fandomhigh | How to Survive Your Own Cooking [Class 2]

"Today," Lulu began, after the class had come into the home ec room, "as it says on your syllabus, we're going to be studying breakfast foods. As it's still fairly early in the class, we'll focus on more basic foods -- if you'd like more advanced recipes, or even some extra instruction, feel free to see me after class and we can discuss it.

"One of the most basic breakfast foods is cold cereal -- generally, in this world at least, you buy it boxed, and simply add milk, potentially some form of sweetener, occasionally sliced fruit such as berries or bananas, or even eat it as is, straight from the box. Unfortunately for you all, you're not getting away with that today. If you'd like, you can attempt to make your own, but that's not required for today's class.

"One of the staples of breakfast -- although, indeed, it is a great food for any time, including snacks -- is the scrambled egg." Lulu demonstrated proper whisking behaviour, then took her students through the process of cooking the eggs so that they'd be able to recognise when their own were finished.

"Breakfast wouldn't be complete without bacon and toast," Lulu continued. "I will add that I added the toast 'recipe' today," and you could hear the airquotes, "because it amused me greatly -- but do try to follow it as best you can. It is helpful, for all that it seems to be frivolous.

"Your assignment today is to make a complete breakfast -- cereal, eggs, bacon, and toast. If you prefer not to make the homemade cereal, you may used boxed cereal, but everything else requires preparation.

"All of the recipes you need are at your stations. Pair up -- in different pairs than last week -- and cook away! Everything you need is available either in your stations, except for ingredients if you wish to make the cereal, or if you wish to make a variation on the scrambled eggs; for those, you can find the ~~moddable~~ ingredients here at the front of the class."

Lulu smiled. "As a drink, I recommend apple or orange juice, as they will help round out the meal. Coffee and hot chocolate, however, are also provided. You can find the drinks at the front of the room as well." She paused. "Feel free to drink them during the class as well."

[OCD ~~will be up in a few~~ is up! I'm hungry now.]

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"Should we add any syrup?" He wondered, as the bacon started to sizzle, "Maybe it's for extra taste. What to try it anyway?"

"It couldn't hurt, right?"

Makoto eyed the bottle thoughtfully. "More is better, right?" He asked, then without waiting for an answer he poured a good half of the bottle onto the bacon. ~~That poor bacon...~~

The sugar in the syrup begins to caramelize on the heat almost immediately. This leads, predictably, to smoke. Very sweet smelling smoke.

"Oh, that smells pretty good!"

"Much better than burning," he grinned, "maybe we're getting the hang of it!"

"I think so," Cassandra agreed as she watched the bacon floating around in the rapidly-caramelizing pool of syrup. "Does the smell mean it's done, do you think?"

"Maybe wait a few more minutes?" Makoto suggested, eyeing the pan, "It started smelling good the moment we added the syrup so I'm not sure the bacon is cooked yet."

"Oh, okay." The pan was watched impatiently.

"How will we know when it's done?"

"Well, uh," Makoto had no idea, "has it gone black yet? Because that'd mean it's burnt. But almost black was a good thing for toast, so maybe it's a good thing for bacon too?"

"That makes sense," Cassandra nodded sagely as she peered at the bacon. "It's sort of hard to see what color it is through the syrup though..."

Makoto looked around for something that might help. He found a spatula. "Maybe we can flip it over?"

"Oh, good idea!" Taking the offered spatula Cassandra shoves it under the hardening mass of syrup to flip it all over. It's surprisingly hard to get all that sticky gunk to peel away from the pan. That's probably because they forgot to grease it with anything.

Still, eventually she manages it and reveals a blackened crust of syrup, "Is it supposed to do that?"

Makoto poked at it with the tip of the knife Cassandra had used to slice the bacon. "That doesn't look like any bacon I've ever seen," he admitted, after a few minutes, "I'm not sure where it went wrong though."

"Maybe," Cassandra slid her spatula under the mess again where the unburnt syrup had begun to blacken as soon as it touched the edge of the hot pan, "We should take it out and check it? Then we could figure out what went wrong."

Or... not.

Makoto went and got a plate. "Let's check it. Maybe it's still edible?" He wondered. "It does smell fairly good after all."

After flipping the mostly stuck-together mass of syrup and bacon bits onto the plate and examining it, Cassandra nodded. "It does smell good. How do we eat it? Forks, I guess?"

He gave it another prod with the knife. "Knives and forks I think. Maybe it'll go good with our toast?"

"Oh!" Cassandra exclaimed as she grabbed some of the (now cold) toast. "We can make sandwich things!"

It sounded like a good idea to Makoto. "That works," he said, working to cut the bacon/syrup/mess into separate parts so they could each have a sandwich. "and sandwiches are pretty easy to make."

"Convenient too," she agreed as she held out some cold toast for the gunk to go on.

He very carefully put some of their creation on the toast. "This is true," he said, putting the rest of the gunk on his own slices of cold toast. Makoto grinned at her. "Want to do the honours of trying it first?"

Cassandra was already biting into the mess. Luckily the bacon had (mostly) cooked in the hot syrup, and the whole thing had caramelized enough to be solid(ish). It was a bit crispy with the terribly burned edges, but Cassandra munched on.

"Hmmm," she said after a bit. "I think we did something wrong."

Makoto eyed Cassandra before taking a bite of his sandwich. He made a face. "Way to much syrup, do you think?"

"Probably. And the toast is cold." The bacon wasn't bad though!

He nodded. "So, next time we need to be quicker about cooking the bacon to make sure that the toast doesn't get cold." Makoto eyed his sandwich. "Or we could reheat the toast somehow?"

Re: Assignment: Bring Home the Bacon

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