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One of my all-time favorite stories.

My dear mother told me this story when I was just a boy. I was enchanted by the idea of this magical stone, too young to consider the clever trick the tramp was playing on the woman.

The sense of cooking being a magical endeavor has stayed with me ever since.

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It wasn't a trick, the magic stone was a big salt rock. It was the most important ingredient from a flavor standpoint.

Hah I misinterpreted it a different way as a kid, for a long time I thought it was like a collective delusion where the shared experience of contributing insubstantial garnishes to a pot of water tricked everyone into finding it filling and enjoying it.

While that was the way it was taught to me as a kid, I thought it was more of a story about con men who came to a village and tricked the townsfolk to eat their entire winter rations in a grand feast and then skipped town before anyone realized what they did.

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