Title: Saffron
Word Count: 3,015
Rating: PG for mild cussing
Character(s): Kurt
Notes: I was going to post the idea that started this on glee_angst_meme, but decided I might as well try it myself.
The prompt was going to be "'Do you have any idea how hard it is to find saffron in this town?' I do – but I want to see Kurt finding that out."
Disclaimer: Don't own them. If I did, Kurt and Rachel would already have sung "Waltz for Eva and Che" from "Evita."
Summary: Kurt's meal plans are about more than just meals.
"Vegan Carrot Soup. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find saffron in this town?"
He found the magazine in the hospital gift shop two days after his dad woke up.
"Six Superfoods to Reverse Heart Disease," the cover blared. That was enough to sell him, but knowing it had "Fresh Flavors of Fall Harvests," and "Quick Chicken Four Ways" could only help.
Dad may not have been paying attention when the nutritionist came for the first of his pre-release "education sessions," but Kurt had been. The handouts had gone into the pocket file labeled "DAD HOSPITAL," and copious notes had been added to the notebook he kept in the file. While Burt picked at his salt-free, fat-free hospital meal (even Kurt had to agree that adding "flavor free" to that description was completely fair), Kurt was poring over Medline articles on his laptop, looking up words from the nutritionists handouts, and coming up with lists, and links, and articles.
It was all so complicated. All the online sources agreed, of course, that the American Heart Association handouts the nutritionist had given him were sadly mistaken. Half of the articles said the handouts were too strict about salt and fat, while the other half said the handouts didn't go far enough, and that they should be recommending a completely vegan diet.
Salt was bad – but maybe not? Fat was bad, period. Or saturated fat was bad, but monounsaturated fat was okay? Except canola oil is apparently some kind of poison? But the Canadians say otherwise! Or maybe all fat was great as long as sugars were completely out, because of the triglycerides. Carbs were bad, but whole grains were crucial. Artificial sweeteners were a godsend – or gave people migraines and made them fatter anyway. Butter was out – but so was margarine. Nonfat dairy was the key to it all – or maybe raw whole milk was? Folate was essential – unless it raised cancer risk – but too much Vitamin K might act synergistically with Dad's blood thinners and cause uncontrollable bleeding. So could too much fish oil. But fish oil was the miracle cure, too!
Uncontrollable bleeding. Kurt's laugh was only somewhat hysterical at that.
Dad couldn't have beer. That was bad. But wine was good – but maybe only red wine? Dad wasn't going to be happy about drinking wine coolers instead of beer during the World Series this year. Maybe he'd like sangria? Yeah, that could work. And look, grape juice was just as good!
During History class the next day, he pushed his class notes to one side and began drawing up meal plans. He made lists of all the foods Burt had to eat, and how many services a week of each, down one side of the paper, and began trying to place them across the days of the week on the other side.
But as much attention as he'd paid to his own diet in the past, he had never been a heart patient. He didn't know how to serve all these foods in the first place, and certainly had no clue how to make them palatable to his dad.
So on the way into the hospital he was drawn into the little bookshop by its display of magazines, their covers red and gold and green with photographs of beautiful food. He walked out of the store with Eating Well, Cooking Light, and Clean Eating tucked into his bookbag, feeling like he had some kind of plan at last.
He sat with Burt over the hospital dinner hour, doing his Algebra II homework in the chair by the bed as his father watched the local sports news and groused about his dinner, the crunchy plastic mattress, the cheap-ass hospital pillow, and McKinley's latest football loss.
Dad was itching to be out of there. But as much as Kurt wanted him home, he wanted to be ready for him. Dad was not going to die on him. They were going to get the diet right and fix him so there was not a repeat of this horrible, agonizing week ever, ever again. Or at least until Kurt was much, much older. This was incredibly important and he would be damned if he was going to screw this up. Dad's life was on the line.
And there was so much to figure out.
At home, after visiting hours, Kurt pored over the magazines. The articles made the perfect diet seem perfectly achievable – a simple matter of a few minutes a day, tossing together a few simple ingredients into delicious, heart-healthy combinations that would raise HDL, lower triglycerides, fix A1Cs and scour plaque from every artery. The pictures looked like things his father would eat – grilled meats with side salads, casseroles with crunchy toppings, hot soups, pastas.
This wouldn't be so hard. He pulled out a fresh piece of paper and began laying out plans.
By the time the doctors announced on Friday night that his father would be coming home on Monday, Kurt was ready. He had laid out the next month of meals in a spreadsheet – breakfast, lunch, and dinner neatly spaced in their own cells, with calorie counts, fat grams (separated by saturated, poly, and mono), carb and fiber counts, sodium and magnesium levels all tallied by meal and totaled by day. He had cross-checked the plan with his exam schedule and glee rehearsal times to be sure he'd be free for the longer prep times. And he had a shopping list. He'd decided to buy as much as possible before dad got home, leaving only perishables to be bought more frequently.
The list was long, and full of ingredients he didn't recognize (Quinoa? Celeriac? Hake?) But after two hours at Meijer's and shorter visits to Ray's and the tiny health food storefront downtown, he'd checked everything off his list.
Well, almost everything. The fridge was stuffed, the pantry had been cleared of Burt's salty snacks, his sweet snacks, and every type of fizzy beverage, the shelves restocked with canned beans, bags of Bobs Red Mill grains of all types, canned tuna and sardines, bottles of fresh herbs, and three different kinds of olive oil (some recipes called for extra virgin, some for plain, and some for cold-pressed, so he'd bought all three).
Dad was not going to be happy about the credit card bill next month. Kurt planned to intercept it if at all possible.
But the list wasn't complete. The carrot soup recipe called for saffron. Kurt knew what saffron was – it was a yellow dye, it was expensive, it was made from flowers, it was luxurious.
It was not sold in Lima, Ohio.
He needed it, though. The recipe called for it. The article accompanying the recipe touted the health benefits of middle eastern spices, described the delicate indescribable flavor the saffron would impart to the dish. It wouldn't be the same without it. It wouldn't be right. It might not work to help dad get better. He had to find it.
So the next day – the day that he'd planned to spend catching up on laundry, making sure dad's bed had clean sheets and dad's bathroom had clean towels, he set out to do that.
In general, the closer to Columbus, the more unusual stuff you could find in stores. It was true for music, it was true for clothes, and he guessed it would be true for food as well. He ruled out Toledo as just as provincial as Lima, if somewhat bigger, and Chicago as too far away, and pointed the Navigator East-Southeast and headed out. He'd downloaded their current American Lit reading assignment from Audible the night before, figuring he'd get some homework done along the way, and he'd look for big grocery stores off the highway. It wouldn't take long, he was sure, and then he could come home and get everything else ready for dad.
But it wasn't that simple. Store after store, he was greeted with a quizzical look or apologetic shrug. "You might try an Indian grocery," one produce manager offered. But his GPS showed no entry for "Indian Groceries." Or "Pakistani groceries" or "Ethnic groceries" and he couldn't think of anything else to type in to search and he'd already tried just "Saffron" yesterday, to no avail.
Clearly, he was incompetent. His duties were simple: get his father home, keep everything around him calm and clean, and feed him good food. Dad wasn't even home yet, and already the whole thing was falling apart. In the parking lot, he picked up the magazine again, reread the recipe, turned to page 103 for ingredient notes. The notes offered a list of online sources for unusual ingredients. Saffron was not, apparently, an unusual ingredient. Well, maybe it wasn't unusual on vegetarian communes in Vermont, where the food stylist had gone for the pictures? He imagined that every tiny grocery store in Vermont must be stocked with quinoa, saffron, turmeric and herbes de Provence. If his big-city dreams didn't work out, maybe he could move up there, where gay marriage was legal and the food was awesome.
The next stop was an upscale-looking Kroger's, not far from the national headquarters of several large corporations. His heart leapt when he walked through the door and saw a sign advertising the store's in-house sushi bar. This was definitely the kind of place he'd find what he needed. He pulled the now very creased magazine out of his back pocket to double-check the amount he'd need to buy as he wove back and forth from aisle to aisle in search of the spices. The section was big, with brands he hadn't seen elsewhere, and he started to smile as he scanned the alphabetically shelved jars. Tarragon, Turmeric, Sage, Savoury….
Shit, it wasn't here either. Not even here. He felt frustration like a hard knot in his throat as he blinked heavily.
Dad was going to die. And Kurt couldn't stop it.
He'd been driving and shopping and driving half the day. He still had to get home, and finish the laundry, and start soaking the spelt berries for tomorrow, and he had come all this damn way and hadn't found the damn saffron. And now Dad was going to die because they lived in a stupid town in the middle of nowhere with nothing but Velveeta and Hormel to eat.
Blindly, blinking back the tears he couldn't release in this strange store in this strange town, he stumbled back towards the main exit. There was a tiny café there offering probably-ancient Starbucks, and he fumbled for his wallet to buy himself a cup, dropping the magazine as he did so. An older woman behind him bent to pick it up just as he did, their hands curling around it at the same time before she handed it back to him, commenting, "I've got that one, too! I was going to try the goulash on the next page…"
Her voice tapered off as she made eye contact with him. "Hey," she said, gently, as though she was trying not to spook a horse, "Are you okay, there?" She reached out, tentatively, and put one hand on his upper arm.
Self-consciously, he dragged his hand across his mouth, trying to control his voice before he responded. "Oh, yeah," he said, his voice too high even for him. "Just … frustrated. I want to make this …." he gestured at the picture of the soup on the open page, "but I just can't find saffron anywhere!" He tried to deliver the last part with a jaunty tone, a "well, what can ya do?" sort of smile. But to his horror, he couldn't control the tremble of his chin or his bottom lip, or prevent a gasp from escaping.
And somehow, before he could even say anything, he was sitting in the one tiny booth next to the register. The woman had paid for his coffee and bundled him into the seat, taking the one across from him. She was much older – probably his dad's age - with a firm, square face and frankly unfashionable clothing, but her eyes were kind and there was no hint of scorn or derision as he spilled out the story of the day's quest, choking back sobs and wiping furiously at the tears dribbling down his cheeks.
When he'd finished and fell silent, she laid her hand over his on the table, squeezing his wrist comfortingly.
"You know, it will taste just fine without the saffron," she told him quietly. "Different, but not bad at all. I used to have to leave it out of all my recipes because it was too expensive when I was younger."
Dejected, he nodded.
"But I get that you want it," she continued. "When my dad was in the hospital in Miami, my brother and I went to 8 different stores trying to find his favorite brand of canned tapioca pudding. We got kind of crazy about it."
"Did you find it?" he sniffled. "Did he get it?"
She paused, shook her head. "They don't sell it in Florida. And he died a week later." They sat in silence for a minute, but it was a companionable sort of silence, despite the fact that the woman was a total stranger. Kurt sipped his coffee and the warmth began to settle the awful gnawing of worry in his stomach.
"Do you have another hour?" the woman said, suddenly.
"Um, I guess?" he responded, unsure of what might be coming next.
"Do you have a GPS?" When he nodded, she continued, "I know exactly where you need to go, but it's another 30 minutes in the wrong direction for you." She pulled out her phone and checked her address book, grabbed a napkin and wrote down an address. "Put that into it and go there. They'll have everything you could possibly want from that magazine."
The street address was nondescript, indicating he was headed for a strip mall in one of Columbus's northwest suburbs. She saw him wrinkling his eyebrows at it and laughed gently.
"Don't worry, I'm not sending you into a den of iniquity. Though no doubt I'd get a good price for you if I did. Here – " she fished a business card out of her wallet, showing she worked in product development at one of the local big industries. "Proof of my good citizenship. Also a way to call me if you get lost, okay?"
He nodded again, and smiled for the first time, for real, and held out his hand. "I'm sorry," he said, "I should have … I'm Kurt."
"Dorie – yes, like in Nemo," she responded, giving his hand a firm shake. She held it slightly longer than socially required, and then dropped it and held open her arms slightly, shrugging a question at him. Kurt felt his chin wobbling again, nodded, and found himself enveloped in a gentle hug, all the while wondering why he was letting a total stranger inside his defenses. Maybe this was his way of going crazy.
Back in the car, he wiped his tear-flushed face with a moist towelette from the glove box and programmed the GPS. The directions were simple, the drive was pleasant, and with a firm destination and the promise of success ahead, he was actually able to pay attention to the audiobook he was trying to catch up on. He'd be ahead in English class by the time he got home, which was something, anyway.
As the GPS told him he'd arrived at his destination, he turned into the parking lot, looked around, and laughed. There, at the end of the strip mall, was a local branch of one of the online sources of spices from the damned magazine. He hadn't even thought to look if they had a store in Ohio, just assumed there wouldn't be one.
The smell of the store was intoxicating. Jars of herbs and spices sat on low shelves, each with a sample bottle that could be opened, sniffed, touched, tasted. They had absolutely every specialty spice he'd read about in the last week, all fresh and pungent.
The store was arranged, like the grocery store spice racks, alphabetically, and Kurt moved deliberately slowly toward the S end, smelling sample blends of spices, choosing a few to take home to try to tempt his dad into eating the otherwise plain baked fish he was going to eat more of than he cared to. And finally, there it was. Saffron. Three kinds, the differences between which were carefully explained on the shelf below the display. Kurt pulled the now-battered magazine from his pocket and checked – the recipe didn't specify.
Well, after all this, dad was getting the good stuff, he reasoned. He tossed two packages of the most expensive variety into his shopping basket. That soup was going to be damn good. Dad was going to eat it, and like it, and everything was only going to get better. It had to. Because Kurt was going to make it better, one step at a time.
He listened to The Fame Monster all the way home, instead of Moby Dick.