The Red Story

The princess arrived at the Palace very late at night. She had lost all the men of her escort because of the terrible storm that had suddenly erupted... She asked to be invited to spend the night safely. "I'm a princess", she told them. "A real princess?", the Queen asked her then. "But, of course, yes!", she answered. However, the Queen did not really seem to believe what she was saying to her, but finally to be completely assured about that, she summoned the maids and ordered them: "You're going to put our thickest mattresses on the bed where she goes to sleep in a while and just above them make the bed with the softest duvets available in the Palace. Though, underneath all this, you're going to carefully put that pea in there", and she took out a little green pea from her elegant bag and gave it to them. They did exactly what have been ordered by the Queen and prepared properly the room for the young supposedly princess... The princess had a hot bath, took her dinner with the company of the King, the Queen and their precious, only son, the handsome young prince. Subsequently, tired and exhausted as she was, she went to sleep having taken as usual in her arms her beloved doll with which she could never part whenever she was, as it seems. To tell the truth, she was some special doll made specially for her by her grandmother the Queen, exclusively manmade of a thread literally immersed in a natural color of poppies and red anemones... She fell asleep smiling and finally dreamed of a green rain of peas... She dreamed, supposedly, that she had gone outside the Palace to pick them up and then she was cooking a marvelous everlasting peas soup that was beautifully fragrant, scented and comforting for the cold weather. It was precisely the recipe of tasty soup that the "green princess" loved to taste too, as her grandmother often told her. There have always been different stories related to colorful princesses just like a whole series of colorful dolls that her grandmother almost all the time and especially manmade of the most resistant and durable yarns and colors she collected by herself among the trees, the meadows, the mountains... In addition to that, the grandmother had the strange habit of visiting her in her dreams. The fact of how she could achieve that so wonderfully, it was indeed some great mystery! And there she was right now wherein that bizarre evening, she came back again to find her granddaughter the princess to reveal to her the great secret of the everlasting pea soup. But then, what could possibly be the meaning of that dream? Nevertheless, what was really sure was that the next morning, the princess - whose name nobody knew until now - was the first to wake up early in the morning and by the way having in her mouth the true taste of everlasting pea soup with all the real sensation of its necessary ingredients: dill, carrots, lemon, though even all the scents of a vegetable garden through some sweet summer night. In fact, our princess had very well known the second small kitchen vegetable garden of her grandmother the Queen. She often gave her a good helping hand in grooving the garden to sow and water all kinds of plants and season vegetables. They both cut the ripe vegetables, one next to the other, and put them in a row in their basket. At any time of the year, they were so but so plenty of natural and nutritious earth treasures for each of them: lettuce, green and red cabbage, fresh onions, leeks, spinach, dill, fennel that requires a lot of water to grow and also parsley, artichokes that were just perfect to make them stuffed for dinner, dry beans and haricot beans, peas and pods that are still not the same thing, lentils, tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplants and zucchini with their splendid flowers to be cooked and served stuffed too...Dear friends of mine, little and grown up ones, the story continuance isn't going to be so easy like in other stories...Let's follow it..