MCA #1- Saturday evening

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MCA #1- Saturday evening

Rey could cook just fine. It wasn't ever fancy or anything, but it was perfectly serviceable food that you'd be perfectly fine eating. However, when you had basically a domestic god for a boyfriend, it would be dumb to not have him teach you a few things.

"I'll warn you, I have probably only the basics of equipment here," she said as she looked through a cabinet. "But I do have them."

And if they needed anything she didn't have, they'd make it work.

[For the guy from that thing.]

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"Basics are just fine," Adrian assured her. After all, they were cooking at her place because he used his fireplace to cook as often as his stove. Possibly moreso if they were counting potions. "No reason to get a bunch of fancy equipment if it's barely ever going to be used, right?"

He grinned at her. "Do you know how to make fresh pasta?"

"I'm guessing that doesn't mean out of a box," she said slowly. "I don't yet."

"I absolutely don't," he confirmed with a grin. "Making homemade pasta is easy, requires very few ingredients, and no specialized equipment if you're willing to work a little hard."

Sure! Standmixers and pasta machines made it even more simple convenient and simple, but he figured this was a great way to prove how little you needed to make something delicious.

"And, once you get comfortable making your own pasta, you can start experimenting with it, too. Adding herbs, spices, vegetables, squid ink...the pasta is as customizable as whatever dish you intend to make with it. We just need flour, eggs, salt, and olive oil. If you've got that, you've got pasta."

And she appreciated that. Watch her trying to find a discount pasta machine.

"I do have those things," she said, "and did you say squid ink?"

Flour, eggs, that was stuff you kept on hand. Squid ink, ehhh.

"I did, but that's a later experiment," Adrian said with a laugh. "I'd be way more surprised if you did."

"I don't think they sell that at Summer's store," she said. "And if they do, I can guarantee I have never been in that aisle for anything."

Like, he was going to have to teach her about spices here.

When he discovered the bare bones of Rey's spice cabinet, Adrian might need to take a moment to recover.

"I promise, we won't start experimenting with squid ink until you're ready," he teased. "We've got awhile before we get there, though. I promised just basics today, right?"

At least the rest of her pantry was stocked! With non-perishables.

"You did, and I appreciate that," she said, starting to get the ingredients out. "I don't usually do all this for myself."

Spices were important, Rey!

"Why not?" Adrian asked, watching her move about with a soft smile on his face. Shh, he just liked looking at her, okay?

How dare.

"I'll do smaller things, but... I don't know," she said thoughtfully. "Maybe because anything is better than what I used to have and that's good enough? I try more when I had someone else to cook for."

He was unrepentant.

"Rey?" he said, voice low and inquiring, and he reached for her hand, drawing her into his chest. He didn't care what she was holding or reaching for at that moment, nothing was more important than this. He looked down into her eyes and said, "You're worth more than 'good enough.'"

"I know," she said, smiling softly up at him and giving him a little kiss for that. "I can be better about acting on that."

She'd admit it! He wouldn't have loved her imposter syndrome phase.

He surely would not have.

He bent down and gave her a much longer kiss in return. For...the answer, sure! For that very good answer and not just because that hadn't been nearly long enough for his mouth to be against hers.

"Good," he said, several moments later. "I would hate for us to have our first fight over this."

"There would be no way for me to come out of that looking good," she smiled.

One more kiss. Because it'd been like ten seconds.

"And I'd prefer no fights." Wouldn't that be great? Just smiles and kissing and no problems ever.

Well, Adrian had heard something about how great making back up was...but yeah. He was really, really okay with not fighting.

"Possibly the only time that could ever be true," he told her, again, several minutes later. "You look amazing every other time."

She was just going to stay nice and close anyway. Sure, they were supposed to be doing stuff, but oh no, her arms were around him.

"We didn't actually fight, you don't have to flatter me," she teased.

"A witch has the duty to speak the truth whenever possible," Adrian said, using the pompous and self-important tones one of the warlocks used whenever he spoke. Or, rather, pronounced. Mere speaking didn't accurately convey the sheer amount of self-importance the man radiated. "Don't like it, take it up with observable reality."

"I'm not sure I have enough time for that. I may have to just allow it," she said. One more kiss. Shut up. He was great.

Who was going to rush them? The eggs?

"Observable reality thanks you," he said with a laugh and then kissed her one more time, so there.

The flour was a surprising stickler for timing.

"I thank you, too." One more. Just one. "That was a thank you."

Cooking was great.

The flour could take several seats, lest it find itself replaced by 00 grade flour as was proper for pasta.

He laughed again, soft and...fond. Definitely the right word. Fond. "If this is a great way to sneakily get out of cooking, it's working."

"I wouldn't dream of it," she laughed. "We do have a habit of getting distracted."

Not that she ever regretted the distractions. She was a big fan of the distractions when they happened.

"Fully your fault," he told her. "You're very distracting. But here, should we start for real?"

"It was your fault," she countered, finally pulling away from him. "But yes. It's not like you're leaving for a while."

In fact she would be insulted if he left before morning. So they had time.

"Mmm, nope, I'm pretty sure it's your fault," Adrian said, moving with Rey back to the counter. What, like he was supposed to let her go? There was plenty of time for that when they started cooking for real. "One hundred percent of witches in the room agree."

Hopefully. Hopefully they let go of each other while cooking for real.

"I could say the same about one hundred percent of the Jedi, and then where are we?"

"Possibly about to have our first fight," Adrian said with a grin, kissing her again. "Do you have a kitchen scale?"

"I'll win it," she said, smiling. "And I definitely do not have that."

"Well, we'll just have to estimate," he said. "Measuring cups? There's what? A hundred twenty, hundred twenty-five grams in a cup?"

Sure, Adrian. Who doesn't know the grams to cup ratio?

"I have measuring cups," she said, reaching back towards that drawer without letting go of him to get the measuring cups. "And a phone for the conversation."

"Even better," he declared. "So, for pasta, we want one egg or twoish egg yolks per hundred grams of flour, and we want a mix of yolks and whole eggs. I usually use about four hundred grams of flour and two eggs and three to four yolks, depending on the size of the eggs. So that should be...around three cups?"

Definitely looking at Rey to check his math and conversions here.

"I think I've figured out the reason I don't do this for myself," Rey said.

But she was finally letting go of him to Google whatever that all was.

"Why not?" Adrian asked, because who didn't want to do math while also cooking?

"This part is probably more work than the cooking part itself," she said, giving him a light kiss for being adorable.

And then finishing her Google and grabbing the flour.

"But it's all worth it in the end," Adrian promised. "You'll see the first time you try it. Will you measure out the flour?" He went grab a sponge to clean the counter. "It can go right on the counter."

"I can," she said, doing just that. "What happens if you get the measurements wrong?"

Surprising no one, Rey was a 'throw things in and see how it works out' kind of girl.

"You don't have to worry about being exact," Adrian said. "It's something you kind of figure out as you go. Too much flour and the dough becomes stiff and crumbly and hard to work. For that, add a bit of moisture, a little at a time, until it becomes a better texture. Too many eggs, and the dough becomes too sticky and wet, and it will taste like eggs, even once it's cooked. The fix for that is slowly adding a bit more flour. So using the wrong amount of either is fixable, but you want to even it out very slowly, so you don't end up caught in a loop of overcompensating with either ingredient."

It probably wouldn't be the best pasta either, but Adrian had found that pasta in general was pretty forgiving.

"That's good to know," she said, dumping the measured flour on the clean counter. "Now probably the eggs?"

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MCA #1- Saturday evening

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