strangetrip | [EP] Tea and Cookies

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[EP] Tea and Cookies

For a few weeks Dot had just pitched in where it seemed like she would be useful and tried to pick up any interesting information for her notebook. Not that she'd learned anything too terribly useful, certainly nothing that would lead to a way home. Then she'd discovered the small bakery in the corner of the main cafe that seemed to be the unofficial gathering place.

She watched it for a few days and then poked about in the pantry kitchen before deciding that what everyone needed - aside from a priest to give mass on Sunday - was cookies.

And bread.

And possibly scones.

What she made would be decided by what she could find in the pantry but most baked goods started with flour, butter, eggs and milk. So many of the people here seemed to lack... well what Dot thought of as essential skills. At least for a woman of her class. What Dot could do with a little flour and some eggs was a sight to be seen.

Which was why the pastry case was currently bursting with cookies, a pot of tea was ready on a side table and Dot was kneading bread at the counter wearing an apron over the most demure clothing the little boutique had to offer.

She may or may not have a smudge of flour on her nose.

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"Chocolate chip?" Kitty felt her stomach go a little gooey, like the best kind of chocolate chip cookies. She grinned at the young woman and reached into the case to snag one. "I'd kiss you, but I should probably introduce myself first. I'm Kitty. I've seen you with Miss Fisher, but I don't think I've ever caught your name."

"I hope they're okay. I've never seen chocolate like that before." Individual morsels prepackaged for cookies just seemed odd to her.

She shaped the dough, dropped it into an oiled bowl, tossed a dish towel over it and wiped her hands on her apron before offering one to Kitty.

"I'm Dot."

Kitty knew a lot of thing, like how small regularly sized chunks of things melted more evenly than irregular shapes. But chocolate chips didn't melt in cookies, which meant there was another reason for it. "Huh." Now she wondered how they'd come about. It probably had something to do with the Nestle company...

She blinked out of her thoughts and took the outstretched hand. "If they taste half as good as they smell, they'll be great."

"I only tried the oatmeal," truthfully the chocolate in these particular cookies had been a whim. And a lack of raisins. "But the basic mix is the same."

To set Dot's mind at ease (and, okay, because she was pretty hungry), Kitty bit into the cookie right then. Butter burst over her tongue before the browned flour and sugar, and then the chocolate, just melty enough to release the flavor. Kitty's eyes widened a little and her eyes brightened with pleasure.

"Ohmygodthat'sgood," she said around a mouthful of cookie, hand coming up to cover her mouth while she finished chewing the bite. "I've eaten a lot of chocolate chip cookies in my life. I'm pretty sure this is the best."

That made Dot laugh, pleased and a little embarrassed if the blush on her cheeks was any indication.

"Oh good, I decided to add the whole bag like the recipe on the back said but I used my own recipe for the rest." The trick was using an extra egg yolk.

Kitty snagged another cookie on the way toward the bar counter, pulled a small plate from under it, set the cookie on it and then started her mental inventorying of what she needed from the kitchen, the other bars, and maintenance. While she did that, she asked Dot, "Where did you learn to cook like that? Is it just baking or can you cook all kinds of stuff?"

"My mother taught all us girls to bake," where was Kitty from that she hadn't been taught that.

"And I can cook too. Nothing fancy just good honest food. Things like that are important where I come from. Mending and cooking, household chores and things like that. It's expected." It made her a little sad, it was expected, and that was why she'd broken her engagement. Because she wanted that, a home and husband, but she wanted MORE than that and had no idea how to get it.

"I wish my mother taught me, but to be honest, I probably wouldn't have had a lot of patience for it," Kitty replied while quickly pulling her hair back into a ponytail and then immediately sticking her hands in the sink for a wash. "I guess she could've sold it as organic chemistry, or focused on kitchen appliances...I probably would just have taken them apart, though."

"Then I know who to go looking for if something breaks down," Dot could fix her sewing machine, but the electric toaster may be beyond her capabilities. Don't even get her started on the thing she'd been told was something called a microwave.

Cooking things that fast was unnatural was what it was.

"Yup. If it's a machine, I can make it work." Frankly, if it was a machine, she could build, rebuild, and probably make it substantially better. "They make a lot more sense than people most of the time. And they're harder to mess up than cookies." At least for Kitty.

"Cookies are easy," Dot said with a laugh, amused by how far on opposite ends of the spectrum they seemed to be. "Just a bit of butter, sugar, vanilla, flour and something to make it special like currants or nuts. Those bits of chocolate."

Something to make it special was the kind of thing that separated people who were really good at cooking and baking from people who just sort of did it. Like Ororo with her plants, and Kitty when she took care of them for her.

"I can follow a recipe, but I tend to lose track of time and leave them in the oven until they're charcoal."

"You do have to keep track of the time," Dot said with a laugh. "You sound like my sister Nell, she hates baking, she says she gets bored halfway through and everything burns."

"I get distracted. My mind's always busy working on something else. That's why I leave the cooking to other people. Safer for everyone."

There wasn't much she actually needed to do to prep the bar. It wouldn't get busy enough to run out her supplies, so she turned to lean against the bar, so she could talk to Dot. "So, what did you do at home besides bake?"

Definitely like Nell.

"Oh, well. I was Miss Phryne's companion and maid."

Which technically she still was.

"And I helped her with her work. And then there was the church and on my afternoons off I'd go help mum."

Not very exciting she was sure, to the other young woman who knew so much about machines and things that Dot hadn't even dreamed of.

Intellectually, Kitty knew that for any period in history before her own, Dot had had a very full life for a woman and one very self-directed. But listening to it, Kitty felt claustrophobic, like she was being smothered. The only question she could think to ask was, "What kind of work does Miss Fisher do?"

In fact, Dot's life was likely far more full and self directed - thanks to Phryne - than any she had ever dreamed of.

"She helps people," which could mean anything including philanthropy.

Kitty tipped her head, brows furrowing sightly. Was Dot being cagey? It seemed more likely Miss Fisher was the type of rich person who spent her time doing good deeds. Not like a stuffy busybody, though. That didn't seem like her.

"Help, like getting them out of trouble?" Because that did seem like her.

Edited 2017-03-04 17:31 (UTC)

Dot probably wasn't capable of being cagey. not really.

"Usually," that did seem to be how things worked out. So it wasn't a fib. "She's very good at finding things out."

"Oh, like a private detective," Kitty said, without any of the disapproval her cop customers in Chicago might have put in it. You couldn't grow up a vigilante (vigilante, superhero, potato, potahto) and disdain others who worked outside the system to help people in need. "That's neat."

"A bit like that, a bit like... well, just like how Miss Phryne is." There was just something about Phryne Fisher that not even Dot could articulate.

"She does seem pretty cool like that." Because her experiences of Miss Fisher tended to be unusual, even when they were ordinary, and always full of life. "Oh, and in case you haven't ever heard it, 'cool' means 'great.'"

Dot wasn't up on 1920s slang, she certainly wasn't up on slang from wherever Kitty came from.

"That's a strange word for it." To her cool meant, cold, chilly, brisk. "I wonder what the source of that meaning is. It certainly doesn't mean that where I come from."

"Ask m where the idea for cold fusion or super-conductors came from," Kitty said with a laugh. "That I could tell you. I can only guess at cool."

But now that she started to think about it, it was pretty interesting. "I think it comes from jazz music?"

[EP] Tea and Cookies

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