KP One Oh One Chapter 22: Part XXII – Sweet Dumplings, a kim possible fanfic

KP – One Oh One : Part XXII Sweet Dumplings

Kim felt more than a little bit strange in Gram R's kitchen. About four in the afternoon all the women trooped into there and tied on aprons right over whatever they were wearing. Each one of them seemed to know their roles, leaving her to feel literally like a fifth wheel. Not only did she not have any idea where to begin, she had little knowledge of what they were planning to fix for the meal. She thought about Ron in the other room with his Dad and great uncle Morty. He was the one who was at home in the kitchen, yet here, for some odd reason, it was like he was forbidden to even enter the room.

Uncle Morty seemed to be rooted to a recliner in the den the whole time they were there. He didn't even rise when she shook his hand, acting like she was blocking his view of the ball game he was trying to watch the whole time. She didn't let the behavior bother her. He was apparently in his late 70s and might not have been able to get out of the chair easily. There was also every possibility he had not taste for the proceedings that day, preferring to let it all pass while he watched some random game.

Gram came and stood shoulder to shoulder with Kim. "Have you ever made pierogies?"

Kim stammered for a moment. "Uh, not that I'm aware of."

"It's really simple, dear. Just take some dough, roll it out nice and thin, then you cut it in a circle." She pulled a circular cutter about four inches across down from a hook. "Then you put something good to eat in the middle. Tonight we're going to use some fruit and jelly, since these will be for desert."

"Oh, okay, sounds like a hot pocket. So, do you bake them?"

"Oh, no. When you fold them over and seal them, you throw them in a pot of boiling water and let them cook until they float. Then you fry them in butter. Simple as can be. Now, you get started on that while I go check on the pot roast."

Kim thought furiously. The last time she had to deal with anything even vaguely resembling dough, it had been in her sophomore Home Ec class, and that time Ron was there to keep it from becoming a complete disaster. Roll it thin, Gram had said. Okay, that meant a rolling pin. The pin itself was right out where she could see it, though it was an old-fashioned one piece style instead of the more familiar version with the independent rolling handles. She found a cutting board that would be a good size to work with and set the cutter to the side.

Okay, now what about dough?

It was a good thing the kitchen was fairly large, especially with five women milling about. It seemed to her that Gram and Ron's Mom were the ones really doing most of the work, while Aunt Ida and Aunt Freda seemed to be just trying to look busy. She had seen it before, especially when her brothers wanted to keep from having extra chores assigned to them or even with some of the students in Home Ec once the class became popular again.

She looked in the refrigerator. Her Mom like to make San Francisco style sourdough and for some reason, that meant she kept a wad of dough going in the fridge all the time. It had something to do with cultures. She couldn't just whip up that kind of bread straight from scratch without the 'starter.'

There didn't seem to be anything like that in Gram's.

Slowly it dawned on her she was going to be expected to make the dough. How on Earth was she supposed to do that? Of course, she knew the basics. She would need flour and eggs and very likely some milk and perhaps some water. The only problem was she had no idea how those ingredients worked together, or how much of any one of them she would need.

She was just about to ask Jean when a piercing wail reached them. Almost immediately she took off her apron and went to see what was wrong with her daughter. Kim knew already, having taken care of babies at least a few times. It was changing time, one of the many prospects of motherhood she was most def not looking forward to. It was fine to change a child a few times on the rare occasion she was babysitting one still in diapers, it was going to be quite another thing to have to do it repeatedly, day after day after day…

Ida and Freda were starting to notice her lost puppy look, exchanging glances. Ida shook her head and went back to chopping whatever kind of vegetable working with.

Taking a deep breath, Kim admitted defeat.

"Um, Gram? How exactly do I make the dough for these pierogies?"

"Good heaven's, dear, didn't your mother ever teach you anything?" She said kindly, with a touch of amusement.

"Actually, Mom's a neurosurgeon. She's never had that much time to teach me any of that." She studiously left out the fact that her mother had long ago given up trying to teach her the fine art of cooking…not to mention that their insurance rates were high enough considering what the twins usually did to the house.

Gram went to a small box, getting out an old, tattered recipe card. "This is the recipe. Just leave out the pepper since you're making sweet pierogies."

Kim read down the list. "Does it still need salt?"

The older woman nodded. "Just follow the directions and leave out the pepper, you'll be fine."

She crossed her fingers and started hunting down the ingredients. At least the flour bin was labeled. Buttermilk and eggs from the refrigerator, salt from the cabinet. She carefully arranged all those things around the cutting board she had out and pulled out a mixing bowl.

Nervously she glanced around the kitchen. There was no sign of a mixer. In fact, considering the rolling pin was the older type, they only thing she expected to find would be a mechanical egg beater. Even that, she knew, would be dangerous in her hands, so she simply found a wooden spoon.

"Three and a half cups of flour." She read. That seemed easy enough. Carefully she measured them out, just like Ron taught her to do, using a knife to skim the heap of the top. The next part really concerned her. There was something about holding an egg that switched her brain off totally. She could walk a tightrope with a book on her head, with a glass balanced in it and not spill a drop. Put a chicken egg in her hands and it was like she was channeling all of Ron's clumsiness into one moment.

Taking the first egg in her hand, she lightly tapped it on the corner of the counter, breaking the shell ever so slightly. Turning her face slightly to the side, she held the egg with both hands over the bowl and started pulling the shell apart.

Amazingly, the contents dropped cleanly down into the bowl.

As the egg rolled down the side of the mound of flour, she realized she had forgotten to make a little bowl in the top of the flour to catch the egg. No matter, there were two more eggs to go. She used the spoon and hollowed out the top, just like preparing mashed potatoes for gravy. The second egg yielded to her light tap and its contents joined the first in the mixture.

Kim smiled. She was actually doing it. She was actually mixing the dough and hadn't gotten any shell in the mix. The smile faded as the final egg simply splintered in her fingers, breaking the yolk and sending several shards of the shell into the bowl. Carefully she picked them out, all the while sensing the eyes of the two elder matrons on her.

Carefully she added the rest of the ingredients and started stirring.

It became obvious pretty quickly why most people used mixers. For all the power and stamina in her arms, the constant circular motion in the thick mixture was making her tire quickly, yet there were still many, many lumps in the dough. She knew the mixture needed to be even and smooth. She found herself literally working up a sweat, unused to working her muscles that way.

Finally, she got it where she thought it would work and dumped the whole blob out onto the board. There was a slight snicker from across the room, making her wonder what she was doing wrong. It had to be something.

Grabbing the rolling pin, she started thinning out the dough. The only problem was everything seemed to want to stick to everything else. The dough stuck to the board, to the rolling pin, to her hands, just about everything. It was all just too wet and sticky. What was she doing wrong?

Kim risked a glance at the other women. Gram was busy with the stove and not paying her any attention, but the Aunts were watching her with rapt attention, obviously enjoying the show.

I can do anything, and that means making pierogies Kim told herself. She repeated her mantra over and over in her mind. Slowly it started dawning on her. She could do anything when Ron was with her. They were a team. Separated, they were less than the sum of their parts. Everyone could make a joke about her burning down a kitchen, but if he was there, she would have the confidence and the backup she needed to not only survive, but thrive in there.

Steeling herself with the knowledge that he was just in the other room, she wracked her brain for the answer. It came to her as she remembered watching Ron baking bread the first day of Home Ec. He greased and floured the pan. Thinking back to the cooking shows she sometimes watched with him, any time they worked with dough they used flour like a gymnast would use chalk. Carefully she scooped the whole mess back into the bowl and cleaned up what had gotten stuck. Taking a pinch of flour, she spread it on the board, on her fingers and the rolling pin. This time, things started working out a whole lot better. It still stuck, but with a little application of more flour, she finally had it under control.

Kim was just about to start cutting out the circles when Gram wandered back over. "Just a little thinner, dear. Don't want them coming out too doughy. You're doing fine. I'll put on a pot of water. Here's the filling." She placed a bowl with several kinds of chopped up fruit and walnuts. Kim rolled it out a little thinner and started making the cuts, though the first one didn't work out that well until she realized she had to use flour there too.

Gram came back one more time and showed Kim the tool for crimping down the edges all pretty. She was about to use a fork, which was just as proper, but the tool made it look all that much better. She felt extreme pride when she finally used up the filling, with only a couple of them breaking open.

She surveyed her work. Forty five minutes in the kitchen and nothing was on fire, nothing more than just a trace of flour had been spilled and her dough wasn't completely filled with bits of egg shell.

A little bead of sweat broke out on her forehead. The next part involved fire. Well, not true fire since it was an electric range, but there was heat involved and even though the next step called for boiling water, she was always afraid that she could burn that as well. After all, wasn't water composed of Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms? Both of which were highly inflammable. Somehow if there was a way to turn a boiling pot of water into a hydrogen bomb, she would stumble onto it.

No! That was not going to happen. Not in front of these women. There was not going to be a repeat of the homemade Naco incident! There were going to be no exploding jars of salsa, not scorched beefy mixture, not grated cheese melting into a ball because it was too close to the burners. No Monique having to go upstairs and take a quick shower, only to have Ron walk in on her just as she got out.

Positive thoughts, positive thoughts. Soon enough dinner would come, pass and they would likely all go to bed early, considering the age of most of the guests. Then it would be Wednesday and it would be time to head home, and the day following that would be spent with her more familiar family. Everyone was going to be there for Thanksgiving this year. Joss and Slim were coming in from Montana, Ron's parents were invited. It was going to be a full house and she also knew that meant Ron would have a certain opportunity. She smiled deeply as she dropped the first few of her creations into the rapidly boiling pot.

Throw 'em in, wait till the float, take them out. That seemed simple enough. It seemed strange boiling something like that, but it really wasn't that different from watching them make bagels at the Resnick's deli. They boiled those too, before putting them in an oven to finish.

I'm actually going to have to try this at home she thought as she put the last ones into the pot. She could get Ron to make some tex-mex filling and make Naco pierogies. Tex-Mex-Polski. Now there was a combination only an iron-clad stomach like Ronald Eugene Stoppable could appreciate.

Scooping the last of them out with a wire basket, she put the bowl aside. All that remained was to fry them golden in some butter. She could do that. Just flip them like pancakes (never mind that any attempt she had made at those in her lifetime was a disaster.)

Confidence can be a wonderful thing. It can buoy you through all kinds of dicey situations, but that only works when you have the proper skills in the first place. Overconfidence could be just as bad as doubt.

Perhaps it was overconfidence, then perhaps it was just because Kim was trying to cook wearing a dress and semi-dressy mid-heel shoes. Maybe there was something on the floor that cut down on her traction. After all, there were four women at work in that kitchen, with all kinds of food and liquids being prepared.

Using protective mitts, Kim picked up the heavy pot full of steaming water. All she had to do was dump it out in the sink. As she pivoted on her foot, she slipped. How she managed to keep any one of them in that kitchen from getting scalded, she didn't know. Perhaps it was because the water was spreading out on cold tiles, but the time she landed on her backside, it was just simply hot.

All Kim knew was that she was now lying on the floor, her backside soaked in used pierogi water with three elderly Jewish women looking at her like there was a three-eyed, green skinned creatures with an antenna sticking out of its head lying on the kitchen floor.

She also knew her face was probably just as red as her backside had turned.

That's it. I am never, ever setting foot in a kitchen again!