Love and magic have a great deal in common [Open]
Who: Alice Hartsen and Open to any one with a reason to be in the building
What: Cooking! And it smells delicious
Where: the museum/shadow gallery (I think it’s the same building?) V’s kitchen.
When: Sunday afternoon/evening
Warnings: none!
Notes: Mostly just providing an opportunity to interact with more people. Welcome to jump in at any point in the cooking, or even later, when the food is ready.
Really, Alice has quite taken over V’s kitchen. Without access to the gardens she cared for in California, or to the stillery, or pantry, or other useful rooms of the House of Cups, the normal places that the hedge-witch would, well, work her magic, are lacking. The kitchen more than meets her needs, as every day she Bends something or another to add to the cupboards and cooking equipment, all discretely cleaned and put away when she is done.
And there is a rather significant collection of bottles and jars filling a shelf, each delicately labeled. Not potions, oh no, without her cookbooks she can only make a limited range, and most are better made fresh anyway. But ingredients, on the other hand.... Tinctures, teas, powders, essences, oils, jams, jellies, flavored waters, dried herbs, pickled herbs… she can merely look over and identify each in the clear glass containers. To be on the safe side, she keeps the more health-hazardous materials in amounts that aren’t enough to actually kill the average person, although some have side effects that might merely make a person which he or she was dead…
But this afternoon, Alice hardly touches her jars and bottles. The witch craves something a bit more challenging to waste her time on. She’s not quite sure who is living in the building, but given the unusual ingredients she tends to use, she doesn’t blame them at all if they are hesitant in eating any of it. Feeling rather lonely, Alice hopes that she’s not bothering anyone, but, being fully aware of how easy it is to affect people through their stomachs, sets about cooking something she thinks the other residents might actually like.
Now, if you want to do something right, you need to do it from scratch. So while Alice intends to have pippin hot chicken pot pie ready for supper, she starts by roasting a chicken. Normally leaning toward a vegetarian diet, it didn’t take being around chickens for long for the Hartsen children to realize the birds were stupid and shallow. But, while she didn’t feel too bad about eating chicken, Alice never could bring herself to kill one, so she Bended a bird already dead and plucked; the kind one might buy from a grocery store. She stuffed it with fresh rosemary and sage and set it to cooking in the oven, pouring some sage-water into the pan to keep it from drying out. With in an hour, the smell fills the kitchen.
For the broth, Alice starts with dicing carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, garlic, and turnips. She blanches the roots quickly in boiling water, and then sets them to the side to be used later. To the water she adds the onions and celery and garlic, then thyme, rosemary, bay leaves and tarragon. The hedge-witch leaves that pot to bubble and boiling merrily as she makes the pie crust.
Up to her elbows in flour, with a smudge on her face, Alice has rather forgotten her apprehension, at least as much as the perpetually nervous witch can. Without even thinking about it, she has dropped much, but not all, of her mental shielding. The complexly simple cooking is relaxing, reminding her of calm times in the Hartsen kitchen, helping to make some of the most basic foods their restaurant provides. Comforting, filling, with a soft and warm magic that all people have, when they make something with care.
What: Cooking! And it smells delicious
Where: the museum/shadow gallery (I think it’s the same building?) V’s kitchen.
When: Sunday afternoon/evening
Warnings: none!
Notes: Mostly just providing an opportunity to interact with more people. Welcome to jump in at any point in the cooking, or even later, when the food is ready.
Really, Alice has quite taken over V’s kitchen. Without access to the gardens she cared for in California, or to the stillery, or pantry, or other useful rooms of the House of Cups, the normal places that the hedge-witch would, well, work her magic, are lacking. The kitchen more than meets her needs, as every day she Bends something or another to add to the cupboards and cooking equipment, all discretely cleaned and put away when she is done.
And there is a rather significant collection of bottles and jars filling a shelf, each delicately labeled. Not potions, oh no, without her cookbooks she can only make a limited range, and most are better made fresh anyway. But ingredients, on the other hand.... Tinctures, teas, powders, essences, oils, jams, jellies, flavored waters, dried herbs, pickled herbs… she can merely look over and identify each in the clear glass containers. To be on the safe side, she keeps the more health-hazardous materials in amounts that aren’t enough to actually kill the average person, although some have side effects that might merely make a person which he or she was dead…
But this afternoon, Alice hardly touches her jars and bottles. The witch craves something a bit more challenging to waste her time on. She’s not quite sure who is living in the building, but given the unusual ingredients she tends to use, she doesn’t blame them at all if they are hesitant in eating any of it. Feeling rather lonely, Alice hopes that she’s not bothering anyone, but, being fully aware of how easy it is to affect people through their stomachs, sets about cooking something she thinks the other residents might actually like.
Now, if you want to do something right, you need to do it from scratch. So while Alice intends to have pippin hot chicken pot pie ready for supper, she starts by roasting a chicken. Normally leaning toward a vegetarian diet, it didn’t take being around chickens for long for the Hartsen children to realize the birds were stupid and shallow. But, while she didn’t feel too bad about eating chicken, Alice never could bring herself to kill one, so she Bended a bird already dead and plucked; the kind one might buy from a grocery store. She stuffed it with fresh rosemary and sage and set it to cooking in the oven, pouring some sage-water into the pan to keep it from drying out. With in an hour, the smell fills the kitchen.
For the broth, Alice starts with dicing carrots, onions, potatoes, celery, garlic, and turnips. She blanches the roots quickly in boiling water, and then sets them to the side to be used later. To the water she adds the onions and celery and garlic, then thyme, rosemary, bay leaves and tarragon. The hedge-witch leaves that pot to bubble and boiling merrily as she makes the pie crust.
Up to her elbows in flour, with a smudge on her face, Alice has rather forgotten her apprehension, at least as much as the perpetually nervous witch can. Without even thinking about it, she has dropped much, but not all, of her mental shielding. The complexly simple cooking is relaxing, reminding her of calm times in the Hartsen kitchen, helping to make some of the most basic foods their restaurant provides. Comforting, filling, with a soft and warm magic that all people have, when they make something with care.