Two pups, two muns

[cook_the_rude]

Today, Dr. Hannibal Lecter and a ten-year-old redhead known to be a younger version of Milliways' favourite baker are busy in the kitchen, making ice cream.

It's a slightly unusual kind, and involves grinding up gingerbread.

Comments

[sunbaked_baker]

"We're making gingerbread ice-cream," she replies, smiling up at him. "It's going to be good. I'm helping."

Maybe it'll be the first recipe in her book!

"What are you going to make?" It shouldn't be a problem to make two dishes in the same kitchen, right, even if they are very different? That happens all the time.

[cook_the_rude]

Dr. Lecter is gently stirring through the mass that is going to be the ice cream. "This is a large enough kitchen for several meals being prepared at once, let alone two mere dishes."

[herr_bookman]

"Mm," Autor says, nodding. "I've never made ice cream before, but I know my mother has, when I was little."

He holds up the herbs. "I'm planning on making a simple garlic butter sauce, for some pumpkin ravioli a friend made me," he says, very slightly gloating.

[sunbaked_baker]

"Ooooh," Rae says, impressed, her eyebrows lifting. "That sounds really good. I didn't know you could put pumpkin in ravioli, though."

One learns something new every day, in Milliways' kitchens.

[cook_the_rude]

"I could show you, afterwards," Dr. Lecter offers, still stirring.

This, apparently, has to be done by hand.

[herr_bookman]

"I imagine it's a matter of adding flavored, pureed pumpkin to the squares," Autor says, unsure of how, exactly, to counter Dr. Lecter's offer. "I believe ravioli can contain all manner of things--spinach, cheese, chocolate... My best friend is an expert."

He ruffles her hair, and crosses to the cabinet to locate a cutting board and a relatively sharp knife.

[sunbaked_baker]

"I've seen Charlie make ravioli before. I've helped him with the dough," Rae says, nodding. Maybe wanting to show that she's knowledgeable on the subject, too. "But just the spinach and cheese kind. Charlie has a... like a pizza-cutter, that makes pretty, wavy edges to the ravioli."

[cook_the_rude]

"I'm sure we have something like that here as well," Dr. Lecter says.

[herr_bookman]

Autor crosses to the sink to wash his herbs and his hands, and then returns to the cutting board to begin chopping. "We'll have to make some together sometime, Rae. You can show me how it's done."

[sunbaked_baker]

She wants to be knowledgeable about it - making food is what she loves doing the best - but she has to duck her head slightly, her cheeks tinging pink in a way that never happens to her adult self.

"I couldn't do it alone, or show you how," she admits, moving over to take now-empty ingredient bowls to the sink to be washed. "But it'd be fun to make them together."

The girl offers Dr. Lecter a smile, too. "Like making ice-cream."

It's always more fun to work together on something.

[cook_the_rude]

"I wouldn't mind showing both of you," Dr. Lecter says.

[herr_bookman]

That blush is adorable. "I'd like to see Rae demonstrate her skills," Autor says, chopping the basil and oregano finely. "But maybe I'll ask my friend to show me first, and then you and I can cook together, Rae. Spinach and cheese ravioli sound delicious."

[sunbaked_baker]

"Thank you for the offer, Dr. Lecter, but it's much more enjoyable to learn by doing," Rae smiles, still a bit pink-cheeked. "I'd feel pretty useless, anyway, not helping out, and I don't think I'd learn it as easy."

"This afternoon'll come in handy this summer," she adds, rather pleased, "when I can make ice cream for Mom and Charlie and Kenny."

[cook_the_rude]

"Yes, the ice cream works with other ingredients, not just gingerbread," Dr. Lecter says.

[herr_bookman]

Autor can't help hut smile at Rae's deferral. He crushes the garlic in a press, and scrapes it out of the metal. "I bet Kenny especially will enjoy cold ice cream on his gums," Autor says. "Charlie and your mom will be very impressed. I'd love to see what flavors you come up with."

[sunbaked_baker]

"I bet," Rae says, smiling wryly, "Mom says he'll start teething soon, and then we're in for it."

Something cold to sooth the baby's gums will be good.

"Chocolate's always a favorite, but it'd be fun to try out more elaborate flavors. Maybe... chocolate ice cream with crushed-up brownies in it, like with the gingerbread."

[cook_the_rude]

"Or cheesecake," Dr. Lecter says, "with fresh strawberries and crushed short pastry."

[herr_bookman]

"Chocolate with brownies sound amazing," Autor says, fetching a small pot from the cabinet. "Well, I think so, anyway. I've never had a brownie."

And after he told the seventeen-year-old Rae that he would. "What about peanut butter?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"How have you never had a brownie, Autor?" the girl's eyebrows lift in the mild horror of one who likes making food finding their friend lacks an Experience.

"Strawberry-cheesecake ice cream sounds wonderful," she adds, grinning at the possibilities. "We could do a whole line of cake and pie and brownie and cookie-based ice cream flavors."

[cook_the_rude]

"A veritable ice cream party!" Dr. Lecter says. "Those are all excellent suggestions."

[herr_bookman]

Autor heads to the fridge to acquire a stick of butter, which he cuts a third of a cup from. He places that in his pot along with the herbs and garlic and turns on the heat to melt it all together.

"I don't know, Rae. You'd think I would, given who my mother is, but I have no idea," Autor says. "It's sort of a travesty, isn't it? I'll fix that. But we'll have to make brownies sometime--and then brownie ice cream."

The butter melts, and it stirs the bubbly mixture with a spatula. Gears turn in his head. "Making ice cream for the whole bar would be quite the challenge. We could have it out by the lake."

[sunbaked_baker]

"That would be fun," says the girl, grinning. "But we'd likely have to wait for it to not be the middle of winter for everybody to want to go outside and have ice cream. Summer would be better."

Though, summer is always better, in her opinion.

[cook_the_rude]

"Unless we do it at the Caribbean inlet," Dr. Lecter says.

[herr_bookman]

"An ice cream party in winter?" Autor says, raising his brows. He stirs his butter mixture a bit more, the delicious garlicky smell wafting up from the pot.

Then he calls a glass container with a lid out of his sylladex, and removes the pot from the heating element to cool a bit. "That'd be a lot of work. How many flavors would you have? As many as you could make?"

[sunbaked_baker]

"They'd still have to get their coats and mitten just to get to the party, if it were out at the tropical inlet at the lake," Rae considers. "I just figured that if the party were in summer, people might already be looking for a way to cool off. Ice cream and swimming in the lake would sound really good, then."

"We'd have as many flavors as we could think up, and manage to make," she answers Autor, figuring that All the flavors! is probably not a feasible answer. Not at the end of the universe.