Taking off her school blazer, Liona draped it over a slightly rickety dining chair before rolling up the sleeves of her blouse. She then went over to the kitchen sink and washed her hands as Erik sat out of the way in the small dining area of the kitchen while he fed his baby brother. Once she was done, she walked Julie through each of her ideas. She explained how each of the ingredients she had on hand could be substituted for others in a dish and still taste similar with a little prep.
Julie was astonished. This was beyond the scope of what she thought a rich girl who had people that probably cooked for her all her life could do. As her son's girlfriend carefully explained how each ingredient had a flavor profile, she walked her through how each combination of these ingredients could be made to taste similar to another that was missing. The girl browsed through her meager spice rack and carefully plucked out a few herbs and spices that were bought at a steep discount.
Then she watched as she transformed the ground beef and the few vegetables she had on hand into some kind of makeshift gourmet meal. She watched from start to finish, and still did not know how it was possible that the thing that came out of their oven was as good smelling as it was.
Liona appreciated the smell of the food stuffed full of herbs and spices to make up for the lack of other ingredients. You'd never know that the dish had a mixture of semi-fresh ground and potted meats. Julie had been missing the fresh vegetables that she had wanted to include in the dish, so she made up for the lack of the few meager spices she had on hand. Powdered onion and garlic still went a long way toward flavoring a dish, and were staple spices found in almost any pantry she had ever seen.
"How on earth did you come up with such a good smelling food?!" Erik exclaimed while he fed his baby brother as he witnessed Liona pull out of the oven some kind of meatball.
"It's really simple! All I did was think of the many dishes that I could make with meat, and then I narrowed it down to those that I could make with the ingredients your mom had on hand. From there, I thought of a way of stretching the ingredients to feed everyone, so meatballs made the most sense! All you need from here is a pack of spaghetti noodles, or any noodle will do, really. Then a can of tomato sauce or paste with a few more herbs and spices. If you really want to get creative, then use that can of mushrooms I see peeking out of the cupboard to add more flavor and texture to the dish." Liona bubbled with happiness as she described her thought process.
Julie stood shocked and awed by the food that was being prepared before her very eyes. This girl that she had dismissed as just another rich girl who would be a complete nincompoop about the ways of poor life and cooking on an extreme budget had just made a gourmet dish out of kitchen scraps. However, she didn't have tomato sauce. It was too expensive, and she was a little ashamed to admit that she didn't have any. But before she could admit that, her son did it for her.
"That's not something we have, Lia." Erik spoke quietly as he gently patted his baby brother's back, coaxing a burp after his feeding.
"Oh? Then what about ketchup? If you have ketchup and maybe some Worcestershire sauce, I can create a yummy glaze to simmer the meatballs in instead."
Lia brushed off the concerned look that Julie had briefly shown on her face. She was doing her best to not react to the lack of food she had seen in this house. The amount of food she had seen would fit on one quarter of a shelf in her pantry and still have space leftover for more.
"What's woorshire sauce?" Kylee poked her head into the kitchen via the cutout in the wall above the kitchen sink.
"I'm hungry, Mama!" Heather also popped her head into the cutout.
"Me too!" Sarah wiggled between her sisters to poke her head in as well.
Liona giggled at the comedic sight of Erik's sisters struggling to all see through the small cutout.
"Catsup!" The small voice of Kirsten drew everyone's attention. She had somehow snuck into the small kitchen with no one noticing and had pulled out a ketchup bottle from the fridge. It was being held up like she was showing off a prized possession.
"When did you get that out?!" Julie chided her five-year-old daughter.
"Sissy wants catsup! Mama didn't get it. I helped!"
Kirsten was used to getting into the kitchen for food. She was always hungry, so she often snuck out of bed to get food from the fridge. Sometimes she would even climb onto the counters to get into the top cupboards where her mama put the yummy food. Although she had to pull out the drawers to get up there, it was a fun adventure.
"Thank you, Kirsten. You are such a big help!" Liona took the ketchup bottle from Kirsten and studied the off-brand label that looked garish with obscure words to make it seem like it was a healthy condiment and not chock-full of preservatives and sugar. Whatever the label said didn't matter in the end, since this was the only thing available to use for making a sauce.
Kirsten beamed at the praise as she watched big sis Liona make something really yummy smelling with it. She didn't even complain when her big brother plopped her down at the table, where she sat on a stack of books.
After being handed a tiny bottle of off brand Worcestershire sauce, Liona let Julie carefully follow her instructions on creating a simple reduction with Worcestershire and the meager amount of ketchup they had left in the small container. Noting that Erik's mom was a quick learner, she was pleased when the woman grasped the complexity of the flavor she was going for after just a brief explanation.
In no time, the food was ready. Erik's mouth was practically watering before his mom dished up a small portion of the food for each of his younger siblings while he gently swayed his baby brother back and forth. Liona was helping by filling their mismatched cups with water as his youngest sisters made their way into the tiny kitchen to sit at the table. He, his mom, along with the older of the girls, would usually eat in the living room so that the small table wasn't crowded with them sitting two to a chair.
"Erik, let me see Tyler. Wash up while I put him in the crib." Nikki reached out to take her baby brother. He was so tiny, just like all her sisters had been. Although. He was at the age when he should be teething. He was probably going to be a late bloomer, just like the rest of them had been. She honestly hated living like they did, but she also knew that it wasn't for a lack of trying to get out of poverty. Her mom busted her ass to provide for them and while that wasn't much, it was made up for with the tough love she knew came from the heart.
Putting him in the crib, he didn't fuss even a bit when she stepped back to make sure he would be okay. He just sighed in his sleep and smacked his lips a bit, probably still a little hungry, but not enough to wake fully. His formula was stretched with a bit of extra water to make it last as long as they could, but it wouldn't be long before he would be another mouth at the table. Splitting their meager meals was already difficult, but she would be damned if anyone tried to say that they weren't fed.
Liona sat down on the couch that had seen better days and sank in a bit as the cushions sagged beneath her. She was handed a chipped plate with one meatball and a tiny amount of mismatched pasta covered in the watered remnants of the glaze she had helped Julie make. There had been just enough meat for each person to have one small meatball and a scoop of the pasta. The vegetable side was a handful of dried out carrots that had been cut into bite-size pieces along with a drizzle of ranch and some kind of watery mess, of what she assumed were supposed to be potatoes. Overall, the meal was probably a third of what she and her siblings would normally eat in a sitting.
Sitting down next to Liona, Erik felt the couch sag further under them. It had long ago lost most of the support of the springs, but it was still a couch that, when dismantled, fit into the van when they moved. He looked at the feast on his plate and couldn't wait to dig in. The smell alone was making his stomach growl in response.
It didn't take long for Julie to finish serving her younger children and making sure they knew there were not enough for seconds. They were too busy stuffing their faces with the food to bother looking up for more than a second. She smiled since it had been a while since they had eaten anything this fancy and had enough to fill the entire small plates they used. Seeing that Kirsten was already covered in the spaghetti sauce glaze that Erik's girlfriend made, she knew that the food had passed her pickiest eater's approval.