Faeries are notoriously bad cooks. They don?t usually have the patience for domestic duties in general. In some lands, the fey are known for causing mischief in households: stealing food cooling on windowsills or even stealing away the cooks themselves to provide for them and their troop. But that was only one of the reasons Jewell Ravenlock makes a horrible cook. She has several things going against her: she did not like to deal with fire because of her water-based nature, she did not like to touch or look at raw meat being a vegetarian, and she was just never instructed to cook because of the life she led before coming to RhyDin. Since coming to RhyDin, not much had changed in that last regard. The first few years she learned what she could to survive. When she had Amanda, she got together money for a housekeeper when she wasn?t living at the shared Ravenlock home.
Yet, despite never having learned to cook, Jewell was in the kitchen of the Red Dragon Inn prepared to do so. She was prepared to cook for Stephen. P until the point where she had all the foodstuffs and utensils spread out before her, she thought this was a good idea. Now she had her doubts but she was too far along to turn back! Besides, she wanted to do this, to at least try to do this, for Stephen.
Shepherd?s pie. That was what she was going to attempt to make for him. She had come upon the idea in a rather stream-of-consciousness fashion. She recalled how he had spoken about his homeland, the way he had spoken about it. She remembered thinking about her own home in turn and how there were times when she became incredibly homesick. It wasn?t that she missed her actual life there, but the other things RhyDin was without: the food, the clothing, the very air. She thought that if Stephen missed his home anywhere near as much as she missed hers sometimes then a little food from home would be a welcome surprise. However, she refused to search the city for anyone that knew how to make good Irish food. No, she was going to do it herself.
That was how she ended up in the kitchen of the Red Dragon Inn (it was safer than her own presently-abandoned home because she wasn?t afraid of burning down the Inn) with all the ingredients for a shepherd?s pie before her plus a recipe. She didn?t quite understand why some of these items?beef, potatoes, green peas?were in a pie at all, shouldn?t there be fruit of some sort? But, this was what the recipe called for and Jewell intended to follow it to a ?T?.
The ingredients had proved to be her first trial. No stranger to the market, Jewell had often done the household shopping and knew where to find the freshest vegetables and which stalls carried unique food from off world. However, she did not have the faintest idea of how to go about purchasing meat of any kind! Just walking past the butcher made her cringe and now she had to go inside? She took a deep breath before doing so, eyeing the man behind the counter with trepidation and trying not to focus on all the raw meat hanging from the ceiling. It was everywhere! Theirs was a silent interaction, the transaction done completely without words on her part as Jewell tried not to breathe. She passed him a piece of paper that indicated what she needed, he told her how much, she handed the money over, took the package of meat into her hands (holding it like it was poisonous), and exited the shop just before black circles started to dance in her vision from lack of oxygen.
Everything else was easy enough to get, though she almost gagged at the thought of ?beef gravy.? She couldn?t even look at it as it sat before her on the counter: brown, thick, and somewhat chunky. She shuddered. No time for hesitation, it was time she got to work! The first thing to set about doing was making the mashed potatoes (the lady she had gotten the recipe from at the library, recognizing her complete lack of common knowledge when it came to food, had kindly explained that to her so she didn?t make an absolute fool of herself). Rather handy with a knife, she somehow managed to cut her fingers any number of times in skinning the potatoes. Each little knick was accompanied by a pathetic little whine or whimper, sometimes a few curses. This was worse than warfare.
Boiling the potatoes was probably worse than skinning them for her. Unwilling to wait until the water boiled on its own over the tiny little flame she allowed (she refused to make a bigger one) she took it upon herself to make the water boil via her magic. That was a mistake. Still young enough to lack the finite control over her element, the water in the large pot went from cold to hyper-heated steam in a matter of seconds. Fortunately, there was no one else in the room to get burned by the steam (which did manage to catch her lower arms and leave some minimal damage) or witness her lack of finesse in the magical field. Once she did manage to get the potatoes boiled, at least she thought they were suitably boiled, she had a heck of a time mashing them up. ?Why are you still hard?? She shouted at the bowl of slightly undercooked potatoes before using a majority of her brute strength?yes, the little fey had some measure of raw strength?to mash the heck out of the poor vegetable. She eyed the finished product, noting that it didn?t look as smooth as it was supposed to. Damn.
She set the potatoes aside for now, off to a fine start and all, and moved to the first step on the directions. ?Half cup of chopped onions?beef. Ack, didn?t cut the onion up yet!? All this was muttered to herself as she worked. Picking the onion up, she eyed it suspiciously as if it might bite her. ?Should you come off?? She poked at the skin a little, unsure as to what she was supposed to do exactly. She wasn?t sure if all the flavor and nutritional value was in the skin or what lay underneath. In the end, she chose to be cautious (Stephen would have to thank her later) in removing the skin and chopping the onion up.
Finding what she thought to be a skillet, she mixed the meat and onion together before putting it on the stove. She slid on the biggest, thickest, oven mitts she could find in order to actual cook the meat and grabbed the spoon with the largest handle so she could stand as far away as possible. The heat from the stove made her flushed as she attempted to cook, impatiently waiting for the meat to brown. Unfortunately, she fell victim to that mistaken thinking that if you just make the flame higher it will cook faster. In the end she ended up with very browned meat (almost black) and onion that one couldn?t exactly call ?tender? as the recipe required, more like mush. ?Drain the beef mixture,? she made a ?yuck? face at that phrase, ?and return to the skillet. What the hell does that mean?? She read it over a few times as if the secret would reveal itself. It didn?t. She eyed the brown meat and onion mush mixture, poking at it a little with the long-handled spoon. ?I guess I?ll just leave it as it is.?
She continued reading the directions, ?Now add all the other stuff, to this stuff?and let it simmer. What?s simmer? Is it like simmering, when it?s hot out? Water simmers when it?s not boiling yet. I guess that?s what that means.? Upholding this conversation with herself, Jewell added the beef gravy, Worcestershire sauce, and peas to the meat, onion, and grease mixture. Then she placed the skillet back on the fire to let it simmer. ?Okay, while that?s doing that?I?m supposed to be adding the rest of this to the mashed potatoes?? She eyed the sour cream and butter and then looked to the pitiful mashed potatoes. Shrugging, she got to work on that, mixing the three together. It was a menial task and it made her lose her focus as she used a spoon to mix the potatoes round and around, beginning to daydream.
It was the sound of bubbling that brought her back to her senses. She looked at the mixture that was supposed to be simmering and found it boiling. With a cry of surprise, almost dropping the bowl of mashed potatoes, she ran over to remove it from the fire. It clattered loudly to the countertop, spilling a little, as she practically through the skillet from her upon picking it up because the handle was too hot for her even through the large oven mitts she wore. She frowned darkly at the growing mess she was making.
?I hate cooking,? she complained miserably to the empty kitchen before moving on to the last series of steps. She poured the semi-burnt mixture into the first pie pan she found only to find out it was too small. She located another, a little too big but it would do. Spreading the mashed potatoes out on top of the meat mixture, she added the cheese before sticking the whole thing in the oven with a sigh of relief. Of course, she had forgotten to preheat the oven but this failed to catch her attention. While the pie was baking, she moved about doing her best to clean up the kitchen with much clattering and dropping of utensils. Despite the usual fluidity and gracefulness of her motions, she could truly be a klutz sometimes.
With the oven heating up as the pie cooked, the kitchen became annoyingly hot to Jewell. She didn?t always mind the heat, but the dry heat that radiated off the oven irritated her senses and made her a touch light-headed. She fanned herself with her hand, drinking more water than usual, as she waited impatiently, opening the oven carefully to check the progress of the pie every few minutes. It seemed to be taking longer than it was supposed to, she couldn?t fathom why. Waiting, she checked her appearance in the back of a spoon. Her face was severely flushed, almost as if from a heat rash, and her hair was in disarray. She couldn?t count the number of small cuts and burns she had on her hands and arms now. However, none of that mattered once the little timer went off, signifying the pie was supposedly done. She carefully removed it from the oven, her arms feeling like they were being sun burnt as she reached in to take it out. The cheese didn?t look quite as melted as it should be, but she was really tired of waiting and refused to put it back in.
Using four oven mitts, she lifted the very hot pie up carefully and emerged victorious from the kitchen to present it to her intended.
Yet, despite never having learned to cook, Jewell was in the kitchen of the Red Dragon Inn prepared to do so. She was prepared to cook for Stephen. P until the point where she had all the foodstuffs and utensils spread out before her, she thought this was a good idea. Now she had her doubts but she was too far along to turn back! Besides, she wanted to do this, to at least try to do this, for Stephen.
Shepherd?s pie. That was what she was going to attempt to make for him. She had come upon the idea in a rather stream-of-consciousness fashion. She recalled how he had spoken about his homeland, the way he had spoken about it. She remembered thinking about her own home in turn and how there were times when she became incredibly homesick. It wasn?t that she missed her actual life there, but the other things RhyDin was without: the food, the clothing, the very air. She thought that if Stephen missed his home anywhere near as much as she missed hers sometimes then a little food from home would be a welcome surprise. However, she refused to search the city for anyone that knew how to make good Irish food. No, she was going to do it herself.
That was how she ended up in the kitchen of the Red Dragon Inn (it was safer than her own presently-abandoned home because she wasn?t afraid of burning down the Inn) with all the ingredients for a shepherd?s pie before her plus a recipe. She didn?t quite understand why some of these items?beef, potatoes, green peas?were in a pie at all, shouldn?t there be fruit of some sort? But, this was what the recipe called for and Jewell intended to follow it to a ?T?.
The ingredients had proved to be her first trial. No stranger to the market, Jewell had often done the household shopping and knew where to find the freshest vegetables and which stalls carried unique food from off world. However, she did not have the faintest idea of how to go about purchasing meat of any kind! Just walking past the butcher made her cringe and now she had to go inside? She took a deep breath before doing so, eyeing the man behind the counter with trepidation and trying not to focus on all the raw meat hanging from the ceiling. It was everywhere! Theirs was a silent interaction, the transaction done completely without words on her part as Jewell tried not to breathe. She passed him a piece of paper that indicated what she needed, he told her how much, she handed the money over, took the package of meat into her hands (holding it like it was poisonous), and exited the shop just before black circles started to dance in her vision from lack of oxygen.
Everything else was easy enough to get, though she almost gagged at the thought of ?beef gravy.? She couldn?t even look at it as it sat before her on the counter: brown, thick, and somewhat chunky. She shuddered. No time for hesitation, it was time she got to work! The first thing to set about doing was making the mashed potatoes (the lady she had gotten the recipe from at the library, recognizing her complete lack of common knowledge when it came to food, had kindly explained that to her so she didn?t make an absolute fool of herself). Rather handy with a knife, she somehow managed to cut her fingers any number of times in skinning the potatoes. Each little knick was accompanied by a pathetic little whine or whimper, sometimes a few curses. This was worse than warfare.
Boiling the potatoes was probably worse than skinning them for her. Unwilling to wait until the water boiled on its own over the tiny little flame she allowed (she refused to make a bigger one) she took it upon herself to make the water boil via her magic. That was a mistake. Still young enough to lack the finite control over her element, the water in the large pot went from cold to hyper-heated steam in a matter of seconds. Fortunately, there was no one else in the room to get burned by the steam (which did manage to catch her lower arms and leave some minimal damage) or witness her lack of finesse in the magical field. Once she did manage to get the potatoes boiled, at least she thought they were suitably boiled, she had a heck of a time mashing them up. ?Why are you still hard?? She shouted at the bowl of slightly undercooked potatoes before using a majority of her brute strength?yes, the little fey had some measure of raw strength?to mash the heck out of the poor vegetable. She eyed the finished product, noting that it didn?t look as smooth as it was supposed to. Damn.
She set the potatoes aside for now, off to a fine start and all, and moved to the first step on the directions. ?Half cup of chopped onions?beef. Ack, didn?t cut the onion up yet!? All this was muttered to herself as she worked. Picking the onion up, she eyed it suspiciously as if it might bite her. ?Should you come off?? She poked at the skin a little, unsure as to what she was supposed to do exactly. She wasn?t sure if all the flavor and nutritional value was in the skin or what lay underneath. In the end, she chose to be cautious (Stephen would have to thank her later) in removing the skin and chopping the onion up.
Finding what she thought to be a skillet, she mixed the meat and onion together before putting it on the stove. She slid on the biggest, thickest, oven mitts she could find in order to actual cook the meat and grabbed the spoon with the largest handle so she could stand as far away as possible. The heat from the stove made her flushed as she attempted to cook, impatiently waiting for the meat to brown. Unfortunately, she fell victim to that mistaken thinking that if you just make the flame higher it will cook faster. In the end she ended up with very browned meat (almost black) and onion that one couldn?t exactly call ?tender? as the recipe required, more like mush. ?Drain the beef mixture,? she made a ?yuck? face at that phrase, ?and return to the skillet. What the hell does that mean?? She read it over a few times as if the secret would reveal itself. It didn?t. She eyed the brown meat and onion mush mixture, poking at it a little with the long-handled spoon. ?I guess I?ll just leave it as it is.?
She continued reading the directions, ?Now add all the other stuff, to this stuff?and let it simmer. What?s simmer? Is it like simmering, when it?s hot out? Water simmers when it?s not boiling yet. I guess that?s what that means.? Upholding this conversation with herself, Jewell added the beef gravy, Worcestershire sauce, and peas to the meat, onion, and grease mixture. Then she placed the skillet back on the fire to let it simmer. ?Okay, while that?s doing that?I?m supposed to be adding the rest of this to the mashed potatoes?? She eyed the sour cream and butter and then looked to the pitiful mashed potatoes. Shrugging, she got to work on that, mixing the three together. It was a menial task and it made her lose her focus as she used a spoon to mix the potatoes round and around, beginning to daydream.
It was the sound of bubbling that brought her back to her senses. She looked at the mixture that was supposed to be simmering and found it boiling. With a cry of surprise, almost dropping the bowl of mashed potatoes, she ran over to remove it from the fire. It clattered loudly to the countertop, spilling a little, as she practically through the skillet from her upon picking it up because the handle was too hot for her even through the large oven mitts she wore. She frowned darkly at the growing mess she was making.
?I hate cooking,? she complained miserably to the empty kitchen before moving on to the last series of steps. She poured the semi-burnt mixture into the first pie pan she found only to find out it was too small. She located another, a little too big but it would do. Spreading the mashed potatoes out on top of the meat mixture, she added the cheese before sticking the whole thing in the oven with a sigh of relief. Of course, she had forgotten to preheat the oven but this failed to catch her attention. While the pie was baking, she moved about doing her best to clean up the kitchen with much clattering and dropping of utensils. Despite the usual fluidity and gracefulness of her motions, she could truly be a klutz sometimes.
With the oven heating up as the pie cooked, the kitchen became annoyingly hot to Jewell. She didn?t always mind the heat, but the dry heat that radiated off the oven irritated her senses and made her a touch light-headed. She fanned herself with her hand, drinking more water than usual, as she waited impatiently, opening the oven carefully to check the progress of the pie every few minutes. It seemed to be taking longer than it was supposed to, she couldn?t fathom why. Waiting, she checked her appearance in the back of a spoon. Her face was severely flushed, almost as if from a heat rash, and her hair was in disarray. She couldn?t count the number of small cuts and burns she had on her hands and arms now. However, none of that mattered once the little timer went off, signifying the pie was supposedly done. She carefully removed it from the oven, her arms feeling like they were being sun burnt as she reached in to take it out. The cheese didn?t look quite as melted as it should be, but she was really tired of waiting and refused to put it back in.
Using four oven mitts, she lifted the very hot pie up carefully and emerged victorious from the kitchen to present it to her intended.