Cooking Disaster [2430-1-4-Wed-7:00am]

[Olive]

"Oh now you're being silly," Olive giggled a little as she grabbed the bowl of leftover salad from the fridge. "Salad doesn't need clothes. Have you been making this up all along??"

Olive guessed the meat was done when Cassandra decided to pull it from the stove. She wrinkled her nose. It had gotten darker, but still didn't look very appetizing as she inspected it. It took her a minute to realize Cass had ran to the sink to rinse off her fingers, exclaiming pain. Olive's ears drooped and she looked at her with worry. "Are you okay?? Was it too hot??" She glanced back down at the meat, pondering if she should poke it or not and test it's temperature.

[Cassandra Nida]

"I'm okay, I just... shouldn't have touched the bare tray." She pushed the melty skin back into shape. Yeah, it was fine. She was going to have to fix her fingerprints later. They were all kinda... smeared. She opened up the nearest drawer and looked for something to scrape the meat with. She found a fork and knife. That would have to work.

She headed over to the meat and proded it with the knife. The top half was soft, but she hit hard, solid meat pretty soon. Cass kept the meat in place with her fork while she scraped the outside off. It was working better than she'd expected.

"no, dressing is... well. that's dressing. you put it on the salad and it tastes... even more delicious." She didn't say 'better' because she didn't really want to hurt Olive's feelings. She just didn't know all the stuff she should know about cooking.

Cass dug out a second tray and put the mostly-cooked meat on it, leaving the raw stuff on the other one. This time she made sure to get an oven mitt on her hand before putting the hot tray into the oven. The other went beside it. "I think that's going to work..." Already, the raw meat was sweating out blood, and the other was browning up the way hamburger was supposed to look. Though she usually ate hers with some sort of sauce. Maybe dressing would work on it too? She really wasn't sure.

[Olive]

Olive picked up the bottle of this so-called dressing and inspected it. "Dressing... what does Thousand Islands mean? Where's that??" She twisted the cap off the top and sniffed it. Interesting! It smelled quite sweet. Maybe it would taste okay with all that lettuce.

She glanced over and watched Cassandra cut off the sides of the meat, revealing the bloody stuff inside once again. "Ew... it's back!" She glanced at the bottle of dressing in her hand, and then started dumping it on the meat. That would hide the blood! Ha!!

[Cassandra Nida]

"I don't think, I think it was a place on terra before- hey!" Cass wasn't quick enough. One moment the meat was ready to be cooked and the next it was covered in dressing. She frowned. Cass didn't know a lot about cooking, but she was pretty sure dressing went on last, or at least after the meat was cooked.

She scowled at the now-drenched meat. "I don't think this is going to work... I don't know what I'm doing, you especially don't know what you're doing... it's all going to be a huge mess."

And then she had a thought. "wait. wait here and don't touch anything." She gave Olive a stern look, hoping maybe she would leave well enough alone. Cass quickly headed down the hall and to her room. Her padd was sitting on top of her bag. She grabbed it and accessed the cooking section. There was a Beginner's Tutorials selection, so she chose it. She typed in 'hamburger' and searched. Dozens of recipes popped up. A few even had videos.

Cass headed back to the kitchen, hoping Olive had left well enough alone.

[Olive]

Olive shrunk a little, ears drooping. "...well you said it would make stuff taste better..." Oh man there was so much about Human cooking that she didn't know. How on Earth did she think she could cook for everyone? She held her head a little, feeling overwhelmed.

She decided not to touch anything else until Cass got back. Mostly because Cass said so, but also because she was scared she'd mess more up. She leaned against the counter and waited, pausing to sniff the dressing again. "Hmm."

[Cassandra Nida]

Everything was how it was supposed to be. Good. Cass set the padd on the counter and tried to figure out the best way to explain it to Olive. "not everything goes together." She decided on, "there's got to be plants that you don't mix because they taste bad together, right? or plants you don't eat until a certain time because they won't taste good before? cooking's like that. you have to put the right ingredients together at the right time."

Cass pressed play on one of the tutorials, showing how to cook hamburger. She turned it so Olive could see too. A woman narrated over top of everything. Cass' heart sank a little when she saw they used a frying pan instead of putting it in the oven. "oh... that's what went wrong..."

[Olive]

"Most plants taste good together," Olive pondered. "But you're right... there's a few you just don't mix."

She leaned over the counter, watching the view screen on the padd with curiosity. The woman had a different container than the one Cass had used. That must have been what went wrong indeed. Then she noted that the pieces looked smaller than the hunk of meat on the pan. The meat also looked far more appetizing on screen. She pointed at the screen. "They're a different shape too... what's that she's moving the meat with?"

[Cassandra Nida]

"I... don't know." Cass knew she should know the name of it. She'd seen people using it in in films before. "I... I think it's a spatula? no, that's not right..." She frowned again. Weren't spatulas plastic? And not metal?

"she's making hamburgers. that's why they're round. look." She rewound a little, showing Olive how the women pressed them into flat round discs. "but you have to do that before you cook them..." She looked at the meat. Half of it was done. The other half was covered in dressing.

Cass brought up other recipes, hoping to find something that looked like what usually ended up on her table. She found it after a few tries. Brown the hamburger, then add sauce? Dressing was not going to cut it, but they'd have to try.

She handed the padd to Olive and popped the meat into the oven again. The dressing made a weird smell as it started to cook, but not an unpleasant one. Maybe it would add flavour? "maybe if we cook it, it'll be okay... but only put dressing on salad. i'm pretty sure you shouldn't put it on meat..."

[Booker]

"I smell food!" Booker exclaimed as he turned around the corner into the kitchen. He had just woken up and immediately smelt the meat cooking and was right out the door. He usually changed into the clothes he was going to wear for the day after breakfast. His pajamas were a light purple plaid buttoned shirt and pants.

He suddenly realized that Cass was there and wasn't sure if she'd appreciate a giant excited man asking a bunch of questions. She seemed to be okay with Olive who often asked questions. They were cooking ground beef, for breakfast? That was a strange breakfast. It didn't matter that much because he'd eat anything. It was just an odd breakfast choice. Maybe there was nothing else to eat.

They had put salad dressing on the meat. They obviously didn't know what they were doing. Booker was no cook, but he was pretty sure those things don't go together. "Need some help?" He tried to talk in a less enthusiastic voice in case Cass was in a bad mood or not.

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass went stock-still at the sound of someone else talking. She looked to the kitchen's entrance. It was the big guy from the table last night, only twice as big. Cass had never seen anybody as big as him in her entire life. How could he stand being on the ship when he was that big?

But... he had lowered his voice. And he was clearly trying not to be so scary. Cass barely managed to spit out, "i-i was trying to cook some meat. but. i've never done it before." She didn't need to say Olive hadn't. That much was pretty obvious.

It was taking everything in her not to run right by him. If she weren't so hungry, she would have. But she needed to eat. There was no compromising on this.

[Olive]

"What's hamburgers?" Olive questioned. She had so much to learn about meat. Her head felt like it was going to explode.

"I smell food!" exclaimed a voice from behind them. Olive jumped in surprise, knocking over the bottle of dressing and quickly scrambling to pick it up again. Boy, good thing she'd put the top back on.

She turned to realize it was Booker, and her face lit up. "Oh hey Booker!! We're trying to make breakfast! We... don't really know what we're doing..."

[Booker]

Booker noticed that Cass looked nervous. He thought that maybe he should make his breakfast and leave them alone to figure it out. Because Booker didn't really know how to cook meat on a stove. He'd done a few barbecues back on Terra but not this. "Well I would be of much help then," He said.

"But I do know that meat isn't a regular breakfast food. But it sure is tasty!" He wasn't sure what was available to eat for breakfast type foods. He also didn't know where to look. He should probably ask Solomon to help them out.

[Cassandra Nida]

She looked at the meat. Booker was right. It wasn't a regular breakfast food, at least not for normal people. But Cass wasn't normal. Your average girl weighed 130 pounds. Cass had been 110 because she'd replaced her limbs and reinforced her torso. These days, she couldn't stand on most conventional scales. She'd crush them before they could even register an error.

"i eat meat for breakfast." She said rather lamely. If Booker couldn't help them out, then she was going to go back to the padd and hope she could come up with something that worked. Cass turned her back on him and checked the meat in the oven. It looked like most of the dressing had burned away, just like the blood had. At least it hadn't caused any lasting damage.

[Olive]

"I don't eat meat at all..." Olive admitted to Booker. Boy, now it was getting even more complicated. Humans liked different things for breakfast too. She sure hoped Sol had bought more stuff that everyone could eat, cause she was pretty sure the crate had been mostly vegetables and that hunk of meat.

She started rummaging around in the drawers and cupboards, making sure to latch each one back up after she'd closed it. Sol had warned her about that. Sometimes a ship might have to lurch or turn at an awkward angle, so most storage compartments needed to have some stronger ways of not flying open as the ship moved.

Mostly everything in these cupboards was pots and other cooking things. Nothing edible. "Hmmm," Olive said out loud. "Maybe the closet!" She strolled around the corner just into the hall and pulled the handle on the closet door there. She'd investigated all the rooms before they'd been filled with anything, so she remembered this room being empty except for some shelves and drawers. Sol had definitely filled it since, as it seemed there were all sorts of boxes in there with various labels and things.

She rifled through them, pulling open one box and pulling out a strangely packaged rectangle shaped thing. "Meal bar," she read out loud across the label. She was pretty sure Sol had shown her some of those back on Antheia. They looked pretty boring, but he'd said they were full of all sorts of important stuff.

On the opposite shelf were other boxes, these ones labeled with various titles, most of them involving words like "bran" "oats" and "grains". Olive was surprised that she recognized those words. The humans grew those types of plants on Antheia, she had learned from the older Fauns who sometimes helped on the Human farms. But this stuff didn't look like plants. All of the pictures on the labels showed brown things in a bowl. "Hey guys!! What's all this stuff??" she called out into the hall.

[Cassandra Nida]

Cass glanced at the meat. Still cooking. But the loose stuff looked done so she pulled it out, once again making sure to use an oven mitt. She left the cooked beef on top of the stove and headed after Olive to see what she was yelling about.

Olive had found the pantry, which would make things a little more useful. She was holding up a box of Honey Oats. "that's cereal. ... it's dried oats with... honey." Obviously. Except not to Olive. Someone had to get her hooked up with an encyclopedia.

Cass looked at the boxes lined up on the shelves. And then, she saw it, the helpful label that said 'spaghetti sauce'. Cass quickly dug out a plastic jar from the box and saw the red sauce she knew she had been missing. And she knew what to do this time, thanks to watching the video. Normally she had spaghetti too, but she was pretty sure she didn't even want to think about how you made that, not after the meat disaster.

She quickly hurried back out to the kitchen, looking for some sort of saucepan. There was one in the cupboard to the right. She latched it back up when she got it out and put it on top of the stove. A big glob of sauce went into the pan, quickly followed by the meat that was cooked. She carefully eyed the burner settings and picked a low one. Maybe this would work.