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

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Then, no. I don't."

[summerdude]

"Yeah, that's what I thought." What Magnus means is that he's the same way -- fighting in front of other people doesn't count; up until he started training with Lancelot, all his fighting had an edge to it, a sense of being observed. Partly because most of it was in the form of a hundreds-of-thousands-strong daily Battle Practice where everyone wanted to see if the Vanir-spawn would ever be able to hold his own. Also, in the course of their near-daily training, he's started to get the sense that there are ways in which he and Lancelot are pretty similar, actually. Luckily he's come around enough on the guy that this doesn't horrify him. Whether Lancelot groks his true meaning is another matter entirely.

Meanwhile, Magnus, satisfied that everything that needs to be in the food processor is in the food processor, attaches the lid and tries to pulse it. But for some reason, the chickpeas don't grind? They just shoot around the bowl like little projectiles.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Magnus might be surprised to learn (if he ever does) that Lancelot was sincere in this -- he does very much enjoy an audience when fighting is involved, provided that fighting is for sport. He often felt at his best on tourney days; he knew what the crowds, what the Queen, expected, and he knew how to give them that. This resulted in their praise, adulation, and it was almost a side benefit that it helped to justify all of the time and effort and the sheer quantity of his life that had gone toward training.

Even outside of that, it was one of the few places where he could show open devotion to Guinever. If he was the Queen's Champion, wearing her favor while he won a match (of any kind), then it was right to publicly present himself to her, for her, it was right to receive her attentions upon winning. That, too, helped to make all his work worthwhile: her love, her praise, the ability to show everyone why she favored him.

He does miss that. He does miss Guinever. He gets, he thinks, what Magnus is saying, though, so he doesn't argue.

When Magnus starts the food processor, he finally moves closer. "I'm not sure," he says, mildly, "it's supposed to do that."

[summerdude]

"No," says Magnus, glumly, turning the processor off and then on again to see if it'll do anything different this time. It doesn't.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Should they be softer?"

[summerdude]

"I soaked them! It said to soak them and I did!" Magnus turns the processor off again, takes off the lid, and takes out a chickpea. When he squeezes it between his fingers, it splits in half, but doesn't smush at all, and he's using a lot of his strength. "How long do you even have to soak these things for them to work?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Did it say how long? Perhaps there is a cookbook here that will tell us."

[summerdude]

There are like ten different cookbooks laid out around the kitchen. Magnus picks one at random and starts leafing through it, frowning.

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot takes up another book, leafing through as well. As he does, he says, "What about the other sorts of-- beans?"

[summerdude]

"It says to rinse them when you get them out of a can," Magnus says, of the cookbook he's looking at. "But falafel should come from dried."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Why?" He doesn't necessarily expect Magnus to know the answer, he's sort of pondering out loud.

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "Heck if I know. I would ask Amir if I could phone home, but..."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"If we heat them... in the water. Would they soften more?"

Magnus, please know that Lancelot has very little idea what he's doing, and his "cooking" has typically consisted of: chopping things; fetching things; following specific instructions of someone who does know what they're doing.

[summerdude]

"Yeah..." says Magnus, thoughtfully. "It says they shouldn't be cooked but maybe a little extra help wouldn't hurt?" He jabs some summer at the chickpeas in the processor.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"It isn't really cooking them if they're just... warm."

[summerdude]

"You think?" Magnus assumes Lancelot has more experience cooking than he does.

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Doesn't cooking need things to be hot? Hotter?"

[summerdude]

Magnus squints at the food processor bowl. "I'm pretty sure one of Aegir's daughters is a raw vegan," he says, thoughtfully. "So she'd definitely know. But I don't think I'd ask her even if I could. They all want to kill me, you know. That whole family."

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Why would they want you dead?" Sure, Magnus can be A Lot. But he is a good person.

[summerdude]

"Oh. Ran -- Aegir's wife -- has a price on my head."

[lanselos_du_lac]

Lancelot gives a surprised half-laugh, "What? Why?"

[summerdude]

"Ummmmmm," says Magnus, shooting more chickpeas with little flares of summer. "So you know how sometimes a guy just, like, threatens a goddess and her entire livelihood to get his sword back?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"Errr, no."

[summerdude]

"What," giving Lancelot a shit-eating grin. "You mean that's not a classic universal experience?"

[lanselos_du_lac]

"No," with a little roll of his eyes.