New Plan, Step One: Provide For My Community [open]

[summerdude]

Magnus needs something to change, so when a Mansion calendar helpfully informs him that it's International Falafel Day back on Earth, he goes to the library for some cookbooks, and then to the kitchen.

He lays out ten different falafel recipes. He gathers the ingredients they list, as best as he can understand them. He has canned chickpeas and fresh chickpeas and dried chickpeas and chickpea flour and box mixes of falafel that say 'just add water!'

Cripes.

"I can do this," he says, peering at the assorted recipes intently for a good ten minutes, and then takes the dried chickpeas over to the sink to rinse and soak.

Comments

[sporesprouter]

Tress walks into the kitchen and blinks at the laid out garbanzopalooza. She glances over at Magnus. "Wow. You look like you have a project."

[summerdude]

Magnus laughs, twisting off the water. "You could say that."

[sporesprouter]

She nods. "What's the project, and could you use an extra pair of hands?"

[summerdude]

"I'm learning how to make falafel," Magnus say, surveying the crowded counters. "Um, ideally."

[sporesprouter]

"Well, I've never made falafel before. Or even had it, other than the once at Wanderers Gather. But I'm happy to help out and we can learn together."

[summerdude]

"Sure!" Cooking for community can involve cooking in community. "Let's do it."

[sporesprouter]

"All right. I'll just wash my hands and then you just tell me what to do."

[summerdude]

"Well, I think these chickpeas have to soak for a while," Magnus says, peering at the piles of recipes. "But we can try, um..." There's a recipe for falafel with chickpea flour, and one that uses canned chickpeas. "One of these?"

[sporesprouter]

Tress washes her hands and starts to head over. "Which one's quicker? Maybe we should start with that one. Kind of a test run, so if it goes badly, we at least didn't use as much time."

[summerdude]

"Smart." Magnus nudges two of the recipes closer to Tress. "What do you think?"

[sporesprouter]

She looks over the recipes. "I think the one with the flour."

[summerdude]

"Cool. Let's try it." Magnus pushes away the stuff for the original recipe and pulls forward the stuff for the new one.

[sporesprouter]

Tress, for her part, goes to retrieve bowls and things to do the mixing in.

[summerdude]

Magnus is staring down at the recipe. "What's the difference between measuring by weight and measuring by size?"

[sporesprouter]

"It's the difference between how heavy something is and how much space it takes up. What is it you're looking at specifically?"

[summerdude]

"All of it," Magnus says, dismally. "Why does this give size and weight measurements?"

[sporesprouter]

"Some people prefer weighing by one or the other. Usually they're about equal."

[summerdude]

"Is there a, like, weight-measure-thingy in here?"

[sporesprouter]

"Oh, a scale? There is!" She opens a cabinet to retrieve a fairly simple digital scale and sets it on the counter.

[summerdude]

"Okay. Experiment time," Magnus says. He carefully measures a half-cup of regular flour and, in an identical container, a half-cup of the chickpea flour. Then he sets each one on the scale in turn.

The chickpea flour is 46 grams; the regular is 60. He groans.

[sporesprouter]

"Well, if the recipe is calling for the chickpea flour, it will have taken into account the density of the flour it's actually calling for, so it should be fine."

[summerdude]

"I bet Galahad has opinions about this," Magnus says, with the faintest twinge of sadness. He misses Galahad. He's gotta -- he's gotta like. Do something about that.

[sporesprouter]

Tress nods. "He probably does. I do think that it makes sense that flour made of different things would weigh differently."

[summerdude]

"Yeah. Different, like, stuff in them."

[sporesprouter]

"Exactly. I think we'll manage this just fine."