Take your pick, you should have some spices lying around at least
As for farming...meat all the way. On the days I don't have any time to spend on KoL, just log in, equip +meat, assign mafia to the adventure in the castle, do something else, when I remember equip rollobyr gear, eat, drink and logout
Of course that ease means the meat return isn't great. Item farming is so much for finicky though and if you actually want significantly larger profits you have to get involved in manipulating the mall which I've never been good at
Edit - also it occurs to me that with the mimic most of the profit is coming from the drops so you could adventure elsewhere if you weren't looking to be optimal...yay for farming for ultra rares