(no subject)

[souffle_girlek]

Early in the morning, before most of the bar is awake, a tiny time traveler visits the kitchen. She would stay at home for a late-night snack, usually, but...

Well.

Ace already knows way too much about the Wells' romantic life, and about one picosecond downstairs at the farm let her know that sticking around would only teach her more. And since Bar was getting a break in the quiet hours of the night, Ace decides to fetch a snack herself. It's really too bad she left her current project on top of the microwave when she left.

=========================================================================

"Well, you see, it's not as easy as going 'yay, souffle'... well, actually, that's pretty much the whole plan, but you have to make it a flavor first, and there's all sorts of flavors." Oswin explain, her nerves translating to babble as she leads them into the kitchen.

Comments

[herr_bookman]

"What do you mean?" Autor asks, adjusting his glasses as he follows her. "Like... Like chocolate? Or strawberry? Can you even do that? I thought you could only make a soufflé with... eggs. And whatever else goes into them."

[souffle_girlek]

She grins, and hops up onto one of the stools that have made it into the kitchen from the main room.

"Oh, they can taste like almost anything - there's sweet ones, savory ones... all sorts of things. Were you hoping for something in particular?

Oswin doesn't have much of a preference - she's made all sorts, to varying degrees of success.

Sweet

[herr_bookman]

"No, no, I mean... Is there any difference aside from the things we add to make it sweet," Autor tries to explain. He can cook some things but talking about the process isn't his forte.

Restless, the boy hops off his stool to start gathering measuring cups and mixing bowls. "Do we need to add sugar to the base, that sort of thing?"

Re: Sweet

[souffle_girlek]

"Well, sure, if we do something that isn't naturally sweet, like... well, lemons. Just adding lemons wouldn't go well. ... Actually I did that last week." She admits, ruefully, scrubbing the back of her neck. "That actually tastes really bad, don't do that."

Chocolate

[souffle_girlek]

"You know, it's only fitting you learn chocolate first -after all, last time I schooled you on chocolate croissants." She smirks at him, snagging the bag of chips out of the pantry.

Re: Chocolate

[herr_bookman]

"And I burned the hell out of my mouth trying to prove to you that I'd baked it correctly," Autor says, and shudders. "I remember."

He carries the butter over to a cabinet near the stove, and opens it to retrieve a saucepan, which he places on a burner. "I melt three tablespoons of this with three tablespoons of flour, right?"

Oswin finds the salt

[souffle_girlek]

"I'm telling you, it's not..."




There it is.


Right next to the pepper.


With the rest of the spices.

But...

But she just looked there.

Re: Oswin finds the salt

[herr_bookman]

Autor blinks, listening to her stillness. It's unnerving. "Oswin? Did you find it?" he calls, his voice a little louder than necessary to make up for her lack.

Autor takes Oswin's hand

[herr_bookman]

Autor reaches out and takes her hand, kneading her palm with his thumbs. "It's okay," he says again, his voice firm and steady, like his heartbeat. He smooths his fingers over her hand, and starts singing the Habanera. Her song.

Re: Autor takes Oswin's hand

[souffle_girlek]

She grips his hand in return with the fierceness of someone who fears drowning. It would be nice, perhaps, to say that the world snaps back into focus, that the sense of unreality dissipates like morning fog.

Oswin has found through grinding experience that this is one of those things that has to be laboriously, frustratingly shoved back into its dark corner - and it doesn't go easily.

Still, it's enough. Enough that after a few minutes she can blink at him rather than through him, enough that she can hear his singing, rather than straining to listen for the voices that don't come.

Autor doesn't touch Oswin

[herr_bookman]

"Oswin?" Autor calls again. He wonders if he should get a chair for her, or a chai tea, or--and then realizes that no, he can't leave her to suffer whatever this is by herself. "Oswin, come back to me. You're okay. It's all okay."

Re: Autor doesn't touch Oswin

[souffle_girlek]

Panic makes things hard to remember, which doesn't help, not at all - she remembers walking into this room, right? There's no way to look outside, to check, without going near the doors, and if... if it isn't real, that's bad, so...

Oswin hunches her shoulders, pulling in on herself, pulling away, unsure of the defensiveness of her position.

Autor finds the salt

[herr_bookman]

"Oswin?" Autor calls, picking up the little blue container with a girl in yellow holding an umbrella. "I found it! It's right here."

He sets the salt aside and turns the heat on. Well, one crisis averted.

Re: Autor finds the salt

[souffle_girlek]

Finally the rising sense of anxiety tamps down a bit, and she can draw a proper breath.

See? Someone just put it away in the wrong place. Some horribly inconsiderate person who's baking should all burn.

After a moment to collect herself, she grabs the cream of tartar as well before it can wander off.

Lemon

[souffle_girlek]

"You know, I've always been partial to lemon - it's sweet, and kind of sassy... that's kind of an awesome combination." She muses, grinning. In general, Oswin does not have an ego problem, no.

Re: Lemon

[herr_bookman]

"Yes, reminds me of someone," Autor says wryly. He crosses to the fridge and pulls out butter and eggs. "So how much butter do we need for the béchamel?"

Autor is crap at separating eggs

[herr_bookman]

Autor draws a deep breath and cracks his first egg. "Whoa," he says, as the liquid pours out. Luckily, he didn't break the yolk, but when he tries to separate the white from it, he fails miserably. Gloppy yellow yolk drips into the mixing bowl.

Oh, well, he thinks. A little yolk in a soufflé isn't going to be too bad. I think.

Re: Autor is crap at separating eggs

[souffle_girlek]

Oswin looks up from her butter-melting operation and does an admirable job not laughing at the egg-separating disaster.

"No, that one's going to have to be tossed, unless you want a scrambled egg - we put the yolks in the base and then add the whipped whites later, it doesn't work mixed."

She tried that too. One in a long string of failures.

Autor is great at separating eggs

[herr_bookman]

"Oh, this will be easy," Autor says, and picks up an egg. "My mother taught me how to do this a long time ago."

He cracks the first egg one-handed and separates the yolk from the white meticulously. One down, six to go...

Re: Autor is great at separating eggs

[souffle_girlek]

"Are you sure you haven't done this before?" Oswin asks, raising an eyebrow. She made souffles for a year (for a given value of 'made') and never had technique like that.

Nineteen Minutes

[herr_bookman]

Nineteen minutes later, Autor has realized very thoroughly how badly he sucks at Dutch Blitz. He slaps his remaining cards on the table and folds his arms.

"This is ridiculous," he opines, huffing like an asthmatic kitten. "I'm going to check on the soufflé."

He stomps over to the oven, being a bit overdramatic for effect, and opens the door. Schlump! goes the soufflé, and Autor's face falls with it.

"Er. Oswin. Something's happened."

Re: Nineteen Minutes

[souffle_girlek]

Oswin, who's been having a grand old time trouncing Autor thoroughly, comes up behind him to see what's happened.

".... Ooooh. Well."

Twenty-six Minutes

[herr_bookman]

"One more game!" he demands, holding up his pointer finger. Then he sits up, nose wriggling. "Oswin. Do you smell that?"

Re: Twenty-six Minutes

[souffle_girlek]

"Alright, I'll...." Oswin pauses when he does, and frowns.

"Yeah, it's..." ... She turns to look at the oven with an expression of dread. She knows that smell. She knows that smell entirely too well.

She just hopes nothing has burned to the bottom of the oven.

Grapefruit-ginger

[souffle_girlek]

"You know, we should do something interesting. I've never done a sweet-and-spicy, so how about grapefruit-ginger? It's sweet, it's tart, you can pretend it's actually supposed to be for breakfast..." She elaborates, scooping a ruby red out of the fruit bowl.

Re: Grapefruit-ginger

[herr_bookman]

Autor eases into a shy smile. "I like ginger. A lot. And grapefruits are okay," he says. "Let's go for it!"

He heads to the fridge and pulls out butter and milk, which he carries over to the oven. Pulling a saucepan out of the cabinet, he sets it on the burner and turns that on. "How much butter do we need? And how much flour?"

White as driven snow

[souffle_girlek]

Oswin eyes the different packages critically. Turns out the flour was always on a higher shelf because that's the flour shelf, she was just too short to see it.

After a brief internal debate over what the blue stuff with the script she can't read might be, she grabs the package she always uses and hops back down.

"Anyway, three tablespoons of this, and three-fourths of a cup of milk, stirred until smooth."

Re: White as driven snow

[herr_bookman]

Autor nods, and opens the flour she presents him. He carefully spoons three tablespoons in to the butter concoction, and then adds the milk. "And we need seven eggs whites, right?"

Off-white is the new white

[souffle_girlek]

"Cheeky." She calls from her shelf perch. Oswin eyes the different packages critically. She had no idea all of these were up here - there's just so much choice.

Well, they are trying something new and different here, right? She grabs a package that sports a smiling boy giving a thumbs-up and hops down.

Re: Off-white is the new white

[herr_bookman]

"Ah, good, you didn't get lost in there," Autor says dryly. "Some of the shelves are kind of tall."

He stirs the fully melted butter. "Three tablespoons of flour, you said?"

Savory

[herr_bookman]

"Wait, no, I mean... Never mind," Autor says, shaking his head. He folds his arms.

"Well, savory sounds good to me," the boy says, licking his lips. "What did we say before? Pumpkin or cheese, right?"

Options:

Pumpkin?

-or-

Cheese?

Pumpkin

[souffle_girlek]

"Even though it seems all of the squashy things are falling out of favor - did you notice they were super popular for a while? Anyway, I still like it. I think we should do pumpkin." Oswin opines, knowing there's a can of pumpkin still in the larder.

Re: Pumpkin

[herr_bookman]

"Squash were super popular?" Autor says, tilting his head. "I wonder why. And pumpkin is my favorite, so it's popular with me."

He heads to the fridge to pull out eggs, butter, and milk out, and carries them to the counter near the stove. "Would you like to handle the eggs while I make the béchamel?"

Autor Trips

[souffle_girlek]

Oswin is an egg-breaking-and-separating machine. You try and make souffles for years - eventually, the technique is just there. She's tossing the egg-shells into the trashcan across the way, sending them in batches of two and three. It's like artistry.

It's like not paying attention to people wandering around looking for flour.

Re: Autor Trips

[herr_bookman]

Unfortunately for Oswin, Autor manages to trip over his own feet. Up goes the flour bag, and he recovers just soon enough to see it sail across the air and land on her shoulder, completely unpending itself to dump white flour everywhere. POOF.

"Oh, Oswin! I'm sorry," he says, dusting flour off of her shoulder like so much snow.

Autor Does Not Trip

[souffle_girlek]

"'Behind', said the boy who didn't want to end up with a face full of eggshells." Oswin snickers, just managing to avoid tossing a handful of broken eggshells at the trashcan when Autor wanders by.

Re: Autor Does Not Trip

[herr_bookman]

"Whoops," Autor says, flashing a cocky grin at her. "Next time I'll warn you," he says, tossing her a one-handed salute. He carefully measures out three tablespoons of flour for the béchamel and adds that to the sauce pan. After stirring it all in, he pours the milk in. "You're doing a good job on those eggs."

Oswin and Autor, PIs

[souffle_girlek]

"Funny, I didn't turn anything else on... well, let's see what it is, if anything the rats can come break it down if its someone else's project gone awry." Oswin decides, depositing the found ingredients near the stovetop and heading over to investigate.

Re: Oswin and Autor, PIs

[herr_bookman]

The growling grows louder, and Autor turns off the oven. He moves the flour bag aside and reveals a bread machine, one red light blinking ominously. The yeasty smell increases, almost sickly sweet.

Autor glances from it to Oswin. "Do... Do you think we should open it?"

Not with a Ten Foot Barge Pole

[souffle_girlek]

"That is not a combination of words I find at all worth investigating in conjunction. In fact, only bad things can come of investigating things that can be explained in such a fashion. Besides, I didn't turn on anything over there, did you?" Oswin asks, eyeing that corner of the kitchen warily.

Re: Not with a Ten Foot Barge Pole

[herr_bookman]

"I didn't," Autor says, and turns back to his béchamel, trying to ignore the loud growling and gear clanking. He stirs it until it's smooth. "How are those egg whites coming?"

Cheese, please!

[souffle_girlek]

"Oh, not just any cheese - Parmesan cheese with cayenne pepper." Oswin corrects, grinning. "Spicy and just a bit salty - kinda like how I like my men."

No, she will not apologize for that.

Re: Cheese, please!

[herr_bookman]

"Shiva wept!" Autor says, gasping. He nearly trips on the way to the refrigerator.

"I don't need to know what your preferences are, Oswin!" he snaps, digging the eggs and milk out for the béchamel. He stalks over to the stove and furrows his brow. "Hey, do you smell that?"

The Smell is Smelt

[herr_bookman]

"The smell," Autor says, frowning a little. "It's a weird smell--here, come over here. It's strong over here."

Re: The Smell is Smelt

[souffle_girlek]

"If this is some sort of retaliation for my perfectly awesome joke, I'm going to be sad at you. Sad for days, Autor. There won't even be... whoa. Um. Wow, no that's bad." Oswin quickly backs away from the source, pulling Autor with her. "So we should find a wait rat, pronto."

The Smell is Not Smelt

[herr_bookman]

"Well, if you don't smell it," Autor says, shrugging. He rummages around in the cabinets for a saucepan, and sets it on the stove. The boy cuts three tablespoons of butter for the pan, and then heads off to find the flour. "Are you going to be working on the eggs?"

Re: The Smell is Not Smelt

[souffle_girlek]

"Yeah, I'll separate those out - I'm pretty quick at it by now." Oswin agrees, hunting up some eggs to use. She always worries that there's sentient hens in the bar and this is some sort of embryo transfer project, but so far she hasn't been that unlucky.

Something inside the oven flickers, unevenly.