Color me crazy, but to me oatmeal has one of the most "warm," house-filling smells I'm aware of. It's a little like baking bread to my nose, but moreso somehow...Granted that noses and their perceptions vary.<br/><br/>SCAdians have this side-hobby of medieval craft recreation that doesn't involve hitting each other with sticks. Quite a lot of us are into digging up and trying out old recipes (tricky, due to variations in measure). A sideline of creating characters and justifying what the hell you brought with you to Tourney or War ends up with a lot of folks having some idea of what was eaten where/when, and one of my good friends was one of the better known medieval/renaissance cooks in the Guild of St. Ives back in its heyday...That sort of thing rubs off on one after a few hundred meals. Me, I stopped hitting people with sticks shortly after meeting my husband, and now I teach history. But I love my morning oatmeal.  ::)<br/><br/><div class="spoiler_container"><div class="spoiler_header" onclick="hideSecond (this);" role="button">HISTORY</div><div class="spoiler_body">Oatmeal is one of the older dishes out there, and variations on it were eaten at all meals. It fell out of favor in England during the 14th c., and around that time a popular coinage was that oats were good "Only for horses and Scots." Interestingly, bars of solidified, dried oatmeal are really, <em>really</em> ancient. There are indications that the Greeks and Romans wouldn't have blinked at most of our simpler modern health-bars.<br/><br/>Depending on the size of the village, folk might pay for flour to make their own breads (usually bannock-like preparations) or there might be a baker or two. It's unlikely that the Professor or his daughter were avid hunters, so they likely purchased or traded for (depending on what they could provide themselves) meats and cured meats. Cheeses are more likely to be found in towns with monasteries or convents...No idea how big the Pharasman presence here is. Restaurans are nearly unheard of. If you stopped at an inn, you ate whatever the heck they were willing to fix that evening.<br/><br/>Tea is a real wildcard. Tisanes have existed everywhere since time immemorial, but REAL tea is a VERY modern introduction in England, but it was traded along the Silk Road and achieved popularity as far west as Venice before the end of the 16th century. Coffee followed a similar pattern around the Eastern edge of the Mediterranean and was found in Venice (Venice was THE big European trading empire for a long time, with fleets of merchants and galleases (imagine the final evolution of the Greco-Roman galley, with a high and wide stern deck that mounted CANNON) dominating most of the Med from the 8th to the 16th centuries despite continual Ottoman naval efforts (e.g. Lepanto). Coffee was a <em>very</em> popular drink in the Ottoman empire and was encountered by Europeans as early as the Crusades, but didn't make its way back north as a tradeable beverage resource until after the battle of Lepanto.</div></div><br/><br/>But hey, as others have remarked, fantasy. Who knows what elves drink at breakfast? Still, there is a Silk Road-equivalent trading route in Pathfinder, and Paizo even called its big trading supplement "The Silk Road." Thayan caravans, casters and enchanters seem to have permeated well to the west in Pathfinder. If worst comes to worst, I will stand on the kobold's weird connections as an alchemyst and a member of a University in a society whose researchers appear to be going through a magically-abetted transition between natural philosophy and the first scratchings of the modern scientific method. Alchemists collected all manner of substances, herbs and preparations through specialist trade, often through personal connections with other alchemists (and alchemy, hell, even its name, has its roots more in the Southeastern Mediterranean and Western Asia than in Europe).<br/><br/>I figure Senthaynatrix is as likely to have cinnamon as cinnabar in her collection of peculiar substances. Whether your character recognizes something as 'normal' or 'outlandish' is up to you, of course!