Dinner plans
After relaxing teenage talk and having fun and a few revelations while reading news about themselves, Ling proposed to linger outside for a little while and enjoy the sunset colours. But the sun set behind a cloud above the mountain so the usual hue of oranges and red was cut short. Only slightly disappointed, the four teens returned to the main entrance to the temple to check if there was anything they were expected to do. Staying outside in increasing darkness and evening chill was less inviting.
When Marinette and Adrien learned they were expected to help in the kitchen for the dinner preparations, both of them decided to feed their kwami first (and hopefully let them continue their sleeping in the sleeping bag).
"I should, um, change my clothes?" Marinette motioned with her hands to show her all weather gear. She felt Tikki sensed her plan and did not fully approve as the kwami tapped her belly from the pocket where she was hiding.
"Yeah, we should definitely change before going to work in the kitchen." Adrien nodded eagerly while he felt Plagg scratched his chest.
"Oh, yes, you are right, we should change too." Ling added as she looked at Ye.
Both younger teens mentally facepalmed to that as they hoped for a little privacy with their kwami.
"So, do you have any idea what are our duties in preparing dinner?" Adrien asked cautiously because he never prepared dinner in his life, he only saw it prepared in various TV shows and he learned not to trust what he saw on TV rather early in his life.
"I have no idea." Marinette shrugged. They were never even close to the kitchen duty before. "But judging from what we got for dinner before, boiling a lot of rice in a large pot might be one of the duties."
"And making that tea too." Ling added with slightly disgusted face. "It is not bad, but that is not tea, it is more like a soup."
"A really strong and dense soup." Ye added.
"So far we have been eating food provided by the government. They did not expect the temple to have so much food stored to feed this many students." The guide spoke from their backs. "You will find the menu for this evening with the instructions and the ingredients in the kitchen."
Adrien thanked the guide while Marinette and the others simply nodded and acknowledged they took the order. They walked over to their backpacks and took off of the jackets and outer pants. Marinette felt a bit naked in just her tights and more concerned on where she would put her kwami so she took her onesie first, but then changed her mind and just took a long hoodie to put on. She gave Tikki a cookie and hid her in the front pocket of her hoodie.
Adrien had different problems. He instantly hid Plagg in his backpack and had an argument with his kwami while he pretended to search for something to wear.
"Oh, dinner, I am so hungry, you got more of that nice cheese from the village this morning, have you?" Plagg whined.
"Yes I have, here is your cheese. Please eat just this piece and not the whole stash because we need more for our way back to Lhasa." Adrien pleaded with his kwami.
"You can always take more from the kitchen downstairs." The tiny black cat like glutton retorted as he gulped the whole piece of the offered cheese in one bite.
"You glutton." Adrien rolled his eyes. "The cheese in the kitchen is for everyone in the temple, not just you."
"I am a god. Humans are supposed to offer me sacrifices. I would accept cheese." Plagg raised his tiny head to the edge of the backpack.
"Plagg, promise me you will stay here and behave." Adrien tried to sound stern while he was whispering.
"Why am I staying here while Pigtails is taking Sugarcube to the kitchen. It is not fair." The tiny black deity complained.
Adrien looked quickly towards Marinette and noticed how she sneaked a cookie in her pocket before he turned back.
"Because her kwami is nice and not a glutton like you." The boy whisper shouted into his backpack. Marinette noticed his ordeal and guessed what was the problem so she drawn the attention of her cousins and discussed idly as they tried to guess what were they supposed to prepare for the dinner and what would they like instead.
"I can be nice." Plagg played to be offended. "But you never give me a chance to show how nice I can be."
"Let me remind you. Flight. Business class cheese stash?" Adrien whispered.
"Oh, if I behave, can I have that on my way back?" Plagg's eyes were wide and shining from the backpack.
The three teens were discussing how it must be the fact that Adrien was the model that was making it hard for him to chose which clothes to wear for the kitchen and the dinner.
"Looking for a suit and a tie?" Ye teased as he tossed one of his oversized t-shirts towards Adrien.
"I will take you and you will behave. I'll get you more cheese on our way, but no sneaking out, okay?" The boy was negotiating with a glutton. Of course that was bound to fail. But that way, at least he had some kind of supervision over his kwami.
"Okay." Plagg replied as he crossed his fingers behind his back.
In the kitchen, a line up of large pots waited to be used. Several students were bringing in the fuel for the cooking. (In Tibet they use dried yak manure to burn the heaters and even to cook on the stoves. You can imagine the government would provide coal or wood along with the food, but not necessarily.) The students who were already there set the fuel on fire and put the large pots on top and started to pour the water inside. Dorje was already there as he was overseeing the work done so far.
"You got spared of this part of the duty because of yesterday." The monk spoke quietly and the four teens sighed.
Ye instantly jumped in to help with one of the large pots while the other students were filling the first pot with water already. Ling took out her phone first eager to take a few photos before she started with work.
Marinette was relieved to be spared from the hard physical labour as she was still tired from the whole experience and she looked for the sheet of paper with instructions for the dinner preparations. She found it easily as there was a sheet of thick paper attached to the wall. She felt rather confident to be able to prepare a simple meal as she often helped her mother in the kitchen. Her clumsiness sometimes made that help rather counterproductive, but her mother always appreciated the effort. She approached the wall to read the instructions and her eyes went wide while her heart rate picked up in panic as she stared at the sheet of paper. It was in Chinese.
"Marinette" Adrien breathed so close to her ear she jumped in the spot as she turned around and flailed her arms. She hit him in the shoulder lightly in the process before he caught her hands.
"Sorry to startle you like that." Adrien apologized quietly.
"I um, it is okay, sorry." The girl stopped waving her arms around and looked down.
"I just wanted to ask you a favour. I need your help with this. I have never cooked anything in my life. I just looked at a few cooking shows. But that is just a show, on a TV, you know, I do not know if that is even real. And your uncle, I saw your uncle cooked, and I saw your father in that show with Jagged Stone and ..." Adrien was rambling while Marinette was trying to catch up with her breath and her brain with her thoughts. She raised her hand in the air lightly.
"Adrien." She spoke quietly. But he noticed her hand before he heard her voice.
"Yes? What? Tell me what to do." The boy rubbed his hands as he wanted to show he was ready to do whatever he was asked to.
"I will need your help with this." Marinette whisper shouted. Adrien frowned. How was he supposed to help her in the kitchen? "Because." She took a deep breath and pointed her hand towards the paper on the wall. "The instructions are in Chinese." She finished in exasperated whisper.
Adrien finally raised his eyes towards the offending paper on the wall and looked carefully.
"I mean, I know a few signs from my maman when she used them in her recipes, because sometimes she used the Chinese instead of French, she stopped long ago because of papa and later me, so I do know a few signs, but I might be able to recognize a few, at best, and these are probably just the ingredients and … " Marinette rambled while Adrien took his time and studied each sign carefully.
"This is not a recipe, it is probably an old paper. Here it is stressing the importance of washing our hands before preparing food, especially after the fuel is brought to the kitchen. Then there is an ode to … flour? And something about the benefit of a good cup of the Tibetan tea to fight the cold. I am not exactly sure, it is written in verses." Adrien blinked toward the paper on the wall and then towards the girl.
"It is not a recipe?" She asked with her eyebrows up.
"Nope, it is not a recipe." Adrien replied softly.
Marinette started laughing and Adrien joined her.
"Okay, I have the dinner plan for tonight." Ling waved a sheet of paper in her hands. "We are having noodles and the government had provided a lot of dried noodles so we are not even making them, just cooking them."
Adrien frowned, he was looking forward to noodles but somehow he believed he missed on something by not making them himself.
"That is okay." Marinette whispered. "Making noodles for this many people is a chore. We would need a whole day to make them and dry them slightly and then cook them."
They were in charge of filling the pots with noodles and watched over them. On the side, few monks with the help of several students fried some flour and then added the cheese brought from the village to make the additional dish for that evening. Adrien felt Plagg scratch and groan in his t-shirt. The tiny black kwami was becoming more and more annoyed about how someone could be destroying cheese in such way. Adrien was thankful for the ambient noise and loud chatter from everyone around the pots because it muffled the noises form his kwami. Marinette heard him and recognized the complaints from his shirt as well as Tikki who chirped a few teasing remarks of her own.
"They are ruining it." Plagg complained. "Stop them, just stop them before they ruin everything."
"If you stop whining, I will let you eat my portion." The boy offered to the pocket in his t-shirt while he glanced around if anyone was watching. Of course, Marinette watched and giggled at his suffering.
"I do not want it cooked or baked, I want it raw and smelly and ..." Plagg whined.
"You can enjoy the smell now and eat it later." Tikki chirped from Marinette's pocket as she was certain that the noise around would muffle the source of the conversation.
Marinette lowered her head slightly and spoke to the pocket.
"You can have my cheese portion too if you just shut up." the girl grinned and straightened up. Then she stirred the noodles once more.
Plagg fell silent and that was enough for Adrien to smile widely.
"Why is it not cooked yet?" Marinette asked the noodles. "It was supposed to be cooked minutes ago."
"It is because we are in high altitude." Adrien smiled. "Water boils at a lower temperature here than in Paris, so tea was finished early and the water for the noddles boiled early, but it takes longer time for the noodles to become cooked if they are boiled in low temperatures."
Marinette blinked at him a few times.
"Ms Mendeleev taught that in class." She furrowed her brows as she remembered that particular part was actually taught.
"Yes, and now you have it in practice." Adrien grinned back proudly.
"Um, so how much longer should I cook them at this altitude?" Marinette looked at the noodles and resisted the urge to mix them the whole time.
"I don't have a clue for how long we should cook them, I don't have a clue about cooking, remember?" Adrien shrugged.
"But haven't you just ..." Marinette trailed off with an exasperated sigh.
Adrien smirked and then gave her a lopsided grin.
"Okay, if you do not know when it is cooked, then you will have to try them." She said and fished out one noodle. She blew on it a few times to cool it down before she offered it to Adrien to try.
"I think these could use a few more minutes." Adrien replied as he smiled back and Marinette blushed as she realized she just fed him and he ate from her hand.
"Ahem" could be heard from Adrien's pocket.
"Yes?" Adrien asked while Marinette frowned.
"I thought you were supposed to be quiet, Plagg" could be heard from Marinette's pocket.
"Perhaps you should ask to try if that cheese stuff is ready too?" Plagg proposed timidly.
Two teens and a kwami laughed their hearts out while Plagg groaned quietly how nobody understands him and his love for cheese and how it smelled so nicely while it was cooked and it was pure suffering because he could smell it but not eat it and so on and so forth until he got shushed quiet by the two teens.
Adrien and Marinette were quickly filling the bowls with noodles and handed them out. Adrien had to admit it was a hard job to do. The boy was hungry and yet his job was to fill all the bowls and make more for the second round. He looked at the noodles. They looked tasty to the hungry boy and yet he had to give each bowl away. He watched each bowl with his hungry eyes. Once the queue of hungry students dispersed, they were relieved by two monks who offered to take their duty until they ate something.
Both kids looked at them gratefully as they went to their usual place and joined Marinette's cousins while they ate.
"Noodles, finally." Adrien exclaimed before he dug into his food.
"That is because you were the cook today." Ye teased back and all four of them laughed between taking bites of food.
Adrien felt Plagg squirm in his pocket. He forgot to take the piece made with cheese. The tiny glutton will not let him forget that soon. Marinette looked at the boy worriedly. Adrien pointed to his bowl and then his pocket. Marinette understood what was missing and looked at her bowl tiredly. She took one long frustrated breath and huffed. She forgot to take the cheese too.
Their saviour plopped down beside them quickly. Dorje brought one small plate with the cheese, there were several pieces of fresh cheese. He put the small plate down between Adrien and himself and let the boy sneak a few pieces into his pocket one by one.
Plagg finally enjoyed his cheese and kept quiet although he was tempted to tease the two teens, especially when they returned to the kitchen to finish their duty.