milliways_bar | (no subject)

There had been yelling, that Saturday morning. Rae's mother had come home from an early grocery-shopping trip to find a vegetarian version of Charlie's sausage-hashbrown pie cooking in the oven, and a ten-year old alone in the kitchen, reading while she waited for it to finish. Charlie had gone to open the coffeehouse hours before Rae woke up, leaving Rae alone in the house, as happened often enough. And, it being a cold, dreary, January day, Rae had wanted something heartier and more warming than cereal with milk for breakfast.

Rae had shown her irate mother that everything was all right, that she had been extra-careful and safe while chopping onions and shredding potatoes, chopping up kale and cooking everything (which hadn't phased her mother a bit), and explained that she'd cooked for herself when left home alone loads of times before and had been just fine (which actually made things worse).

It's just as well that the door to Milliways appeared in the door to Rae's room, where she had been sent. The girl was still hungry, and still smarting - from the assumption that she couldn't do it on her own just as much as from being grounded.

And there was a kitchen, easily within reach now. She wasn't technically leaving her room, since her room didn't deign to show up when she had opened her bedroom door. That isn't her fault at all.

So there is a young girl in the Milliways kitchen, this morning, shredding potatoes using a large cheese-grater and generally illustrating her opinion that adult supervision is something that happens to other people.

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"I'm doing all right - better now, anyway," Rae says, wryly. "I'm making a breakfast pie. It's got eggs, potatoes, cheese, caramelized onions, kale, and herbs all baked together in a pie. Really good when it's cold outside."

Autor cocks his head at the 'better now'. "Better now, huh? Oh, wow, that sounds delicious," Autor says, drying his hands off. "Do you need any help on that?"

Rae dumps the last of the grated potato into a cloth-lined bowl, and gathers the cloth's corners up and begins pressing the water out of the potato, letting it drip back down into the bowl.

"The potatoes are almost ready - could you dice the onion and put it in a bowl of warm water to soak for a bit?" the girl nods at the round, white onion next to the cutting board and the small leafy bunch of kale. "That'll mellow it out so its flavor doesn't overpower anything else."

Clearly she doesn't want to talk about how her day was like before this, so Autor nods cheerfully and picks up a knife to dice the onion. "I knew you cooked, but this is pretty complicated. Nice job, Rae. How has school been?"

See? That's the appropriate response. The girl may be standing a little straighter, from the praise.

"School's okay, but everyone's still restless because it's cold and grey and dark outside and spring hasn't started coming in yet."

Autor carefully dices the onion, using his wrist to really chop the thing. "Ah, yes. I'm sorry it's cold and grey outside here, too, but there's always the Caribbean inlet," he says. "How's the new baby?"

"Loud," Rae says, in wry sympathy for the poor kid. "He's got an ear infection and has been hurting. It makes him cry a lot of the time."

So everyone is tired.

"Aw, poor kid," Autor says, scraping the onion into a bowl. "Ear infections are never fun. My parents used to put apple cider vinegar in my ears for that sort of thing, but I suspect your mom and Charlie have something different."

He shakes his head, and starts warming up the water at the sink. "I hope he heals quickly. Can I do anything else to help with the breakfast pie?"