tampered | log; ongoing

log; ongoing

When; Tomorrow afternoon [zomg future log GET]
Rating; PG?
Characters; Katara [

brbkickingass]
Summary; Katara teaches Suki how to cook like a good Water Tribe woman.
Log;

Suki was probably one of Katara's favorite people. Partially because, c'mon, Suki was smart, polite, could kick the ass of a man twice her size--Katara imagined, anyway--and above all, Suki actually seemed like a girl. When one traveled for extended periods of time on the back of a giant bison with three--Toph included--boys who were more interested in goofing off in the dirt than keeping tidy and helping out with the chores, a girl like Suki was a much-needed breather. Sadly enough, though, fighting the war, particularly after Suki had just managed to rejoin their group, kept anyone from relaxing. Being able to have a day off to relax and actually enjoy chores like cooking, grocery shopping, it was practically unheard of.

So now that they were in the City, and now that Katara better knew the nature of Suki and Sokka's relationship, Katara simply figured, why not have a little girl-to-girl bonding time?

Hopefully Suki would enjoy it, anyway.

Katara knocked gently on the door to Suki's room, hoping that she wasn't interrupting anything important.

"Hey, Suki? You there?"

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Normally, on a day like today (or any day for that matter), Suki would have been drenched in sweat, training for hours with the warriors. It wasn't a normal day or a normal city for that matter. Really, all Suki had to do in her off time from running errands for Miss Meryl was keep an eye on Squeakles every so often and maybe do a little extra cuddling with Sokka.

Oh, and tinker with the many possible ways of styling her short, but quickly growing out, hair.

Suki had just taken out one of the four clips she had added into some bun-like style with the sound of the knock on her door startled her a bit. The voice that followed it was very familiar and she smiled when it registered in her mind.

"Come in, Katara. Door's unlocked."

Quietly, Katara turned the knob on the door and entered Suki's room, the smile on her face widening when she saw Suki playing with her hair-- it was a sight more welcome to Katara than the way Toph got ready in the morning, her hair practically a standing bush. (Katara tended not to complain too much, though, given that... well, it wouldn't exactly feel right to get Toph to care about how she looked, hygiene aside.)

"It looks nice," Katara remarked, with a small shrug of her shoulders. "Your hair, that is."

Running a hand through her own--if she wasn't mistaken, Katara could almost swear that her hair was softer now as well, now that they weren't constantly covered in and surrounded by dirt--Katara sheepishly bit her lip before speaking, perhaps not in a most elegant manner.

"Wanna cook dinner with me?"

"Thanks. But it's being difficult," Suki mused, tugging on the rest of the clips to get them out. "It's at that awkward point where it doesn't know if it wants to be short or if it wants to be long."

She shook her head, releasing the bun and started doing up her regular style of a half ponytail only to freeze when Katara asked that unexpected question.

"Cook dinner?" Suki questioned with a hint of uncertainty in her voice. While she could bring a man to his knees with one swing of her fist and scale walls with nary a problem, there was one thing Suki couldn't do well: cook. Last time she tried to cook, she set fire to her kitchen back on the island and all she was doing was making tea. Cooking was never in her destiny.

Maybe Katara should've been a little suspicious of the fact that Suki had never asked if she could help out with the cooking, despite the fact that she usually helped out with the other errands when camping out and the like. Instead, Katara misinterpreted her hesitation as feeling more than a little bit of uncertainty about the kitchens in the City.

"Yeah. I mean, I know the produce is a little different here, and that the stove is... really strange, but. I've been able to fix some stuff, and I figured I'd teach you how to make some traditional Water Tribe dishes? ...if that isn't too forward or anything."

"It's not forward, per se..." Suki began as she shuffled from one foot to another. She knew that it would be good for her to learn parts of Water Tribe culture, if not for Sokka's sake, but for all her friends'. But did it have to involve cooking?

Suki's eyes darted back and forth and she leaned forward towards Katara as if somebody could hear them passing top secret information between them. "I... can't really cook," she whispered.

Katara blinked for a few moments, and then had to hold back a laugh. It wasn't something Suki should've been ashamed of, nor was it really surprising, now that Katara thought about how much time the Kiyoshi warriors must have put into their training. More than anything else, it was just the reaction that Katara found cute--but that wasn't exactly something she could voice.

"That's not a problem, Suki-- I bet a lot of girls your age don't know how to cook. My Gran-gran just taught me when I was young," Katara explained, her smile a little more subdued when she thought of the reasons why.

"All you really need is the desire to learn. But if you're too uncomfortable, I don't want to force you or anything! It was just a thought."

Even if there were a lot of other girls that didn't know how to cook, that didn't make Suki feel any better. Being recognized as a warrior was what she trained so hard and so long for, but sometimes, she wanted to be recognized as a female too. And in her eyes, cooking was one of those qualities, as chauvinistic as that thought was.

"I do want to learn and I have tried," she replied, "But a burnt kitchen isn't quite delicious as you might think it is. We just spent so much time in training, there was barely enough time to eat food, much less learn how to cook it."

"Well, then, that's the problem," Katara nodded knowingly. "Not enough time to learn how to properly cook things-- if you don't have someone showing you the ropes, it's going to result in a whole lot of burnt kitchens before you get it right. So, Suki, we have a couple of things to our advantage here. First, that we have time. And secondly, that I'm not half-bad at cooking."

Okay, that sounded a little egotistical.

"Or, well, at least it's edible enough that the boys don't really complain." Katara grinned. "Don't you want to try to learn, Suki? It's a useful skill to have if you're by yourself, out on a training mission, or something like that."

Edited 2008-08-01 18:34 (UTC)

Suki could see her point. Cooking was like fighting: nobody learned to be the best at it overnight. The perfectionist in her wanted to be the best at anything she put her mind to and Katara was right. They did have time and she was more than qualified to teach cooking, and Water Tribe cuisine at that.

"Well, a hot meal is better than any wild berries I could find," Suki grinned as she walked over to pull on her shoes. "I'm up for it!"

Excited that Suki had agreed so easily, Katara clapped her hands eagerly before she started making her way towards the kitchen, grabbing various pots and pans out of the cabinets and turning on the sink so she could bend enough water over them to rinse out any dirt or dust.

"First, you should probably know that you have to wash your hands before cooking," Katara instructed, turning the tap up a little and lathering her hands with soap. "Especially since all of us camp out so much. And I think while you're outside, you probably won't want to lug around more than one pot, but we'll use more to start out with so that it'll be a bit easier."

Katara wiped her hands dry on a nearby dish towel. "Um... so when you said you can't really cook... what have you tried?"

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

Now this? This was going a bit too fast for Suki's liking. Following Katara out to the kitchen like a lost and confused puppy, Suki watched the other girl work her way around the cooking space, grabbing pots and pans from every which way. She didn't know that they came in so many different shapes and sizes.

Suki moved over to the sink, wrestling with the tap until the water came on strong enough to start scrubbing at her fingers. "Uh... tea? Rice once too. Oh, and I tried to cook a chickenpig dish once and... yeah.""

Katara blinked at Suki. Tea and... rice. While a nice, cold glass of barley tea and rice could actually make a pretty decent meal, when Suki had mentioned that she didn't have much experienced, Katara had figured that at least she knew how to fry things in a pan, or at the least know how to prepare soup.

Clearly, they had... a long way to go.

"O... kay, then," Katara nodded, digesting this slowly. "Well, then... let's slow down, and I'll just ask you if there's anything you'd like to learn how to make or do first?"

"Eggs," Suki answered quickly as she shook off the excess water on her hands. Eggs were nice and simple, right? Couldn't be too hard to crack a couple and somehow make it come out nice and fluffy like the older ladies back home did. And they were always finding various bird eggs in the forests; who said they couldn't eat those too?

A pause.

"Yeah, sure!" Katara nodded, quickly putting away almost all of the pots and pans that she'd just washed--well, she didn't know that Suki was that behind, right?--save for a small, one-handled pot and a small pan. Looking between the two, Katara then glanced at Suki again.

"What kind of eggs do you want to make? Fried, boiled, or something else?"

"What? Something else?"

Fried? Boiled? Something else? How many ways to make eggs were there? This whole project was starting to make Suki's head spin. Maybe she could just eat berries for the rest of her life.

Closing her eyes, Suki randomly pointed at the larger vessel of the two--the pot--and answered, "That one."

She had never been so unsure before in her life.

Once again, Katara was a little taken aback-- yeah, she'd mentioned boiling eggs, but she didn't actually think that Suki would go for that choice! That basically entailed... boiling water.

Uh.

But, drawing up her patience, Katara nodded slowly and pushed the pan aside. "Hard-boiled eggs, then. Okay. That's easy enough. Um."

She went to the refrigerator, opening it and pulling out the carton of eggs.

"So, to make sure that you don't ever accidentally crack open an uncooked egg, there's a test that you can do for the egg. You take a smooth surface, and spin the egg on it once, then put your finger down on the egg for a moment. Once you let go, if it continues spinning normally, that means it hasn't been cooked."

Katara demonstrated, spinning the egg on its side on the kitchen counter.

Edited 2008-08-01 19:24 (UTC)

Spinning an egg? That sounded easy enough. It didn't involve flames of any sort at this point, so what could go wrong?

Grabbing an egg from the carton with gusto, Suki placed it on the smooth counter and gave it a nice spin-- only to spin it too hard, too fast, and have it flying off the counter down to the hardwood floor with a sickening splat.

"...oops."

Palm, meet face.

With a little bit of a laugh, Katara bended some water to the ground, mixing it with and picking up the egg before dumping it in the sink-- she'd take care of that later.

"A little more gently, Suki? Just... try again. Food's free for us anyway, I guess."

With a heavy sigh and a red face from embarrassment, Suki plucked another egg from the carton, giving it a silent apology for the death of its friend and any future injuries it may suffer at the warrior's hands. She tentatively sat it on the counter and gave it just the barest tap, making the egg wobble more than spin.

At least this time? It stayed on the counter.

Katara nodded, knowing that tapping it so lightly probably wouldn't tell Suki anything, but at worst, that just meant reboiling an already hard-boiled egg, right?

Right.

"Okay, the next thing we want to do is fill the pot with water," Katara instructed, holding the small pot out for Suki. "Usually what I do is put the egg in the pot first, then make sure that the water covers the egg completely."

Water in the pot. Suki could do that.

Taking the pot from Katara's grip, Suki gently placed the egg inside and walked over to the tap again. The issue hot or cold water came up in her mind and, playing it safe because she really didn't want to ask such a stupid question, Suki chose warm water and filled pot up three quarters of the way. There. That should be enough.

"Finished!" Suki announced, way too pleased with herself over a simple task like that.

It was like teaching one of the little girls at the tribe.

"Okay," Katara continued, speaking a bit more slowly than normal. "Next, you need to boil the water. If you have a firebender around, it'd be all too easy, and it's not hard for you to build a fire on your own either, I'd imagine."

Katara took the pot and placed it on the stove.

"But here, we don't even have to make a fire. We just use the stove instead. It has several dials that have settings-- one is low, nine is high. To get the water boiling, we want to set the appropriate dial on high, depending on which of the four spots we're using.

"Does that... make any sense?"

There was no noticing of the slower tone Katara was using for Suki. Suki was happy she finally did something right in the kitchen. But the biggest test was still ahead of her.

She eyed the stove with a wary look, placing the pot on the front right burner. "One to nine?" Suki questioned. It made sense to her in the grand scheme of things. It just didn't make her feel comfortable with dealing with the fire aspect of cooking. "We put it on nine, right?"

Katara nodded. "On nine, right. And after the water starts boiling, you'll want to keep a watch on the pot to make sure that the hot water doesn't bubble over. Once the boiling gets too close to the edge of the pot, you can turn the dial down a bit, maybe to around six or so."

Okay, her instructions were getting a little long-winded again.

"I'll stick by here to help you with that."

Suki turned the knob slowly, watching the blue flame rise up underneath the pot. She could feel the heat from the burner and the sensation with the color reminded her of Azula. Shaking her head, Suki cleared the thought from her mind. That wasn't what she wanted to concentrate on right now.

"So," Suki began, staring at the water in the pot and the egg hanging out at the bottom, "what do we do now?"

Katara gave Suki a look. Apologetic, almost.

"We... wait. Until it starts boiling. Which is why I'm kind of hoping that we can work on a little more than just hard-boiled eggs this time around, but... we'll see?"

She stared at the pot. This... was going to take a while.

"We wait," Suki replied with get a hint of disatisfaction. Part of her was glad that egg boiling didn't call for much to be done. The other part wanted to tackle this cooking thing head on with the passion she usually reserved for fighting. She'd never get anywhere being timid so it was time to be brave and explore the wide world of side dishes.

"Well, hmmm... I never had boiled eggs before. What do you eat with them?"

In all honesty, Katara wasn't the biggest fan of boiled eggs, but she tried to think it through anyway. Salted? Sauces? She'd gone into the marketplace and had... egg salad, was it called? But Katara wasn't exactly sure how to make that anyway.

"You've never had boiled eggs?" Katara said incredulously. "Well, they're... not the most exciting way to eat eggs, but you can use just about any kind of spice with the eggs. Salt works, or I bet Zuko would enjoy hot sauce... my Gran-Gran also taught me to crack the shell of boiled eggs slightly after they're cooked, then letting them soak in a mix of tea, soy sauce, and water."

She smiled. "You can be creative with them, I guess."

"Huh," Suki answered, thinking of her next question as she looked at Katara. "So you don't eat them with meat?"

Because she knew, if there wasn't any meat with it Sokka probably wouldn't like it much and making him a special meal of meatless boiled eggs probably wouldn't get Suki too far in the "Best Girlfriend Ever" department.

Oh, that was cute. Not that Katara was really one to get too involved with her brother's relationship, but she had asked Suki to cook with the idea of making Sokka's favorite dishes in mind. And, if she wasn't ready for that much, well... meat, at the least, would be a good start.

Maybe after a couple of days, anyway.

"You can eat boiled eggs with just about anything, including meat," Katara noted. "I just wasn't sure if meat was the next thing we'd work on, but given my brother, perhaps it wouldn't be a bad idea."

Good. So meat could go with it. Maybe she could figure out how to skip to meat cooking in time for tomorrow's breakfast.

"Is that possible? I know he likes fish," Suki mused. "Do we have any steak? I saw a place here that sold a dish called steak and eggs. I figured..."

And there went her blush again, creeping up along her cheeks.

"I figured I might could fix him a nice breakfast. You know... just because."

...okay, Suki was definitely too good for Sokka. How in the world had Sokka managed to land a girl like her? Well, then again, Katara hadn't really kept a close eye on him at Kiyoshi, and she also didn't know what happened when he saved her from the prison.

But still.

She grinned, rubbing the back of her neck. This would be... difficult.

"To be honest, it might take a couple of days for us to get to that point," Katara admitted. "I mean, frying steak? Is not... easy. And the type of eggs we'll need to make for that will probably have to be scrambled."

Katara pondered the possibilities as she peeked in the refrigerator.

"We have sausages, though. Perhaps we could learn how to fry those with eggs? It's a bit easier."

Yeah, steak was a bit too optimistic. Learning to cook a steak was like trying to master sword fighting before you even learned the proper fighting stance. It was a set up for failure and last thing Suki wanted to do was feed her boyfriend a ruined piece of meat.

"Sausages could work!" Suki piped up, mood instantly lifted by the realization that sausages still were meat. "I'm pretty sure he'd eat those."

"Oh, he will, trust me," Katara assured Suki, taking the sausages and placing them on the counter. "He'll eat just about any meat, even if it's cute with huge eyes."

She moved to the cabinet where all the sauces and oil were kept, and motioned for Suki to look. "We keep most of the cooking materials in this cabinet, and for frying, you'll want to use this oil." Katara pulled out a bottle of corn oil. "We can use this spot for the pan," she added, placing the pan on the next spot over on the stove.

"Watch him with Momo. I saw Sokka licking his lips at him," Suki joked poking the pack of plastic-encased sausages that now sat on the counter.

She moved over to join Katara at the cabinet and craned her neck to get a better view. "Those are a lot of bottles," Suki remarked as she took in the sight of all the various shapes and sizes of the containers that lined the shelves of the pantry. They sure were giving the pot cabinet a run for its money.

The sound of the surface of the pan hitting the burner broke Suki out of her condiment daze and brought her attention back to the stove. "I think it's boiling now," she announced, pointing at the simmering water with the egg.

Edited 2008-08-02 02:42 (UTC)

"Fortunately, Sokka can't fly," Katara pointed out. "And yeah, there are a lot of bottles, but if you read the labels for each, you'll eventually find what you need."

She readied the pan on the stove, turning the dial to high and letting her hand hover over the surface of the pan. "Okay, so just like with boiling, you want to turn this dial to high, and-- oh yeah, the egg's boiling. We'll let it do so for another couple of minutes. Mmm... so, to fry things, you'll want to cover the surface of the pan with enough oil to spread across most of the bottom. Not too much, mind. Just like this..."

Katara poured some of the oil into the pan, making sure Suki watched, and enjoying the slight hissing sound she heard.

"Once that hissing gets a little louder, we'll be ready to cook."

"It gets louder?"

That hissing didn't sound like anything good. In fact, it reminded Suki of the time she accidentally stepped on a nest of viper rats. She was pretty sure the mama rat sounded just like that.

"Yes, it does," Katara nodded, blinking with surprise. Hadn't Suki ever seen what frying a dish was like? "Even louder when we start frying, which should be just about now."

Katara rubbed the back of her neck, before grabbing a pair of chopsticks, holding them out for Suki. "The oil's hot, and once you start frying, it's possible that the oil might pop now and then. Since oil doesn't have any water in it, I also won't be able to bend the oil to keep it from burning you, so..."

She bit her lower lip before unwrapping the sausages, picking one up with her own pair of chopsticks.

"I'll demonstrate for one, and then I want you to try the same thing. Got it?"

"Oh, the oil's going to pop me. I feel so confident now," Suki joked. There was a twinge of hesitancy in her tone but it wouldn't be the first time she was injured doing something. The battle scars the littered her body told the story of wounds and bruises collected through the years. But there was no reason to add another one if she didn't have to.

"But you go ahead and do it first." Suki took one step back, then another, then five more, just enough to keep her safe from any wild oil splatters. "I'll just watch from here."

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