strangetrip | [GP] Réveillon & New Year's Eve & Check-In

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[GP] Réveillon & New Year's Eve & Check-In

Emma had said, during Winter's Crest, that she missed a tradition from home called réveillon. She seemed also to miss her cousin, as Lillith missed hers. Since she wished both to learn to cook and to be of comfort to her friend, it had been decided they would make a réveillon dinner for New Year's Eve.

Yet when Emma began to lay out the courses -- oyster soup and potato & leek soup, salad, a gumbo, venison roast, cheeses, and creme brulee, plus several hors d'ouevres not yet decided -- Lillith quailed at the size of the undertaking. Surely she would wish someone to assist who could contribute more than roasted rabbit, wheat or potato flour dumplings, and koláč.

Since Sunny likewise missed her family and would certainly wish a distraction, when she entered the cafe where they were planning, the other two seized upon her almost at once. Sunny could hardly resist their dual entreaty, even had she wished to, and Lillith thought she seemed even more ready for company than previously. Of course Sunny had offerings of her own: jolloff rice, peppered chicken, and fried plantain.

Between they three, the planning and the cooking were very nearly merry, and Lillith kept them liberally supplied with champagne (her personal favorite), too. By late afternoon of the eve of the new year, they had begun lining tables with dishes, and enlisted the help of other friends to make the evening event widely known.

Of course, in addition to the réveillon feast that took over the steakhouse, alcohol flowed freely, lights sparkled brightly, the nightclub had music for dancing. And at some point the Inn or Caroline or Regina hung mistletoe from several of the primary entrances and exits so that unless one wished to or was unaware of the tradition, no one (not even any new arrivals) need greet the new year unkissed.

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Cooking was not Rey's forte; she had spent the majority of her life cooking simple portions powders in a small pot of boiling water. She knew well what textures she liked and what flavors she enjoyed, but she lacked the culinary knowledge to bring the dishes she loved to life.

But that didn't stop Rey from trying. There were others cooking tonight and whether or not it was true, it felt like she was less experienced than they were. She wasn't about to let that discourage her, though; she was good at following directions, and she had recently discovered a cookbook tucked away behind the back of her bed.

As Rey stirs a large pot of curry with one hand, and holds the book with the other, a pot of water begins to overboil. The burner sizzles and the alarm for the biscuits in the oven goes off all at once.

Rey lets the spoon rest in the pot, sets the book down on the counter, and immediately reaches for an oven mitt. She glances over at the pot of boiling water, then to the person standing nearest to it.

"Can you turn that down a little?" she asks, opening the oven. Smoke billows out as Rey plucks out a tray of blackened biscuits.

Sunny hadn't really noticed exactly when they'd gained another girl in the kitchen in the flurry of activity, but neither had she minded. Nobody was getting in anybody's way, and that was what truly mattered.

It was good to be in a busy kitchen again. It made her miss her mother and her aunties--of the blood and of the heart--much less keenly. And she didn't have the time or space to think about that other shitty date where she'd barely been able to get Faizel to humor her and cook with her. God, how blind had she been to how emotionally stunted that man was?

When the question came, her hand was already automatically reaching for the knob to turn the burner down before she returned to slicing plantain.

She winced sympathetically at the smoke and took up a different knife entirely to make sure it didn't get to the nearest fire alarm. "Tough break."

Rey sets the tray down on the bit of metal countertop that isn't actually actively being used by someone else. She looks down at the smoldering, charred remains of what were supposed to be cheddar biscuits, but more accurately resembled charcoal briquettes with a look of pure dismay.

She runs a hand over her hair -- pulled back into a braid instead of her trademark style -- and continues to frown down at the biscuits for another half-second before reaching for the cookbook.

"I could have sworn I followed the recipe," Rey tells the other woman. She furiously pages through the book until she finds the earmarked page for the recipe in question. Her eyes scan over the page, and only then did she notice the error.

"The temperature was wrong," Rey declares, snapping the book shut. "I don't know how I missed it." The thought hadn't yet occurred to Rey that she might be doing all too much at once.

She quickly stirs the pot of curry, whose strange spices excite Rey tremendously, sets the book back down, then reaches for the tray of burnt biscuits to properly dispose of them before the charcoal-biscuit scent takes over everything.

"I'm Rey," she says, as she steps down on the trashbin foot. She angles the tray, and two dozen small now-charcoal biscuits join a considerably large pile of vegetable peelings for compost. She glances over at the other woman's handiwork.

"It looks like you're a lot better at this cooking thing than I am."

"Sunny," she offered in turn. "And I've had a lot of practice. I've been cooking since I was barely tall enough to see over these counters." And being experienced, she knows that while she can juggle multiple things, it's really tough for someone who doesn't have that kind of confidence. But she couldn't just come out and say that, now could she? "What are you making?"

"It's some sort of Indian curry," Rey answers. She's not exactly sure what makes a curry Indian, but it smelled good, and so-far tasted good. Or better than those burnt biscuits looked, at least.

Rey elects to turn the pot of boiling water off for now to focus her efforts onto the curry proper. No use ruining something else.

"Did your family cook a lot?" Rey asks, looking over at Sunny. She's always been curious about other people's families, by virtue of not really having any experiences with a family of her own.

"They do," Sunny said, trying not to be pointed about the shift in verb tense. She would not talk about her family in the past tense. She relaxed a little bit too when Rey turned off the burner. One thing was so much more manageable than three. "Well. When Mama's home early enough to do it. But holidays, the kitchen's a flurry of my cousins and aunties." Her girl cousins anyway. And Aunt Chinwe's boys, if they were there.

"Is the water for rice?"

Edited 2018-01-02 00:43 (UTC)

Rey could never feel unhappy hearing about other people's families, and it sounded like Sunny had a big one. And what she feels while listening to her talk about her mom and her cousins and aunties isn't really envy. It's more like desire -- something Rey truly wants for herself someday. Maybe once the First Order was eliminated, the remnants of the Resistance could be that for her.

If she ever managed to get back there, anyway.

"That's what I was going to do," she says. "Are you familiar with it? I looked at the rice earlier, but it's not really anything I've tried before. Food was pretty simple where I came from."

"Basmati?" Sunny asked, taking a shot in the dark. "Rice isn't difficult, but it needs watching." She hadn't burned rice in a long time, but it was very easy to do if you didn't believe that what you were seeing and what the instructions were telling you matched.

"I'm pretty sure that's what it was called." Another strange name Rey hadn't heard before: Basmati. Was it the name of a place or a person? Even she wasn't sure.

"Have you made Basmati rice before?" she asks. A half-beat later, she asks: "Would you mind teaching me?"

"Hm..." Sunny considered the pot of water on the stove. "For starters, go in batches before you try boiling that much water at once, or it'll definitely boil over once the rice is in. Also I'd recommend soaking it for twenty to thirty minutes before you cook it."

Edited 2018-01-02 18:07 (UTC)

"So I should be boiling a little at first, and then adding more as I go along?" Rey suddenly wishes she had a Datapad or a notepad to write this all down in. Instead, she files it away in her memory.

Rey grabs an oversized bag of rice off one of the shelves and carries it to a counter; the thing is tremendous, but Rey doesn't struggle with it. A bowl soon joins the rice on the counter, and Rey measures out the rice.

"I can soak the rice," she says, pouring in one last cup. "But why do it?"

Instructions are easy enough to follow, but Rey's always been the curious type. Knowing why has always been more interesting to her than knowing how -- and knowing how had still been plenty interesting to her.

"Boil some, drain, repeat. Other kinds of rice you need a very specific amount of water so it'll all absorb in the cooking, but this isn't one of those." You could do it that way, but in Sunny's experience it always came out mushy that way. "I'm honestly not sure why the soaking," Sunny admitted with a shrug. "But I've done it both with and without, and it comes out better if you soak it first."

Sunny is clearly the rice expert, so Rey continues to make mental notes of how best to cook rice with the hopes that someday she can make it without the instruction of someone else. Not that she particularly minds the guidance; she just doesn't like being dependent on others.

Rey brings the bowl over to the sink, fills it up with water so all over the rice is covered, then sets it down on the counter. With one last glance at the soaking rice, she briskly heads back over to the pot of curry, which smells flavorful enough and hasn't yet burned. She gives it a stir.

"What are you making?" she asks, trying to get a look at what the other woman is doing.

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