Fandom High School

"So, apparently I'm supposed to talk about nutrition," Karla announced as the class came in. "Except I'm supposed to use this weird handout, rather than just talking about what each different type of food is good for." As a Healer, Karla had a lot of thoughts on nutrition. But sometimes bureaucracy was bureaucracy.

"This is the Eatwell Food Plate," she explained, handing them out. "It shows what you should generally be eating, and what percentage of your diet should be made up of each food group. Healthy grains, like wheat, rice, and quinoa should make up the largest portion of your meal, followed by vegetables, preferably of the dark green and leafy variety."

She went over the plate infographic, though not extensively. She had faith her students could read and it wasn't a difficult infographic to follow, after all.

"So, today I'm not the one in charge of cooking something." You were all vastly disappointed, clearly. "Today is when you get to prepare a meal that you think is close to the Eatwell Plate for nutritional value. It doesn't have to follow this exact setup - you don't need to have your food all portioned like this and not touching, that's weird - but it should be close to these general proportions. If you don't feel comfortable actually cooking something like this," and how could that be true, after Karla's excellent instruction? "then just find a recipe you think would fulfill these requirements."

Karla was looking glum as the students filed in. The TV at the front of the room probably explained why even before she opened her mouth.

"Fire safety," she announced, "is going to be our topic today. It's important that you learn about what kind of dangers you can face in the kitchen and the proper way to respond. For example, you don't put water onto oil fires, because that can lead to the oil spraying everywhere and catching more things on fire. And so, we get to watch a couple of instructional videos on how to not catch your kitchen on fire and how to treat a burn at home if you're not a Healer."

Sorry kids, it wasn't even a fun movie day. Ugh.

Another day, another opportunity to learn!

...Probably not in this class, but hey, anything was possible!

"Morning, class!" Karla said, waving them all in. "So, things haven't gone quite to plan these last few weeks, but today we're going to make up for it in spades. We're making meringue cookies today. These cookies are light and airy and delicious, and only have five ingredients, which means they're pretty impossible to screw up."

Ignore how she'd said that about the pesto and the pizza, too.

"I got this recipe from our cook back at the estate and she also sent along a big batch of cookies to snack on while we made our own," she added, calling in a container roughly the size of a picnic basket full of cookies for the class to eat. Cook miiiiight have been certain that these cookies were the only edible ones the students would get to try. For some reason.

"Now, because these take almost the full hour to bake, rather than offering a demonstration, I'm going to hand out the recipes and we'll all make them together. At your stations, you'll find eggs, salt, sugar, food coloring, flavor extracts, and creamy tartar sauce. Let's get started!"

"Today, we're making pesto!" Karla announced to the class because I live out my dreams through RP. "Pesto is a nice, basic, easy recipe, with very little cooking involved at all. It's one of my Consort's favorite meals and he practically begged me to focus on this today as our first real lesson."

Mostly out of a hope of minimizing damage. Warren had your back, y'all.

"It has a bright, summery taste and it just seems fancy, so once you've perfected a recipe, it's something you can make fast and easy, but people are really impressed," Karla continued. "It's also really versatile. You can have it over bread or over pasta, you can have it with no meat or with chicken or pork or fish. It makes a good appetizer or a perfectly fine dinner. At its most basic, pesto is basil, garlic, olive oil, and cheese. But as you get more confident, you can start adding more things: pine nuts, lemon, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, spinach for...I dunno. Reasons? Cook likes sneaking other vegetables into it, probably as punishment for whatever we've done as a family to deserve more spinach in things."

So, in five minutes, when you were wondering how the household didn't starve with Karla cooking for them, there was the answer: a cook.

"We're going to start with an intermediate pesto recipe, but feel free to scale back a little if you're feeling uncertain when it's your turn," Karla said. "So, pesto with pine nuts over pasta. First thing you wanna do is put on a pot of water to boil. I'm using a smaller pot so it boils faster," she explained, putting a pot that was way too small for the amount of pasta she had out. Maybe some of it was for show? "A smart chef flavors the water before boiling the noodles, so add some salt to the water before it boils." Definitely a big handful like the amount Karla just threw in, good job class. "While that's waiting, start toasting your pine nuts." Normally, that meant putting them into a pan over a very low heat. Karla grabbed a toaster off the counter and poured them into the slats, then pushed down the lever. "Make sure you have two different toasters if you're gonna do this," she instructed. "One for bread, one for nuts. Otherwise, you end up with breadcrumbs in your pesto and nobody wants that."

There was a whole lot going on here that nobody wanted, honestly. "Next, take your basil. At home, we have to strip off the leaves from the plant, but here, you can buy whole packages in the store that's just pre-stripped basil leaves. So convenient. Anyway, take a whole bunch of leaves and shove them into a food processor. I mean, you can do it the old-fashioned way, which is mincing it by hand with a knife? But...why? Food processors are faster and easier and, honestly, if I were going to be teaching a class on knifework, it would be for stabbing, not cooking." And also, she'd probably leave it to Surreal to teach anyway. "If you want to know how to mince by hand, go find Dr. Lecter. He's probably got a class on kitchen tools. Me? Well, there's a reason I leave the general prep work to the apprentices and journeymaids of the coven. Ain't got time for that."

Karla finished shoving all the basic she'd brought for the demonstration into the food processor. "First, you chop up the basil," she explained, while the toaster behind her started to smoke a little. "Hands down, questions will be answered at the end. So, first, let's get this all chopped up." She cranked the dial all the way to the highest setting and turned it on, instantly obliterating the leaves and turning them practically to a liquid. "Yeah, okay, so that's looking a little watery in there right now," Karla said loudly to be heard over the high-pitched whine of the processor, "but that's why you add the pine nuts. Thickens it right up!"

The smoke from the toaster was getting thicker now. "While that's chopping--" more pureeing, really "--check your water. If it's boiling, you can add your pasta." A little surprising that the water was already boiling, considering the concentration of salt, but then, she hadn't used a lot. "Dump your pasta in." She added far too much pasta for the volume of the pot or the water "And then go back over and start adding the rest of your ingredients for the pesto!" The processor was still madly whirring along. "So, for pesto, you need garlic and powdered cheese. I got garlic salt because, again, I didn't want to chop anything." She also set out a container of bright orange cheddar cheese powder. Anyone looking close enough to the bottle would see that it wasn't even real cheese, but cheese product. "So next you add these and the olive oil to the basil and--"

Karla hadn't bothered turning off the food processor. Instead she just pried off the lid and tried dumping everything into the top. Instead, to the surprise of likely nobody but Karla, the contents went spattering everywhere, hurled out at high velocity: the basil, the stream of olive oil, and a cloud of garlic salt and fake orange cheese.

And that's when the toaster burst into flames.