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Luke's, Monday

"Are you goddamn kidding me?"

Someone had replaced all the vegetables in the pantry with varying types of gourds and squashes. Eliot had noticed.

The cook came over and peered over his shoulder -- not difficult, since he was at least half a foot taller than Eliot was. "Huh," he said with a shrug. "Pumpkin spice everything."

"Pumpkin spice is not a thing!" said Eliot. "Pumpkins do not have natural spices! Pumpkin spice is a marketing gimmick to sell bland, 'seasonal' foods!"

The kitchen staff stared at him.

"I like pumpkin spice," said the busboy.

Eliot hated this town.

Today's specials
Tortellini with pumpkin alfredo
Spaghetti squash fritters
Butternut squash and parmesian bread pudding
Now hiring!

Luke's was open.

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"Fine. Then I'll have a pumpkin spice milkshake," Vic said decisively. "With cool whip topping."

Eliot let out a long-suffering sigh. "You know 'pumpkin spice' doesn't actually have any -- what am I saying? For you that's probably a feature."

"Oh! So you'll make it for me?" she asked cheerfully.

Eliot sighed again. "I'll make you a milkshake," he said. "With nutmeg and cinnamon and all the other spices that go into pumpkin pie. I will not call it 'pumpkin spice'. And I'm not going to put cool whip on it."

That stuff was disgusting. If you left it out to dry, it would last forever. Food wasn't meant to do that.

"Annnnnnnd the cheeseburger," Vic said. "Also with extra bacon. And the shake will at least have a maraschino cherry on it right?"

Vic would probably thoroughly enjoy the contortions that Eliot's face went through at that. "Maraschino --" He threw his hands in the air, giving up. "There is something wrong with you." He sent the order for the cheeseburger back to the cook to get it started and grabbed one of the shake glasses. "One of these days, I will teach you at least something about taste."

"Okay Mr. Gourmet," Vic said having thoroughly enjoyed Vic's reactions. "Then cancel the cheeseburger and show me what you can do. If you can wow me then... you get to choose my next seven meals. If you don't, then you have to make me whatever I want."

Eliot narrowed his eyes and nodded slowly. "Alright. Deal." It'd be a good challenge, if nothing else, even without any vegetables that weren't squash on hand. "I'll know if you try to lie about liking it."

"Oooo. A gourmet and a mind reader," Vic said in a taunting fashion. "Whatever will I do?"

"Don't need to be a mind reader," Eliot said. "You're not that good of an actor."

"Ooo. Well you I hope you are a better cook than that," Vic said rolling her eyes. "Because I just got burned."

Eliot was not going to dignify that with a response. "You're not allergic to shellfish, are you?"

Clearly Eliot had no joy in his life.

"Nope. No food allergies," Vic said. "But I don't like lobster."

She made a face.

"They creep me out."

Eliot shrugged. "And if we were in Maine, that would be a problem." He served her up a milkshake -- vanilla with pumpkin pie spices, but she was getting real whipped cream and a damned candied pecan on that, dammit -- headed to the kitchen to whip something up.

"What? You won't use lobsters unless they come from Maine?" Vic asked as she tossed the pecan in her mouth. "Can you honestly taste the difference if they come from someplace else?"

Eliot leaned out of the kitchen -- he was tying his hair back with a bandana, so he wasn't leaving something to catch fire while he wasn't looking or anything -- and stared at her.

"Yes," he said. "Good lobster has a very distinctive flavor."

"Why? Because the garbage on the seafloor around Maine tastes better than the garbage found in Nova Scotia?" Vic retorted. "I thought they just ate crap they find on the ocean floor."

"Didn't say Nova Scotia didn't have good lobster," Eliot pointed out, finishing pulling his hair back and heading back into the kitchen. He could cook and call through the door to her at the same time. "Was saying Maryland didn't. Good lobster depends on a hell of a lot of things. Mostly it depends on not being shipped a thousand miles in a goddamn frozen food truck."

"So crabs from Maryland are fine but not lobster. Because the garbage here in Maryland sucks worse than Maine?" Vic said tasting the shake for the first time.

Damn it.

It tasted good. Hopefully Eliot didn't see that.

He didn't, no. When there was fire involved, he didn't tend to look up and away.

Well, not unless a mafioso with the nickname "The Butcher" was trying to kill him, anyway.

"You're kinda stuck on the garbage in the ocean," he noted, finally coming back out of the kitchen with a sandwich on a plate and some potato chips (which would have been fresh, but apparently actual potatoes counted to whoever replaced all his vegetables, but not bags of chips). He'd used a fresh, smoky aioli mayo in lieu of tartar sauce, and bacon instead of lettuce. He was reasonably certain she wouldn't object to that last one, especially.

"You some kind of ocean clean up activist?"

"No. I've just heard that lobsters are like roaches and eat all the crap on the bottom of the seafloor," Vic said looking at the burger suspiciously. "What is that?"

Eliot was tempted to make a joke about the potential nutritious value of roaches -- but decided it'd be a little ill-timed. Instead he folded his arms across his chest and leaned back with a little smirk. 'It's a crab burger," he said. "Creole-spiced and pan-fried." Held together with egg, so he got the fried egg in there. "With aioli and bacon on a poppyseed bun. Plenty artery clogging and not a vegetable in sight, I promise."

'Isn't aioli just runny mayonnaise?" Vic said skeptically as she picked up the burger and took a bite.

Damn.

Damn it all.

It was good.

"Okay that's good, but seriously bagged chips?"

Maybe she could get out on a technicality.

"Homemade runny mayonnaise," Eliot corrected. As for the chips, he shrugged. "It needed a side. And I had a feeling roasted acorn squash wouldn't quite be up your alley."

Vic let out a sigh.

"Fine. You win," she admitted as she went in for another bite. "But don't think that means I won't let you serve me scary food."

And yes she was talking with her mouth full. Sorry for her manners there, Eliot.

Luke's, Monday

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