whyryoutalking (whyryoutalking) wrote in light_of_may, @ 2010-02-24 02:01:00 |
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Entry tags: | 2009-07-05 |
Try to run away with the gypsy woman, here today then gone for good...
Who: Adelle and Tony
When: late morning
Where: Grocery Store
Being bitten by a vampire once was one thing, but twice? That was an entire escapade all its own, and it was one that required that Adelle start a new diet. She was going to need iron, and the only thing she knew of that contained iron was spinach, and she didn't have any of it on hand. After picking out a cute sundress and a pair of high heeled wedges, the siren gave herself a smokey eye, applied a fine glaze of pink lip gloss and was out the door. Most people went to the store in sweats or pajamas, but most people that lived in Scarlet Oak were small-town, and she was oh-so-Californian high life. After applying sunglasses to her face she was out the door and in her car before anybody would've known what hit them, and that would've been a G37.
Within minutes, Adelle was perusing the aisles of whatever supermarket she'd looked up on her phone, studying the list of foods that she intended on buying. Meats and fish were always welcome, but there were also beans, three types of livers, asparagus and molasses. People actually ate all of those kinds of liver? Uck. With some hesitation, the brunette poked at the pack of beef liver. It squished and gave under her pointer and she made a face at it that would've driven small children away. Beef Wellington served by her father was okay, but a liver prepared by she alone? Get ready to gag. Adelle sighed and lifted her iPhone out of her purse to scroll down her list.
Tony was wandering down an aisle, earbuds in his ears, piece of paper in front of him. Serena had been supposed to go grocery shopping, but she'd been meaning to do it for a week and at this point they'd starve before she actually did it. So he'd grabbed one of her credit cards, said he was going shopping (she'd be bitterly disappointed when he didn't come home with clothes), and headed out. He yawned widely and squinted at the paper, bobbing his head slightly to his music. He brought the cart around, heading over to the meat section. He leaned over, grabbing a package of ground beef a few inches down from the liver, his belt showing as he did. He glanced over his shoulder at Adelle and smiled, really more a brief tightening of the lips, one of those 'I acknowledge your existence but have no intention of even remembering this in five minutes' smiles. He ran a hand over his hair, which was seriously getting too long, and yawned again, tired from clinicals the previous night again and not enough sleep.
There was a flash of a smile in her direction and she returned it before seeing the boy yawn and ruffle his hair. She looked him over from behind her sunglasses and was definitely impressed. There weren't many people in Scarlet Oak that she'd seen so far that wore emo clothing or jeans that tight that wasn't a girl. She guessed that there were scenes in grocery stores in movies for a reason, primarily being that two people could meet. The siren pushed her glasses up onto her hair and smiled again, wider this time. "I'm going to assume that you know what you're doing with that meat and ask you a question about cooking liver." She spoke quite loudly since she saw the earbuds in his ears, and tilted her head so the boy would notice the difference in her position if he wasn't exactly looking anymore. He was kinda short, he probably would.
Tony heard her voice, glancing up, and he realized she was looking at him. "Sorry, what?" he asked, yanking the earbuds out and letting them dangle out the neck of his shirt -- they were fed up through so they couldn't go flying anywhere or get caught on anything. He picked up the meat he'd selected again and poked at it, making sure it was good, glancing up and nodding every so often to let her know he was listening. "Oh, sure, yeah. What do you need to know?" He wasn't exactly a gourmet chef, but Serena could barely make toast, so he was a pretty good cook, out of necessity.
"Uh. Liver. What do you do with it to make it taste good?" She felt like a fool for asking the question, but she asked it anyway. There were some things her father didn't touch when he was at home, and liver was one of them. It felt like a foreign thing to be dealing with now, but there was a need for it. The iron in she was probably lacking was in it, and everything else she'd picked up so far. He was definitely younger than she, but cute, in this glowing kind of way. He looked quite androgynous to say the least, but she could definitely tell that he was a boy. A short boy. Her shoes made her at least almost half of a foot taller than him. "I've barely even tasted it, let alone cooked it."
Tony's eyebrows went up. "Uh...you've...okay, well, strong marinades are a good bet. What's the sudden interest in liver? I mean, most people avoid it like the plague, especially if they haven't eaten it much. There's sortof a lot of things you have to know about it if you're gonna cook with it." Tony glanced back, seeing a woman trying to get through, and moved his cart, brushing his hair back again. "If you're new to it though, look for the liver with the palest color, that'll have the mildest flavor. Just to see if you can get into it."
That was a lot more about liver than she expected somebody to know. He was extremely knowledgeable, she'd give him that. "I kinda need the iron, and I'm thinking of all the different ways that I can incorporate it into my diet. Spinach, and beans, apparently a lot of fish and shrimp and oysters have it too. But I'm set with those, I can cook everything besides liver." And the palest liver too. Her hand traveled to another shrink-wrapped package of meat and she poked that one too. "Why do we eat this? It looks vaguely appetizing I... I guess. A little bit on the crazy side."
She moved her own cart over to allow the woman to pass, closer to the meat. "Sorry." She murmured as the woman passed.
Tony watched her as she talked and interacted with the meat packages, and laughed, shaking his head a little. "Okay, well, first of all, if this is like a dietary restriction, medical thing, leave out the spinach. It slows absorption and that can be bad. I'm a nurse, so I've got some experience with that stuff." Well, technically only a nursing student, but whatever, he was only a year away from his RN. It was a white lie, his supervisor said he was pretty much ready now. Plus, he'd undergone so many surgeries in his life he knew how to deal with a restricted diet. "Stick with stuff that comes in a shell. Oysters, clams, mussels, stuff like that. Here, all that stuff's over this way," he said, grabbing his cart and leading her a few feet down to the fish. "Also, if you want fruit, stick to something with a thick peel or rind. Cantaloupe, oranges, that stuff, it'll help with making sure you're using the iron you get and not just storing it. Other than that, any kind of beef or turkey is a good source."
A walking encyclopedia! She listened intently to everything he said, but half of it went in one ear and out of the other. What did he expect from the way she was dressed. Adelle had never been too bright, but she made up for it with her talent in dance. This wasn't dance at all, it was how to get the most iron out of diet, and her memory was failing her so far. "I didn't know that fruit had iron in it too. Maybe what I looked up was just a basic list." She followed his lead to the fish, and was already picking up salmon and tuna steaks before he could finish his sentence. Fish she did know how to cook. All of the other seafood would involve steaming, and she didn't know if she had the ability, but what the heck, it was water and a lid, how hard could it be? "A nurse? But you barely look like you're out of high school. Wow. Okay, would sliced turkey do the trick? I don't think I want to spend a night cooking a turkey." Maybe he dealt with people who had been bitten by vampires and knew some ways to counteract the damage they'd done to her remaining blood.
"Well, everything's got some iron. The fruit isn't really a good source so much as helping with absorption. You can eat all the iron in the world but if your body isn't absorbing it it won't do any good." He watched her pick up the fish, obviously knowing what she was doing here, so he went to one of the big open chest freezers in the middle of the aisle, coming back with a massive box in primary colors advertising fish sticks. Hey, he was a good cook, that didn't mean that he sometimes didn't just want to nuke something junky and eat it. "Sliced turkey like sandwich turkey? Should be fine, just make sure it's real. Like get some from the deli instead of the packages if you can afford it, the stuff in the packages is usually only part turkey. And yeah, I get that a lot, but it's only because I'm short." Tony gave a crooked smile, leaning on the pushy handle thing on his cart that's got to have a name I'm just not thinking of.
The fish sticks surprised her, and she made a face she wasn't aware of making until he put them into his own cart. Good, because she wasn't eating fish sticks anytime soon. No matter how fast she wanted a meal, she had money that said that she would always be able to afford it whether it be by cooking it herself or purchasing it in a restaurant. And of course deli turkey! Didn't she look like she could afford it? She thought she'd done the cute thing right today, apparently she was wrong and looked tacky or something because he was saying things like that. Looking down into her own cart, and then at the fish, she picked up another tuna steak and switched it with one in the cart because they didn't look very symmetrical at all. "Well I don't think they make heels for boys, so I have a good couple of inches over you in mine. Being short isn't that bad though, unless you're trying to reach the top shelf." Which was secretly why she wore heels to the grocery store of all places, because seriously? Asking somebody to get something on a shelf she couldn't reach was so demeaning. "So we need other foods to absorb other foods. Sounds good. I think."
Well, Serena looked like she could afford a lot of things, and she could because she was richer than God, but they still lived in a shithole apartment and ate fish sticks and frozen pizza. "Actually they do, they're just like, a chunk on the heel instead of pumps or whatever though. Hard to find and not as comfortable as chucks," he said, laughing and kicking at the toe of one shoe. "Another thing to look for is stuff that iron-fortified. Plenty of cereals and pastas have it so don't feel like you're restricted to proteins. But yeah, that's why most calcium supplements are calcium citrate, if you've ever noticed that, cause you need the vitamin C for the calcium to be usable."
"Oh, I didn't know that." About either of those things, because seriously? She wasn't into wearing sneakers and she'd never taken a supplement a day in her life. But she supposed that he knew half of what he did because he was a nurse. It was his job to know about supplements, and from the sound of things, he knew a lot she didn't. "Style and comfort are definitely two reasons to choose them over the heels for boys. I'm seriously going to look them up, that's pretty funny." She started to move her cart away, but stopped and turned to face the boy again. "I was going to go pick out some pasta, but I think you'd know what you're looking for better than I would. I don't want to hold you up though."
Tony bit his lip. "I do have to get home before my roommate, like, blows up the apartment or something. I can give you my number, though, in case you need some more culinary-medical advice," he offered, smiling and pulling out his own phone, so he could enter Adelle's and not be confused when he got a call from her. He wasn't really expecting her to call, honestly, but he figured it was a nice gesture, or something. He hoped she didn't think he was coming onto her...whatever, he'd broken girls' hearts before.
She gave him his number, and prompted him to call it so that she could save his. Once this was done, she stuck out her hand to him. "I'm Adelle, but you can call me Adi. I'll probably text you with a bunch of questions. I just want to be on top of this stuff with the iron. I'm probably going to need it over the next few weeks, and I don't want to wind up like, not absorbing it or whatever. So thank you..." and she realized she didn't have a name to call him either.
"Tony," he said, leaning across his cart to shake her hand too. His hand was depressingly small next to hers, but his grip was firm, and he'd been used to that a long time. "And yeah, no worries, you can call or text me." He stored her in his phone as Iron-deficient Adi and nodded, looking up again with a smile. "I'll see you around, then," he said, flicking a salute and turning to leave.