Author's Note: Don't know why I got fixated on food preparation, maybe because of Ratatouille. Anyways, I'm turning this thing into me oneshot reservoir for the Teen Titans. And no, I don't own jack.

Began: 7/3/2007

Finished: 7/3/2007

Summary: She was a disaster in the kitchen, but she knew her tofu...

Between Ravens and Tofu; a Star-crossed Meeting

Raven was a legend when it came to the kitchen. Not because she could cook, but because she couldn't. At all.

Sure, Starfire's creations were mutate-y and had a tendency to try to eat those trying to eat it, but at least her stuff comes out right occasionally (the rest of the Titans tend to believe that they came out right since Star seemed to enjoy scarfing the- delicacies down). Raven's stuff never came out right. Never.

In desperation, she turned to her trusty, kitchen-able friends.

She's tried to get cooking lessons from Cyborg. After she cleaned out the fridge of meat with nothing to show for it, besides a very much massacred kitchen, Cy refused to educate our favorite empath in the fine art of the food preparation (his words, as it were).

She'd turned to Robin next. It was a rather desperate gambit. Though Rob could cook, his stuff came out rather bland. It tasted right and all, but there was something very much missing. Probably because Robin never thought of cooking as an art form, not a line of passion could be found on his body when he handled the kitchen implements. They tried to prepare meat, they tried to prepare fruits and vegetables, and they even turned to vegetarian cuisine (she was utterly delighted at this turn of events but had no idea why her emoti-clones were so excited- even Rage's grumblings quieted to a simmering; she shrugged it off with a meh).

Every encounter was a disaster. One after the other, every single dish came out, without fail, to be inedible in one way or another. From being utterly revolting to being burned (how'd you manage that with a salad!!?) the disasters kept on piling up. But Robin, being Robin, stuck it out a little longer than Cyborg. After a week of the same thing happening over and over again, the fearless leader called it quits. Threw in the towel, so to speak. The fact that Raven's powers nearly brought down the tower from the pent up frustration might have affected the decision making process.

Finally, she turned to Starfire. If she couldn't make earth cuisine, maybe she should try her hand in un-earthly fare. This was a disaster to outdo all the other culinary disasters that came before. On the first try, the very first, Raven created an abomination that nearly ate the tower. Failing that (the two Titans were fiercely protective of their home), it had tried to make it to the mainland. The boys were pulled in to help stop the menace and it took the combined effort of all five of the core Titans to subdue the beast (funny enough, the thing was green).

After that disaster, she began to despair. She became more mope-y than was usual and began to turn to brooding. Her three teachers looked on sadly but didn't dare to even think about allowing Raven into the kitchen again.

Finally, Beast Boy intervened. After pranking her for a week straight and getting no response (not even a freakin' twitch), he'd had enough. Usually, Raven vented on him whenever he decided to pull one of these inanities on her (usually whenever he thought she was getting too down- he firmly ignored the voice in his head that told him he was suicidal and that only a love-struck idiot would pull things like that), but not this time. The green elf cornered the brooding sorceress and demanded that she spill. After holding out for five minutes, she caved and told of her misadventures in the Titan's place of food preparation (Starfire's words). Turns out, she was a demon in the kitchen and the apocalypse was going to come by neither fire or ice but former food stuff gorging on would-be diners (these were Raven's words).

After hearing of her plight, Beast Boy took it upon himself to getting her up to cooking snuff. He had no illusions of her becoming a world class chef thanks to his instruction (well, maybe a few), but he did want her to make a decent meal without have to go out (she couldn't utilize the microwave for anything other than heating a cup of tea when she was too lazy to properly steep it the old fashion way, with the kettle and all- the times she tried to prepare anything else had ended with an exploding microwave and a slightly radioactive kitchen).

They tried salads again, being simple and all.

No fire, no heat in the vicinity and she still burned the thing.

They tried fruit salads, the juice theoretically being able to counter any combustion that could show up.

It still came out burned.

They tried various vegetarian friendly foods (since the changeling refused to touch meat with a twelve meter pole). They looked to China, Japan, France, everywhere for recipes; nothing. She still burned or utterly ruined every dish. Raven was nearly hysterical from it all.

Then, then Beast Boy came up with the stupidest, most brilliant thing possible. He had her prepare tofu.

He had said there was no way anyone could prepare tofu wrong. He was slightly biased but Raven agreed all the same. After all, the fermented soy tasted so bad (to her, anyway) that the only way for it to go in matters of taste was up.

And miracle of miracles, they had found the solution to Raven's cooking problem.

Raven mixed with any other ingredient that could be found in a kitchen with cooking implements alone produced disaster. Raven with tofu and any ingredient that could be found in the kitchen (or out of it) with cooking implements produced ambrosia.

She was a goddess with the stuff. Somehow, somehow she knew what to throw in to a dish with tofu to create the most exquisite of flavors. She manipulated the texture like an artist touching up his canvas. The aroma was titillating and worked any saliva glands in proximity into overdrive. Even Cyborg praised it (that was before he knew it was tofu; after he did he ran to his shrine of meat and begged for forgiveness offering alms).

Robin, Starfire and Cyborg were delighted at Raven's achievement. Mostly relief on Cyborg's part, he still couldn't condone tofu, though he had to ask himself some very difficult questions (if it tasted like meat, if it felt like meat, but it wasn't meat, does that make it any less meaty?).

Beast Boy was utterly delighted. He saw few victories with his name attached to it. Didn't change the fact that he had them, though.

Raven was delighted to the point of being giddy. She had an excuse to share the meals that she prepared with a certain pointy eared green boy. Of course, she refused to admit to any such accusation. After all, she had a reputation to keep, even if it was to herself.