Blast from the Past-a
Posted on Thursday, 13 August 2020 - 3:10pm by Lieutenant JG Adrianna Eberhardt
After returning from Ba'Ku, Adrianna seemed happier than usual. Going back to basics on the planet in terms of cooking was something that brought back a lot of memories. Happy times with her mother. Whilst her brothers and father were out doing business, Tanina Baciami, Adrianna's mother, would be teaching her traditional life skills. The main being how to make pasta. At this moment, that is what Adrianna was doing in her quarters, making pasta for herself. She hummed a happy but non-committal tune, smiling, remembering her mother.
---
"Ade," a doppelganger of Adrianna chastised a little girl standing on a chair at the kitchen counter.
The little girl was none other than Adrianna Baciami, watching her mother make weigh out ingredients using nothing more than sight to make pasta. She evidently looked bored and was starting to draw pictures in the floured surface with her fingers. "But mama, my hands, they are too little!"
"Then you shall make smaller tortellini," Adrianna's mother, Tanina replied with a chuckle.
Adrianna groaned but perked up seeing her father walk into the room. He wasn't alone, he was with some strangers and he looked like he was engrossed in conversation. Nonetheless, Adrianna called," Papi! "
Dario looked down to see the little girl running towards him with open arms. He greeted her, sitting Adrianna on his him, "my daughter, Adrianna. Adrianna, our guests are Russian. Remember the house rules: only speak in the language a guest can understand."
Adrianna pulled a face, thinking hard. She was five, almost six, but languages had always been around the house and the little girl was quite the hyperpolyglot. Finally Adrianna found the words in Russian and whilst stumbling over some of the pronunciation, managed, "hello, welcome to Italy."
Dario smiled and put the girl down, "tell your mother she needs to make more, our guests are staying for dinner. Can you make a nice dinner with your mother?"
Adrianna nodded eagerly and ran back to relay the message. Suddenly the child's willingness to help her mother and learn was now present. Tanina booped her daughter's nose with flour, "so you'll cook for our guests but not to help your mother?"
Adrianna smiled, her big brown eyes pleading innocence, "can I eat the bowl of filling when we are done?"
Tanina stood back thinking, dragging out the time playfully, teasing her daughter, before finally giving in to those puppy dog eyes, "fine piccolina, fine. Maybe I should start calling you cucciolo with eyes like that. You're worse than the dogs for guilting me with those eyes." She kissed the top of Adrianna's head before cutting out some pasta, handing one circle to her daughter and laying one fore herself. The woman used two teaspoons to place a small ball of filling in the centre of the laid pasta and waited for her daughter's eyes to lock onto Tanina's fingers, before showing her how to fold and shape the perfect tortellini.
Adrianna tried and made a clumsy attempt, thought did try her best, "like this?"
"Well, that one is definitely yours," Tanina teased, "come one, one more. You can do this. Fold, close, pinch." The woman recited to her daughter, doing as she spoke.
"Fold," Adrianna's little hands folded the pasta circle in half, encasing the filling. "Close," she pressed the edges together to keep the filling in, "then pinch." Adrianna then curved the pasta into a proper tortellini shape.
"See, you are getting it!" Tanina praised laying out a few more, "once we are done, you can lick the bowl. Just don't tell your brothers. Our Secret."
---
It took until Adrianna was maybe ten before she fell in love with cooking with her mother. It became more routine. She learnt to cook for no less than ten, with her oldest brother and her father having the largest portions. Now, here she was, aged 25, lightyears from home, still cooking for ten, but only feeding one. She'd been away from home for years, and yet somehow, still found it impossible to cook for less than what would have been her family.
The joys of the memory and the nostalgia took a darker side-track. She'd never be able to do that again. Regardless of what Giovanni had passed on to her before her trip, she would not find herself in a kitchen with her mother again.
Adrianna looked down to the dozens of tortellini she had folded, some already in portioned storage containers, the first being very clumsy indeed, and pushed the negativity aside. The first one was always a mess. No clue why; just was. Starfleet had started out like the first one, badly folded and somewhat misshapen, but over the years it had turned into something seemingly perfect. Hell, she'd even found someone special.
As for the present, gawd she needed to learn to cook for less than a million.
