milliways_bar | (no subject)

Guppy is there, without the kid now. He has his own apron on, and passes one to Jools.

"First, we wash our hands."

Jools takes a moment to figure out the apron, and then washes his hands in one of the sinks.

Guppy may notice that his nasty trainers seem to be MIA (probably still out on that table), but that may be for the best, since no one wants mud in a kitchen.

"Good. Okay, do you prefer tuna or ham?"

"Tuna," Jools says. "No, ham. No, definitely tuna."

He nods, slowly.

"No, wait..."

This could go on for a while.

"Well let's make the salad, then we'll add either ham or tuna." Guppy says.

"Okay, first of all, let's cut up the salad."

He gets out of his bag two chopping boards, clear, with lines drawn 1cm apart on the back. He places them on the table.

"To make it easy, we can cut along these lines." he says, getting a cucumber and demonstrating. "Just watch your fingers."

Jools watches him for a few long moments before nodding and trying, himself.

He's careful to hold the cucumber as far from the knife as possible, very slowly and deliberately cutting along the lines.

"What if I can't get it exact?"

"It doesn't matter, it's just to give you an idea." Guppy says.

When Jools has cut up the cucumber, he puts it all in a large mixing bowl.

"Now we can cut some lettuce." He breaks some leaves off and lies them on the board. "Either you can tear it into little bits, or you can cut this in lines too."

He tries cutting the lettuce at first, but finds it rather difficult. Putting the knife aside, he starts shredding the lettuce with his fingers.

"Small, like the cucumber?" he asks.

"It can be as big or as small as you like." Guppy says. "But small is a bit easier to eat."

He nods, and the lettuce winds up shredded into very tiny pieces.

"Right," he says, nodding at the pile of green shreds in front of him.

"Good job." Guppy puts it in the bowl.

"Now, we'll cut some little tomatoes. We cut them in half, then in quarters."

He demonstrates.

"Be careful, they're a little slippery."

He cringes dramatically as he cuts up the tomatoes.

"They're gooey," he declares and they squish apart as he tries to cut them.

"Yeah, but they add flavour. If you don't like them, we can miss them out."

"I don't know," he says.

He finishes cutting them up, trying not to squish them out onto the board. By the last one, he almost manages no squishing at all.

"Well let's put them in today, and you can miss them out next time if you prefer?"

He looks at the tomatoes. "Good job, let's put them in."

He puts them in the bowl.

"Now, you can put lots of other ingredients in salad, but let's keep it simple today. We're going to put in either tuna or ham. Which do you want?"

"Uhmmm..." Jools thinks about this, as though he's afraid he might get the answer wrong.

"Ham. No, tuna. No, ham."

Guppy divides the salad into two bowls.

"Let's made one plate of each, then? First, we open the tin of tuna, then we put it in the bowl."

He demonstrates, then hands the bowl to Jools with a wooden spoon.

"Stir this for about a minute."

He watches Guppy for a bit and then does as instructed. He stirs it quite slowly, careful not to spill anything over the edge.

So far, things have been going fairly well. Nothing's gone horribly wrong like it usually does.

"Like this?"

"That's good." Guppy says.

He cuts up some ham on the chopping board.

"I'm doing the same with the ham salad." he says.

He puts the bowl down.

"Okay, I'm just going to grab the cheese out of the fridge. How about you put the salad dressing on?" He points to the condiment rack.

"A couple of shakes should do it."

Jools looks over the massive condiment rack. Most of these things, he's never even seen before.

He finds one that looks like a sort of salad dressing sort of thing in a bottle with a fancy sort of label written in what he presumes to be French, and opens it.

He nearly pours it onto the salad, but decides to taste it first. It's got a bit of a kick, but should do nicely.

Just a couple of shakes. That's about, this much...

"AAAGH! It did something!" Jools shouts, sounding quite upset indeed.

"What?" Guppy turns around, holding the cheese.

He drops the cheese and stares at the metre high flames coming out of the salad bowl.

D:

He pulls Jools back out the way, grabs a fire extinguisher from the kitchen wall, and starts working on the fire. The alarm goes off, and the sprinklers kick in, which finishes it off.

He opens the window, then stands on the table with a tea towel, wafting fresh air at the smoke detector.

"Are you okay Jools? Did you burn yourself?"

"No," Jools answers simply. Whether he's answering the first question or the second is anyone's guess.

He's trying very hard not to cry right now, though. He'd warned Guppy that things had a way of spontaneously combusting when he was in the kitchen, but even he hadn't expected this.

"I didn't mean for it to happen," he says quickly. "You said to put the stuff on, and so I did, and then that happened."

D: indeed.

"It's all right." Guppy jumps down from the table and gently puts a hand on his shoulder. "It shouldn't have been possible for it to catch fire. Can you show me which sauce you used?"

"That one," he says, pointing at the open bottle that is now on the floor.

The one that looks like a sort of orangy Tabasco with little black flecks.

Guppy gets an oven glove and picks it up carefully.

He looks at the label.

"'Le sorce por l'esplodey dissert.'" Hmm. "No warning label on it, so I don't see how you could have known. It's my fault for not showing you the right bottle, sorry Jools."