, that wasn’t the word. Unpredictable. He was a deer (“Cervitaur, Grunkle Stan-”) so that meant that he mostly followed a deer diet. Should be simple! In actuality, what he wanted and needed changed subtly from day to day, where something he’d been loving one day he couldn’t stand the next. Sometimes, he gagged at even the sight of meat. Once, he’d caught him sneaking one of Pacifica’s mice.
Stan prepared him a general smorgasbord of a salad that comprised the things he was most likely to eat. A bed of oak leaves, some grass, a handful of pine needles, and a couple other miscellaneous plants from the woods Dipper had shown interest in in the past- topped with acorns and blueberries.
If Stan knew Dipper, he’d find this about half eaten when he next saw this bowl. Whatever- if he could get any food in him at all it was a win. The same pride that kept Pacifica from eating whole mice kept Dipper from confidently foraging for himself- and Stan trusted the woods even less than he trusted the lake. He’d keep making half-eaten salads if it meant keeping Dipper from endangering himself just because he was hungry.
He stretched, the tension in his wings cracking in such a satisfying way as he observed the kitchen. A bit messier, a bit worse for wear, but everyone would have something to eat later. That’s what really mattered.
He groaned, folding his wings and stepping out onto the porch. Against his will, he’d been slowly sliding towards his natural sleep schedule- complete nocturnalism. He’d been up all night already… he didn’t have anything important to do that day, right? Tourism was non-existent, and he’d already done a lot of work on the portal… maybe he could rest, a bit.
He sighed, a deep, grating sound, and spread his wings. He flew the short distance from the porch to the roof, and settled into a comfortable position to watch the sunrise. Everyone in his house was comfortable, they were all cared for, and safe.
He could let himself freeze, like this.