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"Delivery for you." Ava announced, dropping a nondescript crate in his lap. Simon wasn't sure what he was expecting when he peeled back the lid carefully, considering he had never received a delivery before, but it wasn't this. His brow furrowed in confusion as he stared at the contents. The box was filled to the brim with vegetables of all kinds.
"Vegetables?" He questioned, tilting his head. "Are these extra rations? You know I can just get some from the kitchen if I'm hungry, right?"
"Not quite. These are naturally grown vegetables, straight from Eden, though the COI did test for poison before forwarding them to us. You remember that Eden's been trying to negotiate a peace treaty since we found the blackbox, right? I'd wager they're trying to get on your good side; you're the one who found it after all. So, now you apparently get gift baskets. They're planning to send one next month, too."
Simon thought for a moment, eyeing the box with a puzzled look. "They're all for me? Your synthetic vegetables have a much longer shelf life than these, this box is gonna go bad in a few days. What am I supposed to do do with a full crate? I'm not the best cook, so I think gonna make a stew so I can use them all up before they start rotting, but need some help with the cooking. It's kinda hard with one arm."
Then, after a short pause: "...do you know how to cook?"
Ava bristled at the question, and he could sense her immediately getting competitive about this. "How hard can it be to chop a potato? Come on, we're cooking stew." she replied, picking up the crate with confidence and walking towards the kitchen.
Simon shook his head with a snort, then stood to follow behind her.
When he caught up to Ava, she was already busy laying out the different kinds of vegetables. Potatoes, cucumbers, radishes, carrots, bell peppers, onions, champignons and tomatoes... well, he supposed that last one was a fruit.
"I need you to tell me if any of these are poisonous. The synthesized vegetables are made without their natural toxins, and I don't really remember enough from when I was 5, just that some could be harmful before cooking." He was thankful she remembered to ask him before biting into possibly poisonous vegetables.
"Just the potatoes; don't eat these raw and you're good. Many mushrooms are deadly too, but these champignons are totally fine after you've washed the dirt off of them." he explained, pointing to the different vegetables as he went.
"... right. They grow in the dirt."
Simon sighed.
"Did the COI seriously tell you nothing about vegetables? Just because you don't eat the natural forms of them anymore doesn't mean that they're not important!"
"I've been living in space for all of my life. Realistically, I've had actual real vegetables about two times growing up. I've only seen the COI ones apart from this, and I know how they grow: liquid solution." Ava defended herself, crossing her arms.
"Ok, then I'm going to start from the basics: We're going to sort out the vegetables we don't want in our stew, since some of these work better in a salad. Honestly, salads need to be eaten fresh, so we should start with these first, and the stew can be frozen if there are leftovers. Then, we're going to wash and cut them, and finally we put them in a salad bowl, though I'm not sure how to make dressing, and the rest goes in the pot." Simon explained patiently. He was fine going over the process step-by-step since he didn't have high hopes in her cooking skills from the beginning.
" Okay, so salad vegetables over here... at least they look the same; that's the tomatoes, carrots, radishes, and cucumbers." Ava said, sorting them into categories.
"Great! Maybe you're not as hopeless as I thought!" He teased. "Though I would put the carrots in the stew instead; they work well in either one."
"Oh, shut up!" She replied, though she was grinning at him.
Simon began filling up the sink while Ava loaded the vegetables into the basin, washing them off one by one. He picked out a radish and grabbed a cutting board.
"See, this is why you're here... Could you hold the radish steady so I can cut it?" He asked, reaching for a knife.
"You can chop them by yourself, so I think I'd be better off setting up the rest of the meal. For radishes, you wanna cut them into fine slices, cutting off the roots and leaves." He added, slicing the radish with precision. "The same goes for cucumbers and tomatoes, though you could dice the big ones instead."
Simon handed his knife to Ava, who grabbed another radish from the pile and began slicing it with precision.
"Well, this is a lot easier than I thought it would be." She proclaimed, pushing the slices to the side to make room for more vegetables.
"See, you're a natural! Now scoot over, you're standing in front of the pots." Simon snickered. He playfully shoved her, making sure wasn't holding the knife when he did, and took a pot from the cabinet she had been standing in front of. He set it down on the counter, together with a glass bowl.
"Salad in here, yeah?" Ava asked, already scooping up the radish.
"Yep. You wanna try some, though? I've missed actual vegetables..." Simon mused, biting down on a piece of radish. Ava tentatively picked one up as well. He laughed as her eye went wide in surprise when she tasted it. Her blind eye was unable to move, but the seeing one was very expressive at times.
"You could really just eat these in Eden? All the time? Now that I've tasted this, I don't ever want to go back to food rations..." she lamented.
Simon was very much on the same page as Ava regarding the rations.
"We can hope they send another if the peace negotiations hold up well." he hoped, already dreaming of all the delicious foods he hadn't had since he was 14. Well, anything was better than the prison food he had gotten after Filament Station.
With Ava chopping the rest of the salad vegetables, Simon was left with some time to piece together a stew recipe from memory. He paced up and down the kitchen, searching for any ingredients he could add.
"Do we have flour here? Olive oil? Pepper, salt, or any spices?"
"Yeah, there's salt in the cabinet behind you. Don't use too much; it's expensive. Artificial flour should be in the cupboard above, but don't use it all up, either. I'm not sure about what kind of oil is available on the ship, but whatever we have is probably in the cabinet to the left, and we don't have any pepper." Ava called from the other side of the kitchen.
"How do you know all that when you don't even cook?" He questioned, gathering the ingredients and trying to balance them all in his arm.
"I helped out in the kitchen a few times when they were understaffed, but effectively just ran back and forth fetching ingredients and handing out trays." She laughed. "They didn't want me messing up the food for everyone on board; I understand that."
"See, that's what I'm here for! I won't let you ruin the salad, I promise!" he boasted, Ava flipping him off playfully in reply.
"Yeah, yeah, you're the best. Now how do I cut an onion? I'm done with the salad vegetables and anything else I know how to slice. Do I cut it in rings or dice it?"
" I think rings work best. Cut it in half first, then peel off the first two layers. After that, just cut the halves into rings." He instructed, approaching Ava again, flour, salt and oil now securely tucked under his arm.
She nodded, slicing cleanly through the onion. Just as she picked it up to begin peeling it, she abruptly dropped it and backed away from the counter.
"WHAT THE FUCK?!"
"…Excuse me?" Simon startled, too, almost dropping the bag of flour.
"What's wro-" He cut himself off mid-sentence with a poorly suppressed laugh at the realization.
"Did you not know they make you cry?"
Ava looked at him, exasperated.
"Simon. All our plants have been stripped of their hostile or poisonous traits. You didn't think to mention onions would attack my eyes? Besides, you said all of them except for the potatoes were safe, and I didn't even know they were carnivorous!"
"No they aren't!" He wheezed out between laughs.
"It's not trying to eat you, and they stop doing this once they're cooked, but it's basically a defense mechanism? They release enzymes or something, and that makes you cry while cutting them. I can try to do it if you don't want to?" He offered.
"I'm fine." She hissed, tears streaming down her face as soon as she approached the onion again. He almost felt bad for laughing as Ava sliced at the onion with a vengeance, only occasionally stopping to wipe her right eye with her sleeve to clear her vision.
" We only have two onions, lucky us." Simon sniffled, beginning to experience the plant warfare himself.
"Though they are really delicious when cooked..." he added dreamily. He had definitely missed Eden's food, if not much else about it now.
Ava pushed the pot away from her cutting board violently after she'd finished chopping them both, situating the onions as far as possible from her. Simon in turn pulled out an unused tissue from his back pocket and dabbed at her face, ignoring her hand trying to swat him away. Despite having stood right next to her, Simon was still faring much better. He figured he'd built up some immunity over time, compared to Ava having never seen a real onion in 27 years.
"Good job fiercely slicing that onion to death. Don't like seeing you cry, though, even when it's just because of onions." he chided, taking her face into his hand and kissing her forehead. He pulled away, resting his hand on her shoulder instead.
Chopping the bell peppers posed another challenge to Ava, as she cut them open the wrong way at first. Instead of continuing, she marvelled at the inside structure and the seeds inside it.
"These... they're seeds, right? You could plant them?" she contemplated, examining them closer.
"It's not technically illegal to grow vegetables if we could get our hands on soil somehow, any ideas?"
"Nah, but I'm sure we can figure something out until they send a new box. For now, throw these out; they're not edible." Ava scraped the seeds into the bin with a sad look in her eyes. Simon supposed he had opened her eyes to the world of real vegetables, and now she never wanted to go back. He couldn’t say he blamed her.
"Now, the mushrooms and potatoes. Peel the potatoes with this, dice them and slice the mushrooms vertically, then maybe cut them down the middle again."
he said, handing her a potato peeler.
"You said potatoes can't be eaten raw, but are they... like the onions?" Ava asked, carefully poking one with the tip of her knife. Simon was quick to reassure her, however.
"No defensive vegetables this time, I promise! Just stomach pain if you eat them raw, but we're cooking them thoroughly."
Pouring water, oil and flour into the pot, Simon prayed the measurements he was eyeballing were sensible amounts. Soon after, Ava finished chopping the last of the champignons and reached for the stove dial.
"Medium heat." He directed, stirring the pot with a wooden spoon. Simon's mouth watered at the smell of cooking stew. It had been so long since he'd had anything but rations, poor imitations of actual food. Sure, they were packed with nutrients, but not flavorful in the slightest. He tasted it and added salt generously, Ava staring at him like he'd gone mad.
"That was so much salt!" She accused, crossing her arms.
"Yeah? If I'm cooking a stew with valuable real vegetables and ruin it by undersalting it, I'd never forgive myself." He snapped back, glaring at her playfully. They actually clashed sometimes, but most of their fighting was anything but vicious. Both of them got quite a kick out of bickering with each other about every small disagreement.
She scoffed, turning to put the cutting board and knife in the dishwasher. The COI's idea of a dishwasher was a terrifying contraption in Simon's eyes, since he wasn't quite as used to modern technology as Ava and the rest of his friends. He'd jumped the first time David had activated it and it started blasting the dishes inside with disinfectant and water at high speeds, hissing viciously all the while. They'd all had a laugh about it afterwards, but he still didn't fully trust the thing.
When they finished cleaning up the kitchen, Ava took a tray and began stacking plates, salad bowls and cutlery onto it.
"I hope David and Jack don't have any dinner plans, because I'm gonna need them to cancel whatever they might have planned for this. I'll shoot them a message to come over to our room in..."
"Fifteen." Simon supplied, peeking inside the pot. "It's done cooking, but we still need to carry it over and plate it. Granted, our salad is going to look a bit sad without the dressing, but I don't think they'll mind."
Ava made room on the tray, laid out a kitchen towel, then lifted the pot onto it.
"No space for the salad bowl; you carry that. I'm taking the tray, obviously." she ordered, grabbing the handles and beginning to leave the room. Simon pulled her back by her arm, and she turned back around and set the tray down again.
"No kiss for the chef?" Simon pouted teasingly.
"I taught you to cook; don't you think I deserve a reward for all my hard work?" He wondered.
"Hm, I think I'd prefer a chef with less of an ego trip over teaching me how to cut a potato." Ava shot back.
"You love me, though." He declared with a triumphant look.
"Jerk." she replied, pulling down his head to kiss him with a grin.