Bakers, start your baking!

[indigo_league]

Who: Everybody!
Where: Riegfried and Soy's mansion
When: January 15th; day time for the cooking part, evening for the mingle part.
Summary: Come one, come all to the newest contest hosted by Riegfried and Soy. Today's theme: cooking!








[Daytime - The kitchens]

Throughout the day, the kitchens will be open to all contestants, though any casual onlookers --human, pokemon, or otherwise-- will be shooed out to prevent any cheating.

Each contestant will be directed to a gleaming counter, where they will be able to find everything from your basic whisk and spatula to gleaming kitchen machinery fancy enough to make any cook feel faint with envy. Each counter comes complete with a small fridge (should you need to chill any of your ingredients), an oven, a stove, a microwave -- really, anything you can imagine and it is there. Riegfried and Soy clearly didn't want anyone to run into the issue of not having the right equipment for the job.

At the back of the room are the fridges: tall, imposing fridges made of gleaming metal stocked full of every sort of ingredient you could possibly think of. And next to the fridges, contestants can find rows and rows of shelves, each nearly bowing under the weight of the products placed on them -- from fresh fruit, to spices, to rice and noodles. If you need it, you can find it.

Riegfried and Soy will be flitting around the room like a pair of extravagant Butterfrees, happy to engage contestants in small interviews. Everything for the camera, baby! Because those are also there; they are clearly trying to stay out of everybody's way, but small, Rotom-powered cameras flit around the room for close-ups, while cameramen and women with heavy-duty equipment get the distance shots. Hopefully, you haven't got an issue with stage fright.



[Evening - The show]

And when all is said and done, and the last dishes have been cooked, it's time for the actual show. There is some time between the actual cooking and this part of the evening, during which contestants have a chance to change their clothing and freshen up, but before too long, the mansion's doors open to the guests, who are herded by the cheerful hosts to an enormous hall.

The hall itself is set up with all manner of comforts. There are some small tables and chairs for anyone who wants to sit down for a while. Long tables line the sides of the room, absolutely laden with all manner of refreshments. There is even a special table set aside where the dishes the contestants made (at least the ones that made it to this part of the evening) are displayed and ready for tasting.

The schedule for the night is rather straightforward.

After some meet-and-greet and time for every last guest to arrive, the day's events (cut and edited by a very exhausted camera crew) will be projected onto a huge screen for all to enjoy. The votes will be tallied afterward and awards and prizes will be handed out. The rest of the evening will give the winners a chance to celebrate, the losers a chance to commiserate, and everybody else to clear the buffet of everything edible.

Comments

[vrdantwind]

Ah, it's really too bad more people don't agree with you on that. It's such a nicer way of looking at the world.

Mind you, I don't know if I think there's ever necessarily a right time to try blue mystery curry, but... [He shrugs and grins.

When Zuke opens his mouth, Claude peers in and clucks his tongue sympathetically.] Not totally, but definitely blue-tinged. It gets on the teeth, y'know? But with only one bite, it probably shouldn't be too bad. Especially if you get some water. I used a toothbrush between the cooking portion and coming here...

[zukeini]

Kinda like having a lollipop as a kid.

[Seriously, he was as happy as a clam despite it all. Shows even more of his anti-conflict nature.

He decided to opt out of brushing his teeth immediately and went for a glass of complementary water.]

It's an experience I can chalk up. Make it up as I go along on that. Something I picked up once I got settled in here.

[vrdantwind]

Oh? What's a lollipop? [Does Zuke know Claude is from medieval times? It's not as though Claude acts it too much. But he's definitely never heard of lollipops before...and it's possible that, even if he's seen them in stores since arriving, he hasn't specifically investigated them or caught the name. There's so many new things to discover, after all! Some are bound to escape his notice.]

[zukeini]

[Uh oh. It was another medieval man. Like Dimitri, Felix, and Jaskier. Men with a wit and no clue about the modern times they were thrown in.]

Stick of pure sugar. You have a ball of pure candy on a little stick that you lick until it's gone.

Depending on who makes the stuff, it's worth it.

Haven't had one in AGES...

[He stared at his water...not since he was a kid? Huh.]

[vrdantwind]

Yeah? Maybe we could have some together. I'm always happy to be introduced to new things, and it's more fun when you've got company. And you might be able to direct me to the good stuff.

[zukeini]

Two grown men getting lollipops on our free time, huh?

[It was so...innocent and completely serious suggested that Zuke couldn't help but blush and chuckle again.

...It was still Jaskier's booze, okay? OKAY?]

Heck yeah, sounds like a great old time. I can hook you up with the best stash.

[vrdantwind]

[The way Zuke says that, and the blush it gets, makes Claude laugh awkwardly.] Ah, that's - not a normal thing to ask someone, I'm gathering? Yeah, definitely a weird thing. It's hard to know what kinds of things are, y'know, socially acceptable and not totally strange to ask when you're dealing with stuff you've never even heard of before.

I mean, I guess it'd be weird if I invited a guy to come eat candy with me back home...but back home, he and I would've both grown up knowing most kinds of candy that're common there, and having had them before. There wouldn't be hundreds of new things that never even existed for us before to want to have people introduce us to...

[zukeini]

Shucks, it’s fine man, it’s just-

[Pause. He wanted to find a word.]

It’s really cute. I kinda forgot about those times in which discovering something new didn’t have to be so extraordinary to have any excuses to go with it. Sometimes you just, I dunno, should do things because it sounds nice.

[vrdantwind]

Cute, huh? [Claude looks amused.] Well, I guess that's better than weird.

I thought you mentioned you hadn't been here all that long, though? This place had to have had a whole bunch of new things for you to discover when you first got here, right? I wouldn't have thought you'd already be over checking out all the novel things this world's got to offer. Or that you'd need to start coming up with excuses for that sort of thing beyond, well, stuff being new to you.

[zukeini]

...You seem like a guy who appreciates that kind of stuff a lot.

[He needed to elaborate. That was a broad statement, and Zuke knew that.]

Just seeing things and knowing for yourself first hand what you didn't know before? Like its so new that it's fun and exciting?

[vrdantwind]

Oh, yeah, I love that sort of thing. [Claude chuckles.] Back home...well, a lot of countries have an attitude of distrust to anything - or anyone - new or different. I was pretty different myself growing up, so...I got to see a lot of that firsthand. And I think things would be a lot better all around if people appreciated differences, and novelty, and enjoyed getting to learn about things they're not necessarily familiar with. So I'm always trying to experience as much of those things as I can.

It's how my curry ended up so bad, honestly. It's not because I don't know how to cook curry, but because there were so many new things to try and experiment with that I wound up going totally overboard. But I can't feel too bad about it, because when will I ever get the chance to play around with so many new ingredients at once ever again? Even if the outcome was garbage, at least I made the most of a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

[zukeini]

[...Zuke decided that he liked this guy.]

Well, nothing better than the present to keep going and doing even more things. At then, you can say you tried it at least once. Then life just feels better despite having plenty of things out of your control.

[He gestured to the curry.]

And really? Could've been worse there.

[vrdantwind]

Could've been a lot worse, really, although you wouldn't know it talking to literally anyone.

[Including the judges. Claude is, after all, going to tie for the Please Don't award before the night is over.]