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seren_ccdTitle: #38, Chapel, Alternatives
Author/Artist: seren_ccd
Pairing(s): Christine Chapel, brief Chapel/Roger Korby
Rating: PG
Summary: The very first recipe Christine attempts all on her own is the one her grandmother passed down for hushpuppies.
A/N: This was written for yahtzee63's Star Trek Reboot Drabble Challenge #3: WHERE NO DRABBLE HAS GONE BEFORE.
The very first recipe Christine attempts all on her own is the one her grandmother passed down for hushpuppies.
She arranges all of the ingredients ahead of time, consults the recipe written in her grandmother’s schoolteacher-handwriting, pulls the little blue footstool flush against the bottom cupboards and gets started.
The very first first-aid Christine attempts all on her own is treating the burns on her hands that the hot oil makes as it spatters when she drops the balls of cornbread batter into the deep fryer.
By the end of the process she has two plates of burnt hushpuppies, one plate of perfectly browned hushpuppies, three blisters on the back of her right hand and one on the underside of her left wrist.
The delighted comments her parents make when they eat the good hushpuppies makes up for most of the pain from the burns. When she tries them herself, she is struck by the contrast of the crisp outside and the soft inside. The hint of tart onion and green pepper balances the sweetness of the cornmeal. She spends a good five minutes carefully studying each bite trying to understand how the combination of all these simple ingredients could produce such a unique taste. How did the chopping of the vegetables add to the flavor? How did the little hint of salt she added not take away from the sweetness but instead enhanced it somehow?
This is the beginning of her love of cooking.
When she is in her fifth grade science class she learns about the digestive process. About how the chemicals break down the food and process it into different other chemicals that get shunted off to separate body organs that are then broken down even more to make sure that her body keeps living. It is the most exciting thing she’s ever really thought about. How all these actions are happening right now and they will continue to happen until, well, until they don’t.
She recites the entire process that night as they eat her mother’s roast chicken. When she gets to the part involving the colon, her mother suggests that maybe she waits until they’ve finished with dessert.
Its fruit with cream, so Christine is happy to wait. After she’s finished, she goes straight to her school PADD and looks up everything she can about the breakdown of food in the body. She sneaks out of her room and goes into her dad's study to get his medical PADD. Huddled under her lavender comforter, she finds a section on the cephalic phase and stays up way past her bedtime reading about the processes that occur before the food even enters your body.
This is the beginning of her love of science.
After awhile, school becomes the challenge and cooking becomes the comfort. She knows exactly what to cook for any occasion. It’s a pretty simple system.
Friend getting dumped by a boyfriend = double chocolate chip cookies
Her sister getting into the Academy = Pan-seared salmon with homemade vinaigrette on the salad
Christine getting into the Nursing Program she wanted = Black beans and yellow rice with Lime Margaritas on the Rocks
Her grandmother passing away = Pecan bread pudding (the only person able to actually eat any of it was her father and he only managed two bites)
Christine losing her first patient = Chilli with a lot of cayenne and onions (The onions are the catalyst that lets the tears she’s been holding in since the time of death was called finally spill over; it didn’t matter that she is still just a nursing student and all she’d actually done in the operating room was bring in the freshly autoclaved instruments, it still hurts.)
She’s fresh out of nursing school and making a name for herself as being the best nurse to have in the emergency, due to her calm nerves and steel trap mind, when she meets Roger. He seems to be everything anyone could want; brilliant, driven, handsome and very gentlemanly. His stories about space actually get her looking up and out a bit more than in and around.
However, on their first date, he spends maybe a total of one minute looking at the menu and then eats without stopping to savor the wine or appreciate the combination of garlic and oregano in the marinara sauce.
That should have been her first clue.
They date for a few years but he calls it off when he tells her he’s heading off on a research trip and while Christine is a very bright girl (girl? her outraged mind thinks), she’s not really made for adventure. She’s infinitely more suited to hospital work and has she considered looking at a smaller private practice to work in?
That night she goes home to her neat, clean apartment that’s only a few blocks from where she grew up. She pulls out her recipe PADD and finds the one recipe that has always evaded her.
Her Great-Great Grandmother’s Seafood Gumbo.
It’s the most time-consuming recipe she has and she always passes it up because the roux section always trips her up and her flour burns.
She races out to the all night market and buys all the ingredients. Christine cooks all night, ignoring the concerned voice messages being left from friends and family. She shells shrimp and crawdads, steams mussels and gets them out of their shells. She chops countless vegetables until her fingers are sticky from okra and tingling from the juices of the chillies.
She stirs the roux diligently until her arm goes numb.
By eight in the morning of the next day, she has a massive pot of gumbo. Her face is red from the effort but goddamn, does it taste good.
She eats three bowls and then collapses into bed and sleeps until early evening. She has to throw out the clothes she wore while cooking because the smell of shellfish won’t come out.
On Monday, she applies to the Starfleet Medical Academy.
Author/Artist: seren_ccd
Pairing(s): Christine Chapel, brief Chapel/Roger Korby
Rating: PG
Summary: The very first recipe Christine attempts all on her own is the one her grandmother passed down for hushpuppies.
A/N: This was written for yahtzee63's Star Trek Reboot Drabble Challenge #3: WHERE NO DRABBLE HAS GONE BEFORE.
The very first recipe Christine attempts all on her own is the one her grandmother passed down for hushpuppies.
She arranges all of the ingredients ahead of time, consults the recipe written in her grandmother’s schoolteacher-handwriting, pulls the little blue footstool flush against the bottom cupboards and gets started.
The very first first-aid Christine attempts all on her own is treating the burns on her hands that the hot oil makes as it spatters when she drops the balls of cornbread batter into the deep fryer.
By the end of the process she has two plates of burnt hushpuppies, one plate of perfectly browned hushpuppies, three blisters on the back of her right hand and one on the underside of her left wrist.
The delighted comments her parents make when they eat the good hushpuppies makes up for most of the pain from the burns. When she tries them herself, she is struck by the contrast of the crisp outside and the soft inside. The hint of tart onion and green pepper balances the sweetness of the cornmeal. She spends a good five minutes carefully studying each bite trying to understand how the combination of all these simple ingredients could produce such a unique taste. How did the chopping of the vegetables add to the flavor? How did the little hint of salt she added not take away from the sweetness but instead enhanced it somehow?
This is the beginning of her love of cooking.
When she is in her fifth grade science class she learns about the digestive process. About how the chemicals break down the food and process it into different other chemicals that get shunted off to separate body organs that are then broken down even more to make sure that her body keeps living. It is the most exciting thing she’s ever really thought about. How all these actions are happening right now and they will continue to happen until, well, until they don’t.
She recites the entire process that night as they eat her mother’s roast chicken. When she gets to the part involving the colon, her mother suggests that maybe she waits until they’ve finished with dessert.
Its fruit with cream, so Christine is happy to wait. After she’s finished, she goes straight to her school PADD and looks up everything she can about the breakdown of food in the body. She sneaks out of her room and goes into her dad's study to get his medical PADD. Huddled under her lavender comforter, she finds a section on the cephalic phase and stays up way past her bedtime reading about the processes that occur before the food even enters your body.
This is the beginning of her love of science.
After awhile, school becomes the challenge and cooking becomes the comfort. She knows exactly what to cook for any occasion. It’s a pretty simple system.
Friend getting dumped by a boyfriend = double chocolate chip cookies
Her sister getting into the Academy = Pan-seared salmon with homemade vinaigrette on the salad
Christine getting into the Nursing Program she wanted = Black beans and yellow rice with Lime Margaritas on the Rocks
Her grandmother passing away = Pecan bread pudding (the only person able to actually eat any of it was her father and he only managed two bites)
Christine losing her first patient = Chilli with a lot of cayenne and onions (The onions are the catalyst that lets the tears she’s been holding in since the time of death was called finally spill over; it didn’t matter that she is still just a nursing student and all she’d actually done in the operating room was bring in the freshly autoclaved instruments, it still hurts.)
She’s fresh out of nursing school and making a name for herself as being the best nurse to have in the emergency, due to her calm nerves and steel trap mind, when she meets Roger. He seems to be everything anyone could want; brilliant, driven, handsome and very gentlemanly. His stories about space actually get her looking up and out a bit more than in and around.
However, on their first date, he spends maybe a total of one minute looking at the menu and then eats without stopping to savor the wine or appreciate the combination of garlic and oregano in the marinara sauce.
That should have been her first clue.
They date for a few years but he calls it off when he tells her he’s heading off on a research trip and while Christine is a very bright girl (girl? her outraged mind thinks), she’s not really made for adventure. She’s infinitely more suited to hospital work and has she considered looking at a smaller private practice to work in?
That night she goes home to her neat, clean apartment that’s only a few blocks from where she grew up. She pulls out her recipe PADD and finds the one recipe that has always evaded her.
Her Great-Great Grandmother’s Seafood Gumbo.
It’s the most time-consuming recipe she has and she always passes it up because the roux section always trips her up and her flour burns.
She races out to the all night market and buys all the ingredients. Christine cooks all night, ignoring the concerned voice messages being left from friends and family. She shells shrimp and crawdads, steams mussels and gets them out of their shells. She chops countless vegetables until her fingers are sticky from okra and tingling from the juices of the chillies.
She stirs the roux diligently until her arm goes numb.
By eight in the morning of the next day, she has a massive pot of gumbo. Her face is red from the effort but goddamn, does it taste good.
She eats three bowls and then collapses into bed and sleeps until early evening. She has to throw out the clothes she wore while cooking because the smell of shellfish won’t come out.
On Monday, she applies to the Starfleet Medical Academy.
