The Clarkl Soup Kitchens Read Online Free
Author: Mary Carmen
adventure ahead.
August 17, 2137
The training has started, and I am learning how to cook. How incomplete my efforts at self-education have been! It is much better to see something being done, to try it yourself, to be corrected.
I learned the value of an oven at the correct temperature. You cannot expect to bake for less time at a higher temperature and have things come out eatable.
The meals here are exactly what we will be serving the Clarklians. Thirty dishes only. Already I am bored, and I have another ten years to go.
However, we have had some of the wickenberries that are used in two of the dishes. These berries are native to Clarkl and are cultivated by the Congregation because they are easy to grow and easy to digest. Full of vitamins, too, if the government can be believed.
There has been success with pineapples, too. In fact, about thirty percent of the pineapples now sold in America come from Clarkl. Hawaiian pineapples are still more desirable, but many of those trees are under water after the floods of the 2020s and the 2120s. I found out the Clarkl pineapples are all from Hawaiian trees, transplanted to the warmest parts of the Clarkl planet.
August 29, 2137
Still enjoying the relaxing ride to Clarkl in this old spacecraft.
The roommate remains pleasant, but she is very into religion. She reads her Bible, with her finger under the lines, from morning to night. The text is sometimes black and sometimes red, and I wonder what that means. Sometimes she moves her lips, as if she wants to try to say the words.
We have been through all thirty recipes. I have become the vegetable stock expert, a dubious distinction. Everybody else debates technique with the instructor. I have no conversation of interest to anybody in the cooking class.
The men, such as they are, work on farming principles. Cultivating the Clarkl ground is very difficult, and each spacecraft contains potting soil and the like from Earth, to be used in the ever-enlarging tracts of American farms on Clarkl. This craft also contains enormous bags of vegetable seeds.
Pumpkins are the next frontier. Everybody is talking pumpkins and pumpkin growing and pumpkin recipes. Those with the loudest voices assure me pumpkins are very cost-beneficial, with little labor and plenty of harvest.
I have not volunteered to bake a pumpkin pie.
September 4, 2137
I received my first messages from Earth today, brief notes from the twins in Wyoming and Susan in Canada .
The twins are having a good time waiting on tables and meeting the girls in the employee housing. Susan has no news of any kind. It makes me wonder what she is not telling me.
The Fundamentalists are having meetings right after supper every day. Of course the Congregation has nothing more to discuss after the classes are over.
My roommate has told me the Congregation is full of defrocked Roman Catholic priests, still calling themselves ministers. The RCs are down to a very small number of American communicants, and the priests had to be reassigned to Africa or be let go. My roommate knows for certain the Reverend Wade was a monsignor. I wonder where he picked up a wife? Pre-monsignor or post-monsignor? That’s probably why he has so many new clothes.
My roommate also assures me the Congregation’s clergy keep most of the money they receive from the government for the Clarkl slave trade. The Fundamentalists, on the other hand, use the money for God’s work, whatever that may be.
Talk has moved onto sweet potatoes and yams. There are some places on Clarkl where the climate is right for growing these vegetables, and one of the objectives for 2138 is to try to get a good crop. Two yam recipes are being tested this week.
I remain the butt of many cooking jokes, but I try to laugh along with the others. It is very obvious to everybody that I am no cook, but I work as hard as anybody else. I am nearly the youngest person going to Clarkl on this craft for work, and I guess I am forgiven.
August 17, 2137
The training has started, and I am learning how to cook. How incomplete my efforts at self-education have been! It is much better to see something being done, to try it yourself, to be corrected.
I learned the value of an oven at the correct temperature. You cannot expect to bake for less time at a higher temperature and have things come out eatable.
The meals here are exactly what we will be serving the Clarklians. Thirty dishes only. Already I am bored, and I have another ten years to go.
However, we have had some of the wickenberries that are used in two of the dishes. These berries are native to Clarkl and are cultivated by the Congregation because they are easy to grow and easy to digest. Full of vitamins, too, if the government can be believed.
There has been success with pineapples, too. In fact, about thirty percent of the pineapples now sold in America come from Clarkl. Hawaiian pineapples are still more desirable, but many of those trees are under water after the floods of the 2020s and the 2120s. I found out the Clarkl pineapples are all from Hawaiian trees, transplanted to the warmest parts of the Clarkl planet.
August 29, 2137
Still enjoying the relaxing ride to Clarkl in this old spacecraft.
The roommate remains pleasant, but she is very into religion. She reads her Bible, with her finger under the lines, from morning to night. The text is sometimes black and sometimes red, and I wonder what that means. Sometimes she moves her lips, as if she wants to try to say the words.
We have been through all thirty recipes. I have become the vegetable stock expert, a dubious distinction. Everybody else debates technique with the instructor. I have no conversation of interest to anybody in the cooking class.
The men, such as they are, work on farming principles. Cultivating the Clarkl ground is very difficult, and each spacecraft contains potting soil and the like from Earth, to be used in the ever-enlarging tracts of American farms on Clarkl. This craft also contains enormous bags of vegetable seeds.
Pumpkins are the next frontier. Everybody is talking pumpkins and pumpkin growing and pumpkin recipes. Those with the loudest voices assure me pumpkins are very cost-beneficial, with little labor and plenty of harvest.
I have not volunteered to bake a pumpkin pie.
September 4, 2137
I received my first messages from Earth today, brief notes from the twins in Wyoming and Susan in Canada .
The twins are having a good time waiting on tables and meeting the girls in the employee housing. Susan has no news of any kind. It makes me wonder what she is not telling me.
The Fundamentalists are having meetings right after supper every day. Of course the Congregation has nothing more to discuss after the classes are over.
My roommate has told me the Congregation is full of defrocked Roman Catholic priests, still calling themselves ministers. The RCs are down to a very small number of American communicants, and the priests had to be reassigned to Africa or be let go. My roommate knows for certain the Reverend Wade was a monsignor. I wonder where he picked up a wife? Pre-monsignor or post-monsignor? That’s probably why he has so many new clothes.
My roommate also assures me the Congregation’s clergy keep most of the money they receive from the government for the Clarkl slave trade. The Fundamentalists, on the other hand, use the money for God’s work, whatever that may be.
Talk has moved onto sweet potatoes and yams. There are some places on Clarkl where the climate is right for growing these vegetables, and one of the objectives for 2138 is to try to get a good crop. Two yam recipes are being tested this week.
I remain the butt of many cooking jokes, but I try to laugh along with the others. It is very obvious to everybody that I am no cook, but I work as hard as anybody else. I am nearly the youngest person going to Clarkl on this craft for work, and I guess I am forgiven.
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