third floor common room | mid morning | tuesday | 27 april

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

With no classes to occupy his time, Jonas figured there was absolutely no excuse to get himself out of his room and into a more social frame of mind. No excuses. So, after waking himself up, he'd take himself down to the common room and was going to try something potentially dangerous. Jonas was going to attempt to follow a recipe in an attempt to make blueberry pancakes.

For the longest time, he'd been afraid to attempt new things for fear of making a mess but now, after so long on a strange island, he knew that if he didn't try, he'd never succeed. So, he was trying. And making a mess. A rather large one but there was nothing burning yet. There was just flour on his shirt and face and pants. But, there was no fire! That was a success. So far.

[open, of course!]

Comments

[glacial_queen]

Karla could follow the scent of cooking food like a bloodhound. "Mmm, that smells good!" she announced, poking her head through the common room door. "Oh, Jonas! Hi! Kiss kiss! Whatcha cooking?"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"I don't know if you could consider this cooking," Jonas admitted, turning to smile (flour covered face and all) at Karla. "It's an attempt at pancakes, I believe."

[I will be SPish for awhile but here as I can omg!]

[glacial_queen]

"Is anything on fire?" Karla asked. That was her usual method of deciding whether something was a culinary success or not. "Ooooh, I like pancakes."

Hint. Hint. Very subtle hint.

[Np! I'll be SPing shortly, too.]

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"Nothing is on fire as of yet," Jonas said, dumping some of the batter onto the frying pan carefully. "Would you like to help me make them and then we can share the spoils? I'd offer to share but they're not quite done yet and I could always use an extra pair of hands."

Jonas could take hints even if they were subtle. He liked pancakes too.

[glacial_queen]

Oh, Jonas! Asking Karla to help was dooming your culinary endeavors to utter failure.

"Sure!" Karla said, gleefully, almost skipping over to the stove. She loved it when people asked her to help cook. And it happened so rarely now. "What can I do?"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

Obviously Jonas hadn't picked up on that yet despite the various warnings and faces people made when he mentioned it.

"I think I need to shape the pancakes," he said, frowning curiously at the recipe. "So, they're circular. That's how they look in the picture, at least."

[glacial_queen]

Karla frowned. Mrs. Beale's pancakes were always perfectly circular, but Karla had no clue how she did it. "We could just make the pancake as big as the pan?" she suggested. "The pan's round, after all."

And there was a suggestion that couldn't end badly at all!

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

Jonas glanced down at the pan and, really, couldn't see anything bad with this idea. It would cut down on the mistakes that could be made across the span of several pancakes, after all.

"All right!" Of course he'd agree. Poor guy. "And then we could cut it up from there into smaller portions."

[glacial_queen]

Karla could eat a whole pan-sized pancake herself, but that worked, too. "Sure," she said. "And we could maybe use a bowl to cut around, so even our cut up pancakes are round! Well, except the edges, but who cares about that? They'll still be tasty."

Karla, stop helping.

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

Jonas reached for the rather large pan and held it. "If I hold it, do you think you could pour the batter I made into this smoothly?"

The batter, it should be said, was made fairly well and was resting in a bowl nearby. Fairly well. Now, it would just be getting it into the pain.

[glacial_queen]

"Of course I can," Karla said cheerfully. "That shouldn't be a problem at all!"

The problem wasn't getting the batter into the pan. It was convincing Karla to stop pouring that was the problem. Or was Jonas okay with a single several-inch-thick pancake?

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

At this point in time, Jonas probably wouldn't know the difference. It might not look like the pictures but he'd chalk this up to being creative.

"We might have to adjust the cooking time to better suit a bigger pancake," he said, reaching for the pan and holding it steady near Karla. "So, it isn't cold in the middle."

[glacial_queen]

"Good call," Karla said. "Plus, it cooks faster when it's hotter." She cranked the burner up to 'high.' "There," she said, satisfied. "It should cook in no time."

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"You're much better at this than I am." Oh, Jonas. "Whenever you're ready to start pouring, I'm ready to hold the pan."

[glacial_queen]

Karla nodded and picked up the bowl. "Okay, and here it goes!"

She poured, the tip of her tongue poking out of the side of her mouth as she made sure she didn't spill a drop. She needed both hands to maneuver the bowl, so a bit of Craft was used to get the batter still clinging to the sides and bottom. "Perfect!"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

And Jonas managed to keep the pan steady and straight even while being amused at how Karla looked while pouring batter.

"I think you might be the best batter pourer I've ever seen," Jonas declared, smiling proudly. Hey, he'd gotten this far and nothing had gotten too bad. It was a reason to be proud.

[glacial_queen]

"It's a long and time-honored skill," Karla said, dimpling. "My ancestors gave their lives perfecting the talent."

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"They could teach mine a thing or two about what they're missing," he said, settling the pan back on the counter. "Only a select few were able to cook where I'm from. It's fun, though. I didn't know what I was missing."

[glacial_queen]

"By ancestors, I really mean the servants," Karla confessed. "I have no idea if my parents could cook. I never saw either of them try."

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"Neither of mine did either," he shared, nodding. "It wasn't their Assignment so they weren't allowed, really."

[glacial_queen]

"Their assignment?" Karla asked, turning away from the pan to look at Jonas. "Not allowed? It was their house, wasn't it? Who'd stop them?"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"The Elders, I suppose," Jonas said idly, shrugging. "It just wasn't done. No one who wasn't Assigned to Food Preparation didn't cook. It was just how things went."

[glacial_queen]

See? This was why Karla burned everything. Watching food actually cook was boring and there was usually something so much more interesting to attract her attention.

"Assigned?" As someone who spoke in capital letters herself, she knew them when she heard them. "So...unless you were part of the caste of cooks, or something, you were banned from the kitchen?"

Dreadful thought...unless that extended to not having to wash dishes when you were naughty, too.

[azuldragon.livejournal.com]

Following her ritual and trying her very best to ignore the weekend, Azula made her way to the common room and raised an eyebrow at the mess.

"Are you attempting a ritual that exploded in your face?"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"No, I'm attempting to cook," Jonas corrected, glancing over at Azula. "I'm just fairly bad at it."

[sorry so late! i fell asleep early!]

[azuldragon.livejournal.com]

"Clearly," she answered dryly. "What were you attempting to cook?"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"Pancakes," he said and nodded towards the recipe and picture in the book in front of him. "I haven't quite gotten the hang of some things."

[azuldragon.livejournal.com]

Azula glanced at the recipe book then back at him. "It looks fairly simple."

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"It looks it but it's not for someone that's a novice in all things cooking," Jonas said. "I didn't even know what an oven was before arriving here."

[azuldragon.livejournal.com]

Azula frowned, "Did you live off the land, cooking on campfires?"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"No, we had specifically assigned food preparers," Jonas shared. "Those that weren't Assigned, didn't cook or bake."

[azuldragon.livejournal.com]

"Are you of Noble Blood?" She questioned.

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"I don't even know what Noble Blood is," Jonas explained, "so I suppose that answers your question. What's Noble Blood?"

[azuldragon.livejournal.com]

"A higher social class of people," she answered. "If you're not noble born then why do you have people cook for you?"

[see-beyond.livejournal.com]

"They didn't cook just for me," he explained, tossing some more ingredients into his bowl. "They cooked for the Community. It was their Assignment. They were Food Preparation. And the Food Distribution people were the ones to deliver the prepared food to everyone."