alas, it's not omelettes
Jan. 25th, 2016 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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castle_perraultHis stay in this castle has gotten a lot longer than expected.
Which is a bit worrying for a variety of different reasons. But then there's the more practical concerns of being trapped in a magical castle, too--like the fact that most of the food to be found so far consists of either fruits from the garden or cakes from the ballroom, mostly. (Cakes with strange not-edible things inside them...) And that's just...not enough, honestly. A growing boy is a perpetually hungry one, and there's a lot to be said for the lack of actual meals lately.
But today Lucas finally stumbles into a kitchen in his wanderings. It's disappointingly ghost-free, much the way the rest of the castle has been--he wonders what Duster would think of all this--but still, the room is large, and there are pots and utensils hung across the walls, and vegetables in the cabinets. ...Perfectly fresh vegetables. Which is pretty odd, but...everything else about this place is odd already. Lucas sets them out on the counter anyway.
Because he does know how to cook, a bit. Flint would often be away for multiple days at a time, and so Lucas is mostly self-taught, using advice from fellow villagers and experimenting a bit on his own...after three years, putting together a decent vegetable stew isn't too hard at all. There's a wood stove that's easy enough to light a fire in, and there's water here and a large pot there...
And so visitors might be drawn in by a faint but pleasant smell, wafting through the open kitchen doorway. Lucas is found standing at a counter (on top of a tall stool, so that he can actually reach everything), carefully chopping more assorted vegetables with a knife while a large pot simmers gently on the stove nearby. He's humming to himself very softly, but is otherwise absorbed in deep concentration as he tries to get these vegetable chunks just the right size, and doesn't notice anyone coming in or watching just yet.
Which is a bit worrying for a variety of different reasons. But then there's the more practical concerns of being trapped in a magical castle, too--like the fact that most of the food to be found so far consists of either fruits from the garden or cakes from the ballroom, mostly. (Cakes with strange not-edible things inside them...) And that's just...not enough, honestly. A growing boy is a perpetually hungry one, and there's a lot to be said for the lack of actual meals lately.
But today Lucas finally stumbles into a kitchen in his wanderings. It's disappointingly ghost-free, much the way the rest of the castle has been--he wonders what Duster would think of all this--but still, the room is large, and there are pots and utensils hung across the walls, and vegetables in the cabinets. ...Perfectly fresh vegetables. Which is pretty odd, but...everything else about this place is odd already. Lucas sets them out on the counter anyway.
Because he does know how to cook, a bit. Flint would often be away for multiple days at a time, and so Lucas is mostly self-taught, using advice from fellow villagers and experimenting a bit on his own...after three years, putting together a decent vegetable stew isn't too hard at all. There's a wood stove that's easy enough to light a fire in, and there's water here and a large pot there...
And so visitors might be drawn in by a faint but pleasant smell, wafting through the open kitchen doorway. Lucas is found standing at a counter (on top of a tall stool, so that he can actually reach everything), carefully chopping more assorted vegetables with a knife while a large pot simmers gently on the stove nearby. He's humming to himself very softly, but is otherwise absorbed in deep concentration as he tries to get these vegetable chunks just the right size, and doesn't notice anyone coming in or watching just yet.
(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-25 03:58 am (UTC)Still, though, Lucas hadn't actually expected Sans to already have a pen and notebook and everything--that's really handy...but once it's apparent that he's ready to start jotting things down Lucas straightens.
"But--okay, so..."
Slowly, Lucas begins listing off ingredients first. Most of the choices in vegetables had honestly been somewhat slapdash, consisting of what he could find immediately in the kitchen, but it's a fair variety of them and he points out which cupboard he found each kind in too. Spices come after that, mostly salt and pepper and--the mystery spice, which Lucas spends a few moments fumbling over before he finally opts to just get up and dig out the little bottle for Sans to examine for himself. (It's garlic, as it turns out.) Then he goes over the general procedure, how much water goes in the pot and how the vegetables ought to be portioned.
No numbers for measurements, or anything--everyone cooked by sight and smell back home, for the most part. (Well, before--things like measuring cups starting cropping up. But Mom never got to see any of those, and Lucas had never tried them either.) But Lucas is slow and careful with his directions all the same, glad to answer any questions Sans might have. And he's distinctly happier, as he goes on; it's nice, being helpful with such a nice thing. It feels like he hasn't been very useful for much of anything in a long time. (This may also be the most he's talked in...a little while--)
"Though, I'm sure you could probably add other things too if you want," he finishes, folding his arms on the table with a smile that's a little bigger now. "I ended up using things I found in here, but there's a lot of room in vegetable soup for other things that taste nice too. I think, it's a sort of thing you can mess around with a lot..."
(no subject)
Date: 2016-02-25 03:56 pm (UTC)Mostly, his questions involve what some of the vegetables on the table are called. Not everything a human might be familiar with could grow in the Underground, not even with the background magic. He asks how to tell if something's gone bad or rotten. It might be not an issue, here, seeing what he's starting to see of the castle and it's resets. But it's best to be sure, with this. With them. He asks for Lucas' opinion on how they might best go together, for future reference.
And he seems happier having this conversation, too. It brings up good memories, of a time before things went wrong. It sets before him a way to do something here and now and real for the people he cares about. It's hard to feel helpless, when soup is bubbling away.
"...spinach." Sans rattles the pencil thoughtfully against his skull, staring down thoughtfully at two pages of scrawled notes. "spinach is good for skeletons. i mean, i hate spinach. so much." He shudders in theatrical revulsion. "but it's good for skeletons."