"Let me get this straight. You three want to take over the kitchen?" Corporal Clark looked at the three nurses in front of him, wondering how anyone could be crazy enough to volunteer to prepare the food for over fifty people.
"That's right," Darlene replied.
Jo, who was basically dragged here by Erin and Darlene, sighed, "Come on you two, this'll be too much work."
"Hey, I'm glad to give you three the job, but you better get it done or your mess will be on my hands!"
"We'll get it all done, and done better than any army cook," Erin watched as Clark raised an eyebrow, "no offense."
"Alright. I'll finish up lunch, but after you three had your chow time, you better get to work right away."
Darlene smiled and nodded, "You got it!"
/scene/
The three nurses found themselves back at the mess tent avidly eating their lunch. Not because it was delicious (it was leftover breakfast from leftover yesterday's dinner to no one's surprise), but because they wanted to get in the kitchen as quickly as possible.
"So, I don't know how to make rum cake," Darlene said between spoonfuls of peas, "but I make a preatty good vanilla loaf cake. As long as Clark has some leftover pastry ingredients, I should be able to make enough for twenty or so people with the amount of time we'll have."
Darlene looked over to Jo, "You think you could cook the vegetables, Josie?"
She nodded. "Hopefully there's some sort of spices in there that I can use besides salt and pepper. Otherwise I'll try my best to make a culinary delight out of frozen green beans leftover from World War Two."
"Everything sounds good so far, but what's Christmas dinner without some sort of meat for the main course?" Erin asked.
Darlene waved her hand dismissively. "Don't worry, right before we went to the kitchen I gave Porter fifteen bucks to drive down to the 7089th and negotiate for some ham."
Erin nodded, supposing she'd be the one in charge of preparing the ham. "He'll be back in time with the ham, right?"
Darlene didn't think about timing before. She only asked him an hour ago, and it was nearly half an hour's drive just to get to the 7089th.
"Hopefully."