Title: A Turkey By Any Other Name
Author: Kathy Rose
Rating: PG
Beta: Kylie Lee
Summary: Thanksgiving dinner on Enterprise, as prepared by the senior staff.
Trip Tucker was barely awake as he trudged down the corridor. It was a good two hours before alpha shift, and most of the crew, except for those on the smaller nighttime shift, were snug in their bunks. That was where Trip wished he was. But they were going to use some of his mother's recipes, so even if he hadn't agreed to help, he'd better be there to make sure they did everything right.
He yawned as he walked into the mess hall. This early, the place was empty, the lights dim. He stopped at the beverage dispenser for a cup of coffee before heading for the galley. The sounds of rhythmic thumping came to him as, cradling the coffee cup in his hands, he used his elbow to push open the swinging door to the kitchen area.
"Trip! There you are!" Hoshi greeted him anxiously. The diminutive communications officer had smears of flour on her cheeks and all over the full apron she wore over her uniform. On the counter in front of her was a large mound of dough.
"What time did you get here?" Trip asked curiously as he perched on a stool at one of the work counters.
"About an hour ago," Hoshi replied. "Where have you been? Where's everybody else?"
Trip watched, bemused, as she practically attacked the dough on the flour-covered counter. "Calm down, Hoshi. It's only one meal."
"One meal!" She paused, wrist deep in the dough, to stare incredulously at him. "You of all people should know how important this meal is. This version of it started as an American tradition."
"So it's a big meal," he conceded. He blew on his coffee to cool it. "You've got plenty of time, and I'm sure reinforcements will be here soon. Then you can delegate to your heart's content."
Hoshi leaned against the counter, looking forlornly at the mess before her. "Whatever possessed me to think I could make dinner rolls from scratch?" she wondered.
Trip took a cautious sip of his coffee. It was hot, but the tiny amount he'd managed to swallow helped open his sleepy eyes. "You don't have to do everything," he pointed out. He took another sip, hoping the caffeine would kick in soon. "Maybe one of the others has done this before."
"Yeah, right," she responded sarcastically. "Have you?"
He shook his head. "My mother always wanted everyone to stay out of the kitchen when she was fixin' Thanksgiving dinner. She said we got underfoot." A fond smile crossed his face as he thought about past Thanksgivings at his family's home. He'd already told Hoshi about the time he'd taken all the screws out of the dining room table, which had collapsed as soon as his father had put the turkey on it. Come to think of it, though, it had usually been his father's fault if something went wrong on Thanksgiving. "There was one time my father was tryin' to be helpful, and he checked the oven controls. Wound up he reset the controls and turned the oven off. That turkey sat in there for three hours before my mother realized it wasn't cooking. She was so mad!" He laughed at the memory. "We didn't eat until about nine o'clock that night."
Hoshi snorted in amusement as she folded dough over. "That's not going to happen here if I can help it, but I bet no one knows how to do this." She looked thoughtfully at the pummeled dough. "T'Pol doesn't use her hands to touch food, so there's no sense asking her. Doctor Phlox doesn't know how to cook Earth food. Malcolm..." She paused to roll her eyes. "Half the time he doesn't even pay attention to what he's eating, so I seriously doubt he knows how to fix anything more complicated than scrambled eggs. Travis might know, but he probably watched his father make dinner instead of doing the actual work. Either that, or they ate nothing but nutripaks." She looked hopefully at him. "What about the captain?"
Trip hated to disappoint her. "I think after his mother died, he and his father probably went out to eat on Thanksgiving, or they visited relatives."
Hoshi shook her head. "I guess it's up to me."
"Just follow my mother's instructions, and I'm sure the rolls will turn out fine. What about the turkey?"
She strode over to the walk-in cooler, wiping her hands on her apron as she went. She opened the door and stood aside. Trip could see two rows of turkeys lined up on shelves.
"That looks like that should be plenty," he said. "When do we put them in?"
"About oh-eight-hundred if we want to eat at noon," Hoshi said, glancing at the clock just as the galley door swung open to admit another of her sous chefs for a day. "Travis!" Hoshi exclaimed. "Have you ever made dinner rolls?"
The tall helmsman covered his mouth with one hand as he yawned widely. "No," he mumbled. "But I've eaten a lot of them. Does that count?"
Hoshi let out a sigh. "I've got a job for you, then." She pulled a stool over in front of a counter on which were several bags of potatoes. She retrieved a paring knife, handed it to him, and said, "Start peeling."
Travis didn't bother to stifle another yawn as he moved to follow her orders. He did, however, cast an envious glance at Trip, who sat doing nothing more than drinking coffee.
Catching Travis's glance, Hoshi said, "I've got a job for him, too." She marched over to a cabinet and pulled out several loaves of bread. "This all needs to be cut into cubes for the stuffing."
"Rolls, potatoes, stuffing," Trip said, setting his coffee cup on the counter as he rose to accept his task. "Isn't this a little heavy on the starches?"
"Isn't that what Thanksgiving dinner is all about?" Hoshi asked. "Too much heavy food that you have to sleep off afterward? Instead of American football, you and the captain can doze off watching a water polo match. Some new game recordings were transmitted to us from his alma mater yesterday, by the way." She huffed and looked pointedly at him. "Your mother gave us the stuffing recipe, too, and she wants me to write to her and tell her how it and everything else turned out. Just be thankful we don't have any yams on board, or we'd be fixing them, too."
Trip had just started cubing bread with a large serrated knife when the swinging door opened to admit T'Pol and Phlox. The Vulcan first officer surveyed the scene with an air of resignation. The Denobulan physician, however, was brimming with energy. He rubbed his hands together gleefully. "Ah! Another quaint human cultural tradition! I've been reading up on it. What would you like me to do? Stuff the turkeys, perhaps?"
"No!" Hoshi cried in alarm. "No one's stuffed a turkey for more than a hundred years."
"I can understand that. It's safer to prepare the stuffing separately, to ensure that both it and the turkey are cooked thoroughly." Phlox shrugged good-naturedly. "Still, I was rather looking forward to it."
"Ensign Sato," said T'Pol, who stood with her hands clasped behind her back. "You could save yourself--and us--a great deal of trouble if you would use resequenced protein for some of the dishes."
"What?" cried Trip and Hoshi in unison.
In his astonishment at T'Pol's suggestion, Trip had almost nicked himself with the bread knife. "You have to use real food, or it just wouldn't be right," he said indignantly. "You expect us to sit around a table and give thanks for resequenced protein? I don't think so."
"Besides," Travis put in from his potato-peeling station, "the captain told Chef we'd take care of this. And Chef never uses anything resequenced for our Thanksgiving meal."
T'Pol's gaze swept the others before coming to rest on Phlox. "I find it highly suspicious that Chef developed a stomach ailment a day before this annual orgy of excessive food consumption."
"The man is in severe pain, Commander," Phlox said reasonably. "He can barely tolerate the smell of food at the moment. It would be cruel to expect him to work around food right now, much less prepare a meal of this size."
"Still, it would be--"
"Quit squabbling and start working!" ordered Hoshi, who had turned around from one of the cabinets with her hands full of pie pans.
Trip was beginning to get an idea of how much of a taskmaster Hoshi was going to be. He was reminded of the time they'd been under the influence of radiation while investigating a black hole in a trinary star system and Hoshi had taken over for Chef. At least this time, they'd get to eat something besides oden. He just hoped it wasn't batch after batch of dinner rolls.
T'Pol and Phlox were instructed to work together to make fourteen pumpkin pies. Hoshi handed over another of Trip's mother's recipes for that project, and the alien pair went in search of the ingredients in the galley's pantry.
If only his mother could see them now, Trip thought with a grin. His amusement was short-lived, however, as Hoshi rounded on him, telling him to hurry up. He uttered a respectful, "Yes, ma'am," and began chopping faster. When he was finished making big pieces of bread into smaller pieces, Hoshi informed him, he was to dice onions and chop parsley for the stuffing. It was clear that Hoshi trusted him with a knife, although he thought surely Doctor Phlox would be good in that department and ought to take a turn.
Hoshi stood with her hands on her hips, surveying the work, only to swing around when the galley door behind her was pushed open yet again. Jon and Malcolm stopped just across the threshold to take in all the activity.
"It looks like you have everything in hand, Hoshi," Jon said. "Maybe you don't need us?"
The hopeful expressions on both Jon and Malcolm's faces fell when she said, "Not so fast, sir! There's plenty for everyone to do." She pointed toward some trays of fruit and sliced quick breads. "Put those in the mess hall serving cabinets."
Malcolm looked dubiously at the trays. "This isn't very much for breakfast."
"We are going to have enough food to last for days when we get this Thanksgiving meal done," Hoshi snapped. "No one needs a large breakfast today."
She went to check on T'Pol and Phlox's progress, and Jon and Malcolm picked up the trays and headed for the door. As Jon passed Trip, he murmured, "She's enjoying this way too much."
Trip tried not to laugh, afraid that Hoshi would hear and find yet something else for him to do. "You're the one who put her in charge of this," he reminded the captain.
"Hey! Get moving!" Hoshi yelled at Jon and Malcolm from across the room as she emerged from the pantry, followed by T'Pol and Phlox. "I've got more work for you."
"Yes, ma'am," Jon said meekly, but not before whispering to Trip, "And I thought I ran a tight ship!"
Trip shrugged and concentrated on his task. When Jon and Malcolm returned, Hoshi ordered the tactical officer to the potato-peeling station to assist Travis. The captain she set to rolling knifes, forks, and spoons in napkins for the place settings.
"I don't recall Chef doing this for last year's Thanksgiving," Jon complained. "We just picked up the utensils in the serving line like usual."
Hoshi glared at him. "That's where Chef and I are different. He may fix the traditional food, but we're going to have an honest-to-goodness real Thanksgiving meal this year, with tablecloths and place settings on the tables. Oh, and we'll be serving the crew."
All chopping, peeling, and mixing came to a halt as every eye in the place went to her.
"I'm going to make this a Thanksgiving meal to remember if it's the last thing I do," Hoshi said determinedly. "That includes the senior staff serving the crew. And I don't want Mrs. Tucker to find out that I messed up her recipes."
"County fairprize-winning recipes," Trip put in.
Hoshi fixed her stern gaze on him, silencing anything else he might say. As he hurriedly went back to chopping, she turned to Phlox and T'Pol. "Haven't you got the filling mixed yet?" she demanded. "Those pies need to go in the oven and bake before we can put the turkeys in."
"We are working as fast as we can," T'Pol calmly informed her. "However, we could proceed more quickly if you quit haranguing your kitchen staff."
Hoshi didn't say anything. She didn't have to. Everyone in the galley heard the growl she made. T'Pol raised one eyebrow, looked at Phlox, and dipped her head toward the large bowls on the counter next to them. Without a word, they returned to mixing the pie filling. Trip noticed that T'Pol tended to do things like open cans and stir, while Phlox did anything that involved directly touching the food. How did Vulcans cook if they didn't like to touch food?
"There!" Trip said, pushing the large container he'd filled with bread cubes to the side. "Bring on the onions."
Hoshi walked over to a cupboard and pulled out a mesh sack of onions. She plopped it down on the counter in front of him.
"How many of these do you want cut up?" Trip asked, eyeing the sack. He estimated it would take at least a half hour to go through the whole batch, not counting the times he would have to stop to wipe his eyes when they teared up.
"All of them," came Hoshi's short reply.
Trip set to work. For a few minutes, there was no talking as everyone went about their appointed tasks. Hoshi must have been satisfied with their progress, Trip thought, for she returned to her roll-making. Then, just as he was about to sneak another sip of his coffee, he heard her call out.
"Hey! You two with the potatoes! Quit fooling around. Just cut them up instead of carving miniature phase pistols!"
The mess hall was empty. The crew members who had eaten had staggered out some time earlier with overly full stomachs. Chef's regular staff was in the galley doing cleanup and making up plates for those in the crew who had volunteered to stay on bridge and engineering duty during the meal. There was no sound but muted conversation and laughter from the captain's private mess, where Jon and the senior staff sat around the table upon which sat empty serving bowls and a platter with the remnants of a large turkey.
Trip, savoring the last bite of his slice of pumpkin pie, couldn't help but think his mother would have been pleased. This Thanksgiving dinner hadn't been quite as good as those she had prepared, but it had been close. Too bad they had only had pumpkin pie for dessert. Trip thought he could have made room for another slice of pie if it had been his favorite -- pecan. It would have been the perfect ending to the meal they'd just eaten.
"That had to be the best meal I've had on board since Enterprise was launched," Jon said from his place at the head of the crowded table.
Hoshi, seated to his right and looking a little tired, smiled warmly at his praise.
From his spot on the other side of Hoshi, Trip put in, "Just don't tell Chef. He might go on strike if he gets jealous." As all the others but T'Pol laughed, he added, "No offense, Hoshi, but I didn't sign up with Starfleet to be stuck in the kitchen all day."
"It is just as well," T'Pol remarked from her seat on the other side of the table from Trip. "Your skills are put to better use in the engine room than the galley." Her gaze traveled around the table as she put down her fork after taking the last bite of green bean casserole that had been on her plate. As a vegetarian, she had naturally not partaken of the turkey, but there had been more than enough other foods at this traditional Thanksgiving feast to satisfy her nutritional needs. "All of you are much better suited for your usual duties."
"If that's your way of saying we're good Starfleet officers, thank you," Jon said with a lopsided smile.
"Come on, Commander," Travis said coaxingly. "Like the captain said, this was the best meal we've ever had."
T'Pol tilted her head as she considered. "Perhaps by human standards, the food was good--"
"I'm not sure, but I think she just complimented us," Malcolm said in a stage whisper, garnering chuckles from the others.
"--but the execution of its preparation left something to be desired," T'Pol finished. "For one thing, there are more efficient ways of preparing food, other than 'from scratch.'"
Dead silence greeted her remark. Trip glanced at Hoshi. To his surprise, the communications officer didn't appear to be angry. Peeved, maybe, or a little irritated, but not really, truly upset. Then he saw a light come into her tired brown eyes.
"As you pointed out, Commander, galley duty isn't my usual assignment," Hoshi said. She looked at the napkin that T'Pol had placed next to her plate after folding it neatly when she'd finished eating. "But it must have been pretty good, even by Vulcan standards. I noticed the finger food didn't slow you down too much."
Trip tried to hold back a laugh, but couldn't. When T'Pol looked at him, he gestured toward her napkin. "I don't think I've ever seen someone use a napkin to hold a roll they were eating."
T'Pol looked like she wanted to say something, but Jon quickly said, "You did very well, Hoshi."
Trip recognized Jon's timely intervention as a double-pronged attempt to head off an argument as well as to smooth any ruffled feelings on Hoshi's part. He'd be the first to agree that the linguist had done a heck of a job getting such a large meal ready for more than eighty people in one morning, so he was quick to back Jon up. "That's right, Hoshi. We couldn't have been the easiest people to supervise. I don't think any of us has had much experience in the kitchen. My mother will be proud when she hears how well all this turned out." He glanced pointedly at the napkin by T'Pol's plate. "The rolls especially seemed to be a big hit. It's lucky we managed to save a few for when we finally got to eat."
"The crew seemed to appreciate the senior staff bringing the food to their tables," Phlox said. He leaned back and patted his stomach in satisfaction. "It certainly was an intriguing gastronomical experience. I'll admit that the cranberry sauce, which I've never had before, complemented the other items on the menu very well, even if there were a lot of heavy, starchy foods."
Travis pushed back a bit from the table and let out a groan. "Yeah. Wasn't it great?" he said with a strained smile.
The others laughed, for Travis's well-known ravenous appetite had been put to the test with the wide variety of food that had been on the table. The helmsman had had at least two helpings of each.
"There's one last thing we need to do," Trip said. He reached over and slid the platter with the picked-over turkey carcass towards him. "Who gets to pull the wishbone?"
"I think Hoshi ought to have that honor," Malcolm said as Trip pried the V-shaped bone from the wreckage of the main course. "She was in charge of this whole affair, and a bang-up job she did of it, too."
As the others murmured their assent, T'Pol asked, "Pull the wishbone?"
"I think we've found our second candidate," Jon said with a grin. When T'Pol shifted her puzzled gaze to him, he explained, "It takes two to pull a wishbone."
"What is the purpose of 'pulling the wishbone'?" she asked warily, eyeing the object in question.
"Normally," Trip said, holding the wishbone up for her to better see, "you let this dry out for a few days, so it breaks more easily. But we're not going to wait. One person takes hold of each side, and on the count of three, they pull."
"And you have to make a wish!" Phlox guessed delightedly.
"You're supposed to wait to see who wins--that's the person who has the bigger piece of the wishbone after it breaks--then the winner makes a wish," Jon clarified.
"We didn't do it that way in my family," Travis spoke up. "My brother and I always got to pull the wishbone, and we each made a wish, and then only the winner's was supposed to come true."
T'Pol looked around the table as the comments died down. When her gaze came to Malcolm, he said defensively, "Don't look at me. Playing with our food at the dining table was severely frowned upon in my family."
Trip laughed and said, "Go on, T'Pol. Give it a try." He held the wishbone out toward her. "Who knows? This might be the first time in recorded history that a Vulcan has participated in this particular human custom."
T'Pol shot a glance at Jon at the head of the table.
"Go ahead, T'Pol," Jon encouraged her. "After the great job you and Phlox did with the pies, I think you deserve it."
In resignation, T'Pol looked at Hoshi and asked, "If you have no objections...?"
"It's fine by me," Hoshi replied. "Although I'm warning you: I'm going to make a wish ahead of time."
T'Pol dipped her head in acknowledgment. "As shall I."
T'Pol still looked reluctant, so Trip handed the wishbone to Hoshi, who took it by one of the legs of the V and held it so that the other leg was toward T'Pol. The Vulcan looked at the wishbone, then reached for her napkin and, to chuckles and snickers from the other diners, leaned across the table toward Hoshi and grasped the proffered wishbone stem with the cloth.
"Cap'n," Trip said, "if you'd do the honors?"
"Certainly. Are you ready?" Jon asked the two women. At their answering nods, he said, "One. Two. Three. Pull!"
Both Hoshi and T'Pol tugged as hard as they could, but the wishbone refused to yield. Vulcan strength seemed to be winning, as Hoshi was slowly dragged from her chair towards T'Pol. Trip was wondering if they were going to have to put a stop to it before someone got hurt or Hoshi got dredged through the last of the gravy in the bowl in front of her when he saw T'Pol twist her wrist slightly. The wishbone suddenly snapped, and Hoshi, with the larger piece in her hand, landed back in her chair with a thud. As the others offered their congratulations to Hoshi, Trip could have sworn he saw a look of satisfaction cross T'Pol's face, but it was gone as quickly as it had appeared. She'd made that move to break the wishbone on purpose, knowing that Hoshi would have the larger piece, Trip realized.
"So, what did you wish for?" Travis asked Hoshi.
"She's not supposed to tell," Jon admonished him, "or it won't come true."
"That is a superstition," T'Pol said, placing her broken piece of the wishbone on her plate. "Wishing does not make something happen, much less as predicted by the breaking of a bone from a cooked fowl."
Hoshi waved her piece of wishbone in the air to get the others' attention. "I have to agree with T'Pol. But I really do wish my wish would come true," she said with a smile. "As much as I enjoyed this whole Thanksgiving experience, my wish is that we don't have to make this meal again next year."
There were rumblings of agreement and laughter from around the table.
"What about you, T'Pol?" Trip asked. "What did you wish for?"
T'Pol raised an eyebrow. "What an intriguing coincidence."
"That's not a wish!" Travis said.
"No, it is not," she agreed. "I merely meant that my wish was the same as Hoshi's. I wished that we will not have to prepare this meal again next year."
"Oh, boy," Trip said. "I think we're in trouble now. Hoshi and T'Pol wished for the same thing, but only the winner's wish is supposed to come true."
Jon cleared his throat. "Actually, that wouldn't have been a problem, but Hoshi told us her wish, so that means it won't come true."
"If we follow that line of reasoning, that means we will be making Thanksgiving dinner again next year," Malcolm grumbled.
As the others groaned good-naturedly, T'Pol insisted, "There is no logic in wishing."
Trip snickered. "Well, I guess that's just one more thing to be thankful for, but I'm going to ask my mother for her pecan pie recipe for next year--just in case."
--- the end --