Ancient Food Crimes; Friday, First Period [06/03].

[somethingwithturquoise]

"Morning, everyone," Summer said, with a faint grin and a nod of her head as she leaned against the station at the front of the class, idly tossing a banana between her hands or just up in the air a little while she waited for everyone to get settled. And once everyone did, she tossed the banana just a little bit higher, caught it, and held it up.

"Today, I want to talk about this guy," she explained. "The banana. One of the most popular fruits in the entire world, known for its versatility, its potassium, and its tendency to collect in a withered brown frozen state in the back of many a freezer, because you were definitely going to make banana bread out of that, really, don't throw it away, you'll get to it tomorrow!

"For the most part, there are few people who find a banana objectionable. Exceptions doubtless exist, but it's a pretty run-of-the-mill, average-joe kind of fruit. Good on its own, or you can slice it up into cereal. It's great in baked goods, yogurt, plays well with other fruits. An all-around good guy, as far as fruits go. Which makes some of the things people have done to this tried and true fruit all the more horrible when you get right down to it. The banana did nothing to deserve this.

"Well," she amended, "you could go into the long and storied history of colonial exploitation, slave labor, unsafe farming conditions, or the absurd amount of genetic mutations, pesticides, and other chemicals that go into the crop, but that's not the bananas' fault.

"And I don't know who exactly to blame for what we're about to witness here today, but that's what we're here to maybe find out. Bear in mind, once upon a time, I actually did a whole workshop like this focused specifically on bananas, so this is just the worst of the worst here, but that's an astonishingly amount of terrible banana-related food crimes out there.

"Today, we're going to talk about four specific ones, though: the classic Ham and Banana Hollandaise, the lesser-known and shockingly lazy banana and shrimp salad and its friend the banana sardine boat, and, of course, the banana candle salad, which is less offensive from a flavor perspective and entirely about the aesthetics of it all."

If you didn't see what she meant immediately, then it was going to be very awkward explaining it to you.

Cupcakes, Friday 6/3, Period 2

[stykera]

Like the last two weeks, Stark was at the front of the room today with a box of mystery ingredients in front of him. “Welcome back. Nothing kraken-themed this week, in case anyone was worried.” There were other things to worry about.

“I thought white cupcakes this week,” he said. “So we’ll have a variety of white ingredients to try.” Ingredients he had not, of course, checked again after packing them into the box to begin with.

“I have white chocolate, coconut, cream cheese, egg whites, macadamia nuts, mayonnaise which sounds like it shouldn’t work in baking but it does, I promise...” Stark pulled out each ingredient and set it in front of him as he listed them off. His voice trailed off as he saw the last two ingredients and he sighed before continuing. “ …and then there’s onion and garlic.”

Yes, he shot a suspicious glance in Summer’s direction (assuming she was there). Not a long one because he was still awkward, but he did look her way.

“I have some already made cupcakes, if you like. None with onion or garlic. That I know of. If anyone wants help I’ll be here to assist.”

Completely Safe Science With Beaker!, Friday, June 3, 2022

[meepmeepmeep]

"Meep meep meep meep meep!" Beaker said, gesturing grandly to the dishwashing soap, hydrogen peroxide, and yeast on his bench.

Did anyone recognize the components of elephant toothpaste?

Beaker, still meeping authoritatively, went through the steps for making elephant toothpaste as he mixed the soap with the hydrogen peroxide, then carefully (...well, for Beaker) added the yeast.

And a huge plume of foam engulfed him.

"MEEP!"

At least he didn't catch fire this time?

Cooperating with People you Hate, Friday 4th period

[unusual_sith]

Lana grinned cheerfully as everyone entered the room. Today it was made up like a somewhat posh cantina, plush benches and dim lighting, mostly from the tables. When everyone was there, she stood at the bar and spoke.

"It occurs to me that I've been neglecting one of the most important aspects of cooperation - communication. If you hate somebody, they can of course just be a terrible person, but it's also possible you're operating on faulty data, and you simply don't know each other well enough. Or even if they are a terrible person, if you know more about them, you may learn how best to avoid them. So today's task is this - we're doing a version of those three-minute dates the bar has. Not dating this time, but talking. So, half of you will sit at one side of the tables, and the other half will sit on the other side. We've got an hour, so you've got ten minutes to talk. After that, one side will get up and move one table down, and you'll talk with the next person. Your goal is to discuss whatever you like, but you can't just sit there, and you want to not annoy each other."

Well, any more than necessary. She wasn't optimistic with some of you.

"By the end, you should have at least spoken with half the class, and hopefully you'll have a better insight into each other."

She divided them in two and sent them to the tables.

Library - Friday

[onlyajones]

When Jo got to the library this week, she decided to take the opportunity to see what books she could find on the Kraken to do some reading. She wasn’t sure what an actual Kraken attack would involve but she figured it wouldn’t hurt to at least try and be prepared in case something like ever happened.

So in between her usual routine of shelving books, Jo was seated at the front desk trying to do some research and see what notes she could make on the Kraken.

This was definitely not something she ever thought she’d be studying, actually the idea of studying was quite new in general but she was finding the information rather fascinating all the same.