Who: Elle and Mozzie What: Experimenting When: Earlier today Where: The kitchen Warnings: Possible culinary mishaps
If there was one thing that Elle missed being able to do it was gather all of her kitchen supplies and go to work. On more than one occasion Peter would come home to a meal that was completely unexpected and sometimes not entirely recognizable. She liked to experiment and while she never would have considered herself to be any sort of culinary expert by any stretch of the imagination, she was certainly the queen of her own kitchen and Peter never left the table unsatisfied. There was always a chance he was scared what would happen to him if he did show any disinterest in a meal she prepared, but the full stomach when they settled into bed told her what she needed to know. Satchmo didn't always get the advantage of eating table scraps because Peter cleaned his plate like a good boy.
She stood in the center of the kitchen and stared at the supply closet. So many of the same ingredients were sitting there on the shelves in front of her. Without the usual manufacturers pumping out boxes and sacks of flour, sugar, oils, spices, and everything else that came in handy in a kitchen, they had a limited supply of options to choose from in their preparations but Elle was bound and determined to come up with a handful of new meals for the prison. Maybe it was because she enjoyed watching the smiles appear across Peter, Neal, Mozzie, and Shannon's faces. Or maybe it was the maternal instinct in her wanting to feed everyone. Anytime Neal or Moz would come over to the house back in New York, there was generally a snack prepared of some kind. An invitation for dinner or a lunch date that was always kept.
Elle tapped her foot on the floor unconsciously but no recipes were jumping out at her. If only she had this or that ingredient then she'd be able to make the perfect meal. There's only so much of this so it wouldn't feel but a fourth of the prison population. She also wanted to waste as little as possible in these experiments. It was harder for the raiders to take their trips during the cold weather so this was probably the worst time to have the cooking bug.
There were a couple of cans of condensed soup and Ragu next to some of the spam. The girls who tended the garden somehow were able to keep it growing even during the winter months. Something about vampire magic. She didn't know what that meant, but she was grateful for the fresh herbs that were waiting to be used. There was a time when Elle had rarely used anything but fresh herbs from her small herb garden.
"Hmm," she murmured to herself before she began grabbing several ingredients at once and transporting them over to one of the counters. The lunch shift had just ended so she was all alone before it started getting busy with the next set of staff getting ready for dinner. She pulled out a casserole dish from one of the cabinets and popped open the jar of Ragu. Time to make some culinary magic.