I'm back, everybody! This particular chapter is really really long so I'm splitting it into 3 parts. Hope you like it!

Chapter Seven: Victory On All Fronts

Annabeth decided to make her monthly dinner on the Saturday after the Greenwood game. She'd made the trip to the supermarket the night before to avoid the Saturday crowd, remembering how the shelves had been almost empty the last time she'd gone on a Saturday afternoon.

She started preparation at four, submerging six vacuum-packed salmon fillets in a tub of water to defrost them. She pulled the long pods of beans from the refrigerator and placed them in a heap at the end of the island countertop, then crossed to the big larder on the other side of the kitchen and started grabbing potatoes.

"Five should be enough," she muttered, loading potatoes into her grip. They were much too big for her fingers to wrap around. She took a step back, hands full, and kicked the larder door closed with her foot, but the slight shift in balance caused a potato to fall out of her hands.

"Shit!" Instinct took over and her leg shot up, trying to catch the potato before it could hit the floor. The potato bounced off her knee toward the centre of the room. Annabeth extended her leg, intending to chip the potato onto the countertop like a football, but the potato was much lighter and she ended up volleying it into the knife holders instead. Pointy knives spilled all over the countertop, along with a half-dozen ladles and large spoons that clattered over the edge and onto the floor. One last blade fell point-first into the sink where she'd placed the tub of water containing her pack of defrosting salmon. The tip of the blade punctured the vacuum pack with a small hiss and bubbles started rising to the surface as water entered the plastic pack, then on top of everything another potato fell from her hands amidst the commotion, landing on her toe and making her yelp.

"Oww!"

She dumped the potatoes onto the nearest countertop and hopped across the kitchen to rescue her waterlogged fillets. The water was taking forever to drain out through the tiny puncture, so she used the kitchen scissors to cut the packaging open and poured the water out.

After returning all the ladles and knives to their holders, she turned her attention back to the meal at hand. The French beans, runner beans and green beans were being rebels, jumping out of the colander as she washed them, springing out of position when she tried to line them up to cut them into smaller segments. The small paring knife she used wasn't sharp enough and bent the tips of the bean pods rather than cutting through them like she intended, resulting in gaping wounds as she resorted to ripping the tips away like wine corks, sending little beans flying out of the pods. The kitchen counter was littered with mangled tips and beans by the time she was done. The beans themselves looked like they'd been through a war zone, a stark contrast to the neat segments that Percy had served up two weeks ago. A few of the segments had committed suicide rather than continue to suffer in her hands, flying out of her grip onto the kitchen floor. She swore at the infuriating bean pods and scraped the survivors into a bowl, sighing as she bent to pick up the ones on the floor and tossed them into the bin.

Next came the potatoes, slipping and squirming out of her grip as she tried to first wash, then peel, then finally cut into thick slices. One whole potato shot out of her hands across the countertop as she was positioning it on the chopping board and Annabeth in her frustration lunged across the countertop with her knife, stabbing the potato so hard that the blade drove through the centre of the tuber and stuck in the countertop below, pinning it in place.

"Uh oh."

She shot a hasty glance toward the open doorway to confirm nobody had been watching.

After a brief consultation with her notes, the potatoes were placed in a small pot of water and put to the boil, joined by the bean pod segments after the water had simmered for some time. While the vegetables were cooking she turned her attention to the defrosted salmon fillets, seasoning them with salt, black pepper and dried basil and dill.

"Oh, the rice!"

Determined not to forget the rice this time, she scooped one-and-a-half cups of dry grains into a small pot and put it on the stove, carefully measuring out the amount to avoid cooking too much rice like she had the last time.

The cooked potatoes and vegetables were drained and spread into a baking dish. More basil and dill rained down on them, followed by pepper, olive oil and a few spoons of butter. She wiped the buttery spoon onto a piece of potato to remove the remaining butter stuck to it, then started to mix all the ingredients together. She yelped as a hot piece of potato came into contact with a finger as she moved her spoon through the mixture, then gasped as a length of French bean flew into the air from a particularly hard stir, hit her neck and went into her shirt.

"Oww, oww!" She dropped the spoon and hopped about as both hands plunged into her shirt to remove the scalding hot segment of bean, smearing butter all over herself in the process.

She growled in frustration. For all her progress, she was making a mess out of the kitchen which would take a lot of time to clean up afterward. It suddenly occured to her that she should have used a larger spoon and she slapped a palm to her face, then groaned as she realised there was now butter smeared onto her forehead.

Once the vegetables were thoroughly mixed she placed the salmon fillets on them and slid the tray into the oven. The rice was bubbling nicely and she stirred the pot as the grains slowly absorbed the water until the mixture was dry and starting to steam. She turned off the fire, pulled the large baking dish out of the oven and went to lay the table.

The whole family sat down for dinner at exactly six thirty. Four pairs of eyes went wide as Annabeth lifted the lid off the baking dish with a dramatic flourish, revealing the impressive-looking fillets on the steaming bed of vegetables.

"Are you getting lessons from Jamie Oliver?" Frederick asked. "This looks like something out of his cooking show."

Annabeth waited with anticipation as everyone dug in, watching for their reactions.

"You made this?" Frederick shook his head in disbelief, mouth full of potatoes and runner beans. "You, my own daughter? I almost can't believe it."

"It tastes great, sis!" Bobby beamed at her.

"Yeah, what he said!" Matthew added, bouncing up and down in his chair.

Annabeth's smile was so wide it hurt her face. She filled her own plate and dug in, savouring the victory with every taste bud she had. Her mother's questioning glance knocked her satisfaction down a notch and she swallowed the mouthful, suddenly apprehensive.

"The dish is great, dear." Her mother said. "But with all these potatoes, why did you prepare rice? We can't finish all that."

Annabeth's face fell and she slapped her hand onto her face for the second time in an hour. Her brothers copied her, unaware of what was going on.

"You've got to be kidding me," she groaned.

Frederick let out a chuckle that turned into a choke as a length of French bean went down his gullet. He hawked the tubelike vegetable back onto his spoon, then chuckled again.

"Looks like it's fried rice for lunch tomorrow again." He turned to address Annabeth. "Don't worry, dear. It's always better to have more food than less."