A/N: Oh Lord! I'm an awful person. I forgot my thank yous! Gaben, thank you (as always) for being the best beta in the world! DeleaMarie, Dorian Herestor, Gaben, Sprite91360, and Valawenel thank you guys for reading, reviewing, favoriting and following! I really love that you take that minute or two to do it!
Chapter 3: Rainy Monday
Monday was the only day the old Brew-pub and new Gastro-pub was closed. It was a restaurant tradition; and one that Eliot wasn't willing to break. Hardison growled and said that Applebee's and TGI Friday's were both open on Monday's.
"Applebee's is a chain restaurant! They don't have chef's, they have untrained line cooks who are only taught to use a microwave! A microwave for God's sake! My food doesn't come from a microwave!"
"Uhhh…" Hardison scrambled to think of what would most irritate the hitter. "They've got great vegetables."
"Vegetables! You call those vegetables!" The hitter brushed the hair out of his face and slammed his German steel knife down on one of the tomatoes he was cutting. "This is a vegetable. It was raised with love and care, and harvested by hand." He pushed the ripe plum tomato into the bowl with the rest of the ones he'd been cutting. "Those… Those things they call vegetables are raised on corporate farms, fertilized with chemicals, harvested unripe by machines. Those are not vegetables!"
"Mmm… Hmmm… " Alec chuckled to himself, riling Eliot was always fun. Although this time he did have a carrot for the hitter. He looked over at Parker and nodded, it was time. "But, the steamed veggie thing at 'Outback' has lots of color. It's got orange, and green, and…"
"Rrrr…." Eliot diced the tomatoes a little bit more ferociously. He'd already blanched and skinned them; he was going to can them so that he could make tomato sauce, soup, chili, and the such over the winter. The team liked that type of comfort on cold winter days. In fact when they'd been in Boston they'd always gathered at Nate's for food and well… Whatever had come up, usually sports, the latest con, or whatever book one of the team was reading.
Hardison continued "Now those little sprinkle things that they put on the vegetables at Chili's."
"Rrrr…" The hitter kept chopping as the team's thief approached with something behind her back. He wagged the knife at her. "Don't you join in this too." He warned.
"I like Cocoa Puffs." She shrugged and pulled a book out from behind her back. "And I wasn't trying to sneak up on you."
Eliot arched an eyebrow at her and the tall man behind her; who he knew was her co-conspirator. "If you weren't, what were you trying to do?"
Parker was not good at surprises, she tossed her hair around and looked helplessly at Sophie who just lifted up the copy of Vogue she was reading to cover her face. "We…" She gained confidence in her words and the words tumbled out of her mouth "We got you this."
She whipped out a book from behind her back and carefully found a tomato free place to put it on the counter before announcing, "Can we have the spaghetti stuff for dinner?"
"Which spaghetti stuff?" Without looking up Eliot asked, he'd made many things over the last four years which had involved some type of delicious pasta dish.
Hardison laid down a wooden box on top of the book Parker had laid down. "The green stuff is what I think she wants. That garlicky stuff."
"Pesto." Eliot grunted, still not looking up. He knew his teammates well enough to know that his not looking up was driving them nuts.
"Yeah, the cheesy green stuff!" Parker bubbled; "but, with more cheese and less green stuff."
Eliot rolled his eyes; leave it to Parker to want to remove any kind of beta carotene from a meal. Or for that fact, anything healthy from a meal, in that aspect she wasn't really that different than the team's hacker. Hardison had his love of orange soda, and anything which was full of chemicals with unpronounceable names.
"What's in the box?" Eliot figured he'd strung them on long enough.
"Open it." Parker jumped up and down like a little kid. "Open it! But first, look under the box."
Very carefully, Eliot put down the knife, and methodically washed his hands. He deliberately washed his hands twice concentrating on getting everything out from under his fingernails. Tomato was a bitch to get out from under fingernails. He took the flour sack towel from its place by the sink and just as deliberately dried his hands making sure that there wasn't a drop of water anywhere on his hands, wrists, forearms, or elbows.
"Come on! Open it!" Parker was bouncing in place, barely able contain her excitement. It was like Christmas; just not in the winter. "Open it!"
Knowing that it was driving the two youngest team members' nuts, Eliot carefully wiped down the counter; delayed gratification made presents even better. And the upside was that he also got to drive both Parker and Hardison nuts!
After making sure that the counter was both clean and dry the hitter, carefully pulled the box on top of the book towards himself. He lifted the box off what was underneath and found a book. "Stocking Up: How To Preserve The Foods You Grow Naturally."
Perplexed he looked up and Park shrugged. "We see you putting all the stuff in bottles…" Her eyes lit up. "And then the yummy stuff that comes out of them."
Hardison added in, "We got it at the antique show last week." The unspoken part of that sentence was; "The antique show Sophie dragged me to because you were out looking at vegetable suppliers for the gastro-pub. And Nate just had to go with you."
"Cool thanks." The hitter opened the carefully protected dust jacket and looked inside. "Wow, this is the first time I've seen a first edition in this good a shape." He smiled and gently placed the book where it wouldn't get damaged while he was canning tomatoes.
"You like it?" Hardison asked eagerly.
Sophie smiled as she watched the exchange, her magazine sliding into her lap. Parker and Hardison had been so excited when they'd found the one booth in all of the Portland Antique Show that was dedicated to cookbooks and antique cookery.
"I love it." Eliot smiled fixing his ponytail so that hair wouldn't end up in the canned tomatoes, and thinking to himself that he'd make homemade pizza for dinner. It was one of both Parker and Hardison's favorite meals. They really liked his Pizza Margerhita.
"Open the box, open the box!" Parker's enthusiasm was infectious and had Sophie smiling as Nate walked in carrying a book.
The mastermind went to ask what was going on; but, Sophie sshh-ed him and pointed over at the interchange going on at the island in the kitchen.
Eliot was sliding open the stained wooden box and staring in fascination at what was in the simple velvet lined box.
"Whaaa… Wh…?" He stuttered. It was the first time Nate or Sophie had ever seen him truly speechless. The hitter carefully drew out the wooden handled knife and stared reverently at it. "Where did you find a Zwilling in this kind of condition?"
"Zwilling?" Hardison looked quizzically at Parker and then Eliot. "It's a Henkel's knife. The… The guy said that it was made in something like 1750." A pissed off look crossed his face "Did we get a bad knife?"
Eliot chuckled, and then started laughing. "Peter Henkels registered the trademark, Zwilling in 1731with the Cutlers' Guild of Solingen. In 1771 Peter's son, Johann renamed their knife company Henkel's. So you're completely right; it is a Henkel's knife but, it was made by Johann's father Peter before the formation of the company Henkel's." Without looking up Eliot lovingly caressed the simple cooking knife, "Do you have any idea of how precious this knife is?"
"Thought you'd like it." The hacker tried for a manly tone; but, the touchdown like dance he was doing around Parker and the open area of kitchen kind of belied that.
E/N: The book Stocking Up is real; and there are two editions, the first was published in 1973, and the second in 1974. I guess it was really popular; although the idea of a book published in the 1970's by the editors of Organic Gardening and Farming being a bestseller amuses me. And the knife history is all real. My knife set is by Henkel's; I love them! In fact I saved up and bought my knives one by one in order to get the full set; in fact they would probably be one of the two or three things I'd rescue in a fire.
And the funny thing is this was going to be a ficlet on the book Stealing the Mystic Lamb by Noah Charney. Which while being a kind of dry is a history of the most stolen painting in the world: The alter-piece of Ghent. And totally the type of book I can see Nate or Parker reading.
