InsaneJournal

Who: Simon Tam, Malcolm Reynolds
When: Evening
Where: Community kitchen
What: Trying to cook. Failing.
Rating/Warnings: None so far
Cooking for himself was not something Simon had grown accustomed to yet. When he was a child his family had employed cooks, in the plural usually and often from different planets so that the Tam children could have the “cultural experience” of sampling ethnic cuisine. At the medacad he'd usually been too distracted to notice what he was eating, piling up takeout boxes in the corner until, spurred by an imminent visit from his mother or River, he would sweep them all into the trash and frantically try to collect faked evidence of the preparation of nutritious meals. On Serenity he'd had kitchen shifts, same as everyone else, but Kaylee had always saved him, just happening to wander by while he was staring despairingly at their limited options and offering to help. She had a haphazard cooking style, just throwing things into pots on what seemed like a whim, and sometimes it backfired, but it came out better than anything he might have tried anyway. Now, however, Simon was stranded on earth-that-was with no cooks, no Kaylee, and a sister who reacted badly if he even suggested venturing out into the outside world for takeout. Besides, it was better to fix something relatively nutritious and it wasn't as if River could cook for herself.

Which was, in combination with the fact that the Tam's collection of cooking implements was still rather scarce pending another trip to the store, what brought Simon to be standing, looking confused and rather cranky, staring at an open recipe book and a pile of perhaps relevant ingredients, in the community kitchen. He bent over the book again, stared back to the ingredients, and grumbled “Bunch of luh-suh--” Which was when he noticed someone else entering the kitchen and straightened up, a bit embarrassed to be caught muttering to a pile of food.