COOKSET
Cost: 4 credits/10 platinum
Availability: Everywhere
A nested wok and a few pans, serving plates, plastic utensils and cookware, some basic spices, a squirt-tube of oil, and a handful of chemical heat tablets. With time and inclination, along with a few tinned goods or fresh ones, you can turn any flat surface berth into a make-do kitchen. Cookbook optional.
CROP SUPPLEMENTS
Cost: 300 credits/750 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
While terraforming has succeeded in making many planets habitable, the individual quirks of the various planets and moons make it difficult to predict whether or not a given crop will grow on each. Highly concentrated fertilizers and pesticides, packed into easily applied chemical pellets, are one of the more common solutions to this problem. Settlers usually bring a fair supply of crop supplements with them in order to ensure bountiful harverts for the first few years. The pellets come in drums, bags, or boxes; one container is enough for five acres when mixed with the seeds before planting or tilled into the earth beforehand. The benefits usually last for two or three growing seasons, depending on the crops being farmed.
FINE WINE
Cost: 6.4 credits/16 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
A case of twelve bottles of extremely good wine; what more needs to be said? Good win is hard to come by, so it can get very expensive, but many folk consider it worthwhile.
FRESH FRUIT
Cost: 0.1-0.5 credits/1 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
A rarity on the Rim, especially delicacies such as fresh strawberries. The cost covers a small box's worth.
GOOD WHISKEY
Cost: 5.6 credits/14 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
Wood alcohol is cheap. High-quality strong drink is a bit more costly.
FOODSTUFFS, CANNED
Cost: 5 credits/12 platinum
Availability: Everywhere
Since such foods keep a nice while, food packs and canned fruits are popular among settlers and ship crews. The given price buys two or three boxes of different kinds of food, allowing one person to eat decently for about a week. Rationed, the food will last longer.
FOODSTUFFS, FRESH
Cost: 8 credits/20 platinum
Availability: Everywhere
Most often, fresh food is bought in small amounts or is carefully rationed over a period of time, at least by those who live in the Black.
FOODSTUFFS, LUXURY
Cost: 2 credits/5 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
This is the kind of fancy-pants yummies you can't even find most places on the Rim. A pound of fresh strawberries, a chocolate ice cream cake, caviar - such count as luxury goods to folk who live on the Rim. The units in which the goods are sold depends upon exactly what the food is. The price can vary as well, but whatever it is, it will almost always be quite expensive. The kicker? This price is the average for one 'unit' of what every it be you are buying.
FOODSTUFFS, NUTRIENT BARS
Cost: 570 credits/1425 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
A Newtech Alliance ration - are perhaps the most compact form of food ever developed. Each bar is about the size and shape of a gold ingot and each is wrapped in foil. The actual bar is a brownish compound, nearly tasteless. If sliced thinly, a single bar can provide 30 days' worth of nutrition for one persons. The person will still need water and additional calories, but the vitamins, minerals, immune supplements, and so on will allow them to subsist on an otherwise minimal diet. This price is marked for average sale of a case of 100 bars.
FOODSTUFFS, PROTEIN PASTE
Cost: 2.5 credits/6 platinum
Availability: Everywhere
Tubs of colored and (supposedly) flavorsome protein paste are the standard diet for spacefarers in the 'Verse. The paste is sometimes molded into different forms and cooked different ways. Sadly, it tastes about the same no matter what you do to it. Healthy, if boring, the paste stores for a good long while.
PROTEIN CHIPS
Cost: 0.2-0.4 credits/1 platinum
Availability: Everywhere
One bag of a common snack found pretty much everywhere, protein chips are soy-based, salty, and tasty.
ROTGUT
Cost: 0.4 credits/1 platinum
Availability: Everywhere
Crude alcohol brewed in some such distilling rig using the rotting carcass of some kind of small animal (usually snakes) to speed up the fermentation process. It tastes something foul and is just barely on the friendly side of toxic, but it's usually free. Imbibing more'n a cup of rotgut requires an Easy Endurance (Willpower + Vitality) roll or the drinker feels nauseous and suffers a fearsome hangover.
SNACK BAR
Cost: 0.1 credits/1 platinum
Availability: Everywhere
A snack bar is a single serving of either nutritious or delicious (rarely both) foods such as chocolate, dried fruit, grains, or even vegetable matter. One of the most popular brands of snack bars is the Fruity Oaty Bar, mostly due to their ever-present marketing efforts that blanket nearly every planet in the 'Verse.
SPICES, COMMON
Cost: 2 credits/5 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
Whether it's used with protein paste, canned vegetables, or fresh meat, a sprig of rosemary can make your day a little brighter.
SPICES, RARE
Cost: 5 credits/13 platinum
Availability: Core Worlds
Popular in the Core for those who can afford high class dining, rare spices such as saffron can be extremely expensive. A good cargo to carry, and even better to have if you can afford it.