Forward
Ladies, do not go out with a journalist. And if you do and that journalist
gets hired to head the Outer Hebrides bureau and he asks you to come along,
break up with him immediately. On no account do you listen to his
tear-filled pleas, his pledges of undying love, his promises of
“adventure”, the guilt trips. Do not let your heart melt as he sends you
bouquet after bouquet. Walk away, dear ladies, walk away.
Because I did not. And for ten years I was stuck in that hellhole of space
called the Outer Hebrides. There are no towns there, ladies. There is no
fine dining. The only heels you will wear come heat-sealed to two-inch
thick gravity workboots that keep you mired in goo because paved roads exit
only in the wet dreams of civil engineers. The nearest civilization is the
Zhobu star system where the little moon Sweet Avalon actually has a mall.
And that’s an eleven-day trip on a ratty shuttle, hon. In ten years I made
it to Avalon, sweet little Avalon, twice. I cried all the way back “home.”
Home. My true home is Mistport. The center of civilization. Glam capital of
the universe. I am a metropolis girl through and through. Born and raised.
10th generation. So what happens when you take a metropolis girl
out of Mistport and plunk her down in the middle of nowhere? We survive.
Turns out we Mistport Minnies are tough. Standing in line for six weeks
waiting for the yearly Sale of the Century at the Pleiades Starmall is good
training for almost anything. I survived the storms, the intense heat
waves, the power shortages, the rebel attacks, the day-long hikes when the
tank broke down. Much to my surprise, I could live without my daily
manicures, TV, instant chats. I could even live without a Roboto Butler. So
what can’t I live without? Food, ladies, food. Comfort food. The food of
Mistport. The food of civilization.
First, let me be perfectly clear: I am not an expert on food or cooking.
Before arriving on Ienlow, I didn’t even know how to crack an egg. Like
most Mistport Minnies, I ate out almost every day. And when I didn’t, the
Roboto Butler cooked. My model did a mean Prince Omala omelet. It never
even occurred to me that there wouldn’t be restaurants in the Outer
Hebrides. Or Roboto Butlers. Instead, what I found in my new domicile was a
thirty-year-old cranky food replicator with only twenty-six entree options.
Twenty-six! And all twenty-six, from hamburgers to cheese souffles, tasted
pretty much the powdery same. So you see, I started to cook out of
desperation. A need for food. Real food. The food of home.
Lulu’s Lichen Omelet
It’s not really clear what makes up the Outer Hebrides. It’s just a
convenient term for any and all things beyond the Glacien belt. The main
official administrative offices are located on Ienlow, a modest-sized
planet in the Krawkow star system. That was my hell for ten long years.
Ienlow. Not a pretty planet, let me tell you. A sticky sand covers most of
it. And underneath that thin layer of goo is hard crystal. Useless hard
crystal. Unlike the immensely valuable crystals and minerals making up the
surrounding planets, the real reason why there’s so much activity in the
Outer Hebrides. Needless to say, not much grows on Ienlow, and certainly
nothing that looks at all edible. It took me two years to discover Ienlow’s
lichen and only because of Lulu.
Lulu is a granddaughter of one of the original settlers of Ienlow. These
descendants are now classified as rebels and are forced to live hidden
miles away from official settlements. You’ll never knowingly meet a
descendant. I only met Lulu because I got lost. It was after yet another
ballistic screamer with the Journalist: he wanted to know why I’d thrown
out his filthy, rotting, centuries-old slippers and I wanted to know why
he’d dragged me down to hell. I mean, there were things growing in
those slippers and I’m sure that was why his feet stank. Blinded by fury
and blood-vessel-bursting frustration, I jumped into the tank and blasted
clear out of town. Had no idea where I was going except as far away from
the settlement as I could. Didn’t stop until I saw black smoke hurling out
of the engine. Sure that the tank was finally going to blow, I grabbed the
emergency pack and leapt out in a panic. It didn’t blow. But I knew I was
stuck for the night.
The sun was setting. Below me was a field of purple set ablaze by Helios.
The purple was lichen, growing from a sheet of protruding crystal. How
beautiful it was, like a nebula on the ground.
“You can touch those,” I heard a gentle voice say.
It was Lulu.
“Hello,” I responded, a little stupefied at seeing a fellow human this far
from “civilization.” She seemed ancient, a thousand lines engraved on her
sun-burnt face as if she were a wooden totem.
“You must be lost,” she said, rich and gravelly. The voice of the
underground crystal.
“I think I am.”
“Follow me. The sun’s about to disappear. Safer to spend the night with
me.”
It didn’t take me long to realize Lulu was a “rebel.” I wasn’t sure how I
was still alive. On home turf, “rebels” tend to shoot strangers on first
sight (or so I’d been told over and over again). Even Lulu couldn’t tell me
why she’d rescued me that day.
She lived alone, her small hut-like house right under a canyon ledge so it
couldn’t be spotted by surveillance drones. The descendants are experts at
camouflage and guerilla warfare. And at cookery. After all, it’s not like
they can walk up to a government store and replenish their supply of
foodmix for the food replicator. Out of necessity, they’d learned how to
cook native plants and wildlife. It turned out that the lichens on Ienlow
are not only beautiful but edible. Fresh, they have the taste of goat
cheese. Dried and rehydrated, they taste of seaweed. Roasted, a bit lemony.
That night, Lulu made me a dish of lichen omelet. To my great surprise, the
omelet had real eggs in it. I had heard there were feral chickens roaming
about but I’d thought it was urban-legend stuff.
“Not legend at all,” Lulu said, smiling. “And not so feral. I’ve got a few
old hens out back. Not native, of course. They say one of the first
settlers smuggled in some live embryos.”
It was lovely watching Lulu cook, the handle of her well-worn pan snuggled
in her expert hand, the eggs swirling and bubbling. One of the best meals
I’ve ever had.
Ingredients
6 eggs
A handful of lichen (substitute mushrooms, fungi, cheese, etc—whatever is
best on your home world)
Butter (Lulu used butter she’d made from Gallow seeds. The Gallow plant
grows near the northern hemisphere of Ienlow, where the colder weather
solidifies the sand enough for modest plant growth.)
Preparation
Break the eggs into a large bowl and whip. The whipping makes the omelet
fluffier. Heat a large frying pan, add butter and then the lichen. When the
lichen has wilted a bit, add the eggs and stir the mixture rapidly until it
begins to solidify. Take the pan off the heat immediately (the omelet will
still be runny but that doesn’t matter as it’ll continue to cook as it sits
in the hot pan). The lichen will have exuded a creamy juice which will act
almost like cream. The result is a custardy, souffle-like omelet.
Lulu’s Chicken and Dumplings
My introduction to Ienlow’s lichen was a true revelation. I soon discovered
that this lichen is as versatile as an egg. Left to dry under the intense
Ienlow sun and then ground into powder, the lichen becomes flour. What
can’t you make with a little egg and flour?
I met up with Lulu about once a month. She taught me how to cook, and when
I got better at it, we began exchanging recipes. I had the surprise of my
life on one visit: Lulu had made chicken and dumplings.
“One of the hens no longer lays eggs so I put her out of her misery,” Lulu
told me.
“We’re going to have chicken?” I asked, ecstatic. Real chicken! “Roast
chicken?”
“Oh, no,” Lulu said, laughing. “You need a nice, young chicken for
roasting. This is literally a tough old bird. Can’t do much with it except
boil it. Get nice stock too. And when the meat’s tender enough, you can
make chicken and dumplings.”
Now, I’d heard of chicken and dumplings, a nice ancient dish from colonial
days, but I’d never actually eaten one. What a treat! I’m not sure why
restaurants don’t have it on their menus. It’s sad how dishes go out of
fashion. Here’s Lulu’s recipe.
Ingredients
one whole chicken
water
For the dumplings:
something like 100 grams of flour [
figure out exact measurements later—am I getting any of this right?
It’s been so long since I’ve been near a kitchen
]
about teaspoon of leavening agent (Most people use baking powder. On
Ienlow, the agent is a mold that can be cultured from a thick mixture of
native sand and water, which is naturally carbonated.)
~50 grams of butter
salt (the ubiquitous crystal on Ienlow, ground finely, makes a good
substitute for salt)
1/4 cup of eggs
milk (Lulu’s milk was from Gallow seeds but regular dairy milk is fine)
Preparation
Boil the cleaned chicken in plenty of water, careful to remove the scum
that rises to the top. Lulu says this can take anywhere from an hour to
three days depending on how tough the chicken is. The chicken you get at
Mistport supernovamarts probably needs less than half an hour. And, of
course, you will have to adjust for your local gravity, atmosphere,
altitude, etc.
When the meat is falling off the bone, take it out of the broth—meat,
bones, everything. Do NOT throw away the broth. You will need the broth to
cook the dumplings. With your fingers, pull apart the chicken meat into
small threads. Of course, wait until the chicken is cool enough or you’ll
burn your fingers!
Now for the dumplings, which are just these fluffy cake-like things. In a
bowl, mix together flour, baking powder and salt. Add butter. With your
fingers rub the butter into the dry ingredients until you get something
that looks vaguely like Katingla sand. Mix in egg. Pour in enough milk to
make a sticky batter.
In a casserole pot put in half the chicken meat and enough of the broth to
cover the chicken by five centimeters. Heat the broth. When the broth is
about to boil, put in small spoonfuls of the dumpling batter, placed so
they won’t touch. Close the lid of the pot and lower the heat to simmering.
In about twenty minutes you’ll have a soul-satisfying dish your friends
will remember for life.
Pasta with Lichen
There were plenty of pasta dishes in the food replicator: macaroni and
cheese, spaghetti, lasagna, etc. It was food-replicator food, grim and
gloppy. I would have killed for one more meal at Petrovio’s, where the
pastas are lovingly made daily, so good they almost didn’t need sauces. I’m
a real carb nut. And then one day it occurred to me. Lichen. You can make
flour with lichen. Flour, a little water and salt—pasta! For a month I
experimented. The lichen flour isn’t as glutinous as wheat flour. Getting
it to stick together in just the right way took hours and hours of trial
and error. The trick is to let the dough dry, ferment, for a good
twenty-four hours. Only then is it pliable enough to cut. And then the
pasta has to be dried again. Cooking it immediately is disaster. Fresh
dough melts in boiling water and what you get is porridge. Good porridge
but not pasta. [Should I include a porridge recipe or two?]
As soon as I’d become an expert, I took my pasta to Lulu’s to show off. She
loved it. Lichen pasta in a thick, creamy lichen sauce. To celebrate, she
decided to open up a tube of her prized salami.
Lulu made her salami with sphinx meat. The sphinx is one of the rare
creatures on Ienlow that actually makes wonderful eating. These animals,
about the size of large dogs, live in small family units that feed near hot
springs. There are many springs on Ienlow, which I was very surprised to
find out. On first look, Ienlow seems a desert of sand. But actually,
there’s plenty of rainfall on Ienlow. The rain just never stays on the
surface. There are no oceans or lakes on Ienlow. All the water drains into
the ground, creating vast underwater river systems. Occasionally the water
will bubble back up, the layers of crystal having carbonated it. Some of
the springs are near hotspots in the planet’s crust and the water will
billow up as mist. These hot spas are where you’ll find the sphinx.
The meat of the sphinx is delicate and briny, as delicious as the micato of
Aokvir. In fact, I suspect that one day, some bright young thing will come
along, farm the sphinx and make a killing (oh, to be a bright young
thing!). The one unsettling thing about eating sphinx is that they have
eerily human faces, thus their name. But according to the Hellminor Ethical
Food Index, the sphinx ranks pretty low. Much lower than the humble pig.
Still, I’m glad I’ve never had to butcher one. I watched Lulu butcher a
chicken once and promptly threw up.
Amazing how tough Lulu could be. When I first saw Lulu I thought she was an
old woman but she’s the exact same age that I am. We lived in such
different worlds. She had no idea what a manicure was. She’d howl with
laughter as I told her stories about my life in the great metropolis:
adventures with the Roboto Butler, stunts I pulled at the military balls.
I’m sure she thought I was a bit crazy. That my world was completely crazy.
Sadly, she never said much about her own life except to say she’s a
descendent of one of the original settlers. Now that’s a sad tale. These
poor settlers had been lured by government promises of free land and new
lives. It was true, the land was free, but it was also useless. You
couldn’t farm it, you couldn’t mine it. Quickly in debt, the settlers had
to take government jobs mining on outer planets and moons. Some, like
Lulu’s father, were forced into the auxiliary military, sent on dangerous,
usually one-way exploration missions. Lulu was six when she last saw her
father. How can people still be duped by the promises of free land? How
often has that trick been used? But then I forget how poor some planetary
systems are, how desperate they are for hope. Does the human condition
never change?
Of course, I no longer think of Lulu and her people as rebels. Or even as
first settlers or descendants. I think of them the way Lulu and her people
think of themselves, as New Hebridians. Once, I playfully called Lulu
“cowgirl.” She was so hurt and angry. I couldn’t understand why until the
Journalist told me “cowboy” and “cowgirl” were Outer Hebrides slang, a
pejorative term that meant “outlaw,” “vandal,” “deadbeat.” Of course, I
didn’t think of her like that at all. Lulu had become a dear friend. She
taught me so much.
New Hebridians. Can’t we at least give them that? After all their hardship?
And everything you hear on the news is wrong. The New Hebridians didn’t
rebel out of greed, although I can’t help thinking this “war” would go away
and peace miraculously restored if the Outer Hebrides suddenly ran out of
all those tempting mineral resources. No, the New Hebridians rebelled only
after the new wave of settlers arrived, taking their jobs, even their land
(exactly for what purpose no one can figure out, but I’ll bet you anything
the Blackwell Corporation’s involved). Yes, I do realize I’m not an expert
and that these are very complicated issues and you would be right in
thinking I should not be bringing these very complicated issues up in a
cookbook. Some would even say my comments are
treasonous
absurd. But then, some would think independent thought itself is
treasonous
. In any case, if there are some of you out there who would be interested
in further exploring these topics, I would highly recommend H Hieronymous
Woods’ The Right To Self-Definition In The Era Of Empire Building.
[
Or is it Hieronymous H? The title doesn’t sound right either. Maybe
it’s not even the right book—why is it so hard, to remember, remember
anything
] The book is a little hard to find since Woods’ arrest two years ago and I
wouldn’t advise going through the usual channels to find it. Certainly,
don’t mention it by title. But if you happen to come across it, well, by
all means read it. And who knows what climate we’ll be living in after the
next territorial elections? I’ve always been an optimist.
Thunder & Lightning
Thunder & Lightning, also known as T&L, is the local hooch. It’s
made from the bacteria that sometimes grow on top of drying lichen. Really
strong, a bit hallucinogenic, bitter, makes you flatulent as all hell.
Basically, you have to be desperate to drink it. And people on Ienlow are
pretty desperate. There’s so much tax on alcohol that most people can’t
afford anything but alcopops. So they drink T&L, which, by the way,
only the New Hebridians know how to make and so is technically illegal. The
New Hebridians make a lot of money selling T&L. Selling black market
hooch and piracy keep the New Hebridians funded. Too well funded as far as
the government’s concerned. Suddenly, the number of spy drones on Ienlow
tripled. Those little tan birds were everywhere, even stuck to the laser
window screen of my bathroom. And it haunts me: did I lead one of those
fecking birds to Lulu? I can’t get that image out of my mind, Lulu’s house
bombed to hell, me thinking I was seeing her body parts in every bit of
charred debris. After hours of searching, I couldn’t find a body. I’m
hoping that Lulu wasn’t home, that she was out foraging. I’m hoping that
Lulu isn’t on Ienlow at all but in the G-6 sector where the New Hebridians
have a stronghold. She’s a survivor. She’s from a family of survivors. I
know she survived.
I suppose the government was hoping I’d lead them to others because they
didn’t pick me up for another month. You would not believe how fast the
Journalist threw me under. “I had no idea what she’s been up to,” he says.
No idea? Of course, he had some idea. Just where did Mr. Asshole think I
was getting my new recipe ideas from exactly? By the way, Asshole has only
visited me once since I’ve been
in prison
at the center and only to show the government that he was doing his duty.
Strange how you feel the government in a desolate place like
Ienlow. Of course all the stores are government stores and you see military
and government officials everywhere unlike in a metropolis where you don’t
see the government even though the government is there just the same,
watching and listening in on everything you do and say although it claims
no one pays any attention except to key words like “bombs” and
“demonstrations” and other meta words. But in a place like Ienlow, the
government seems more, like it’s alive somehow, following you,
breathing right behind you. Freedom’s just a word. We’re all in prison,
walls of words and retail options and XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX after
interrogating
interviewing me relentlessly for seventy-four hours straight, it became
clear to the Department of Culture that I am what I appeared to be: a
classic dumb Mistport Minnie whose only threat was to her own bank account.
The DoC was pretty decent. Not as scary as in stories and films. I was
given a medical exam before my interview to make sure I was fit enough for
interrogation
an
interview
. The doctor apologized for doping me up with alithizine but it was routine
and actually beneficial since it was really more a relaxant than an
almighty truth serum. And, holy galactic empire, I was relaxed. The
interviewers couldn’t get me to stop talking. I was remembering
things from like my fourth birthday party. I went on and on about how Dervi
Springall broke my fecking heart and suddenly I was thirteen again. And I’d
start speaking in Mantin. Fluently, which is crazy because I never really
learned to speak Mantin very well—my language teachers at school were shit.
After three days of listening to my blather, clearly, they were the ones
who’d been tortured, not me.
In the end, the DoC declared me a non-terrorist. I got on my knees and
cried when my lawyer finally told me because let’s face it: the yearly Sale
of the Century at the Pleiades Starmall does not prepare a Mistport Minnie
for a Level 5 labor camp. That’s where they send people like Lulu. You
don’t come back from Level 5. Instead, I was declared contaminated. This is
my second year at the re-acculturation center. Life here is comfortable, if
a little lonely. We get our own cells and aren’t allowed to talk to each
other. Every day we do five hours of work to pay for our treatment, room
and board, etc, which is fair. There’s only so much you can ask the
taxpayers to put up with. I’m with fifty people testing bioconductors.
Visitors are allowed once a month for thirteen-minute rendezvous. The DoC
actually wants friends and family of
prisoners
participants to visit. After all, there’s nothing like friends and family
to remind you of what you’ve lost. Medical exams are also once a month,
although I go twice because I’ve developed high blood pressure and have odd
attacks of severe nausea. The medical treatment is state of the art. I’m
getting a new drug called synedzine which is even better than alithizine.
Super relaxing. It does make me dream a lot. And I’m not always sure
whether I’m awake or dreaming and I think odd things and feel odd things
and I’m not sure what’s memory or dream like I’m in a thriller and there
are moments when I can’t remember who I am, little blip moments, and I have
to hold on to Mistport Minnie, home, Mistport but is that really Ienlow and
I’m all things at once which means I’m no where at all. My mentor is on
synedzine too and she floats. Literally. Although I don’t suppose she could
literally float through space except that we’re both full of synedzine.
Mentors are participants who are almost clean. They’re the only humans
outside of medical and motivators we’re allowed to converse with. I mean,
you can talk to the robot staff but they don’t have much of a sense of
humor. God, I miss my Roboto Butler. Apparently the latest upgrades and
accessories are phenomenal. Can’t wait to get back to Mistport and
civilization.
So what am I doing writing this cookbook? Because some of you might think
it’s totally masochistic of me to write a cookbook while I’m in a prison
labor camp
center where the only food we get is from a replicator. The last real meal
I had was with the Journalist. Strangely, I remember it fondly. He’d
brought home some contraband cheese and wine. We made baguettes in the
replicator. As we ate he read me his screenplay. Yes, the Journalist was
writing a screenplay. What journalist isn’t, right? He’d cast himself at a
pretty young age in the Pollux Bejemen mold, all macho and alpha male-y. I
admit it. That’s what I fell for. The Journalist is even a better actor
than newsman. What am I doing writing this cookbook? Food, all I can think
about, dream about, the eating and—maybe it’s the synedzine, maybe it’s
changing my brain chemistry—because the words—I can taste the words feel
each morsel in my mouth going down my esophagus flooding my stomach every
cell of my body burning burning home
Lulu