I haven’t talked much about life on the centaur homeworld in Runaway to the Stars, so here’s some tidbits. Most centaur buildings have a stove in the center, both for cooking and heating the house. In the northern territories, a popular stove attachment is a basin of sand (This was inspired by how traditional Turkish coffee is made here on earth!). When the fire is started in the morning, the sand gradually heats up until it’s hot enough to cook food. Even after the fire goes out in the evening, the heated sand and stove walls radiate warmth into the air. The sand basin is removable and can be traded for a grill or flat stove top in the hotter months of the year. Most stoves are fueled with wood, grass, and dried animal dung; but in urban areas and wealthy households electrical stoves were quite popular, even before first contact with the other alien races.

Centaur guts are pretty short and designed for diet of raw meat, not breaking down plant matter. But being opportunists, they’ve found ways to process some local plants into tastier forms. For tubers the method usually involves steaming, peeling, and then pounding into mash with enzymes juiced from the digestive glands of herbivorous prey. Nutritionally it lacks some amino acids centaurs can only obtain from meat, but it fills a stomach or two during bad years for hunting and livestock rearing.