From: Brandon Ray Date: 11 Apr 1999 19:44:02 -0700 Subject: NEW: Raisin Pie (1/1) TITLE: Raisin Pie (1/1) AUTHOR: Brandon D. Ray EMAIL ADDRESS: publius@avalon.net DISTRIBUTION STATEMENT: Anywhere and everywhere, so long as my name stays on it and no money changes hands. FEEDBACK: Go ahead; knock yourself out. Ephemeral: *FEEDBACK*publius@avalon.net SPOILER STATEMENT: You've GOT to be kidding. None. RATING: PG CONTENT STATEMENT: A few bad words. CLASSIFICATION: VH SUMMARY: Response to Shannon's "Lasagna". Mulder's loose in the kitchen -- everybody duck! And any resemblance between this story and the author's first attempt to bake a pie, back during the Carter Administration, is strictly coincidental.... ;) DISCLAIMER: In my dreams... Raisin Pie by Brandon D. Ray What the hell was he doing? Mulder didn't cook. And he *certainly* didn't bake. This was going to be a disaster. He so thoroughly didn't cook that he didn't even own a cookbook -- not even the Betty Crocker his mother had given him as a housewarming gift when he got his first apartment. That one got sent to Good Will years ago, to make room for the Alien Autopsy Encyclopedia. Nevertheless, here he was, in the kitchen, preparing to bake one of his childhood favorites: raisin pie. After a quick trip to the grocery store, of course, since the only ingredient he'd had on hand was tap water. And also after a quick hop onto the Internet to find the recipe. He really didn't know where this domestic urge came from. He'd woke up that morning feeling perfectly normal, other than a small, niggling sense that he was supposed to be doing something. Something important. Something vital. The problem was that he hadn't had the faintest clue what that something might be. It was Saturday, so he didn't have to go to work, and he and Scully didn't have a case hanging over their heads at the moment. He'd paid the bills for this month *last* week, and he was even caught up on all his expense reimbursement paperwork. Well, okay -- *Scully* was caught up on all his reimbursement paperwork. Same difference. He'd tried pacing through his apartment; he'd tried dribbling his basketball; he'd tried surfing the net. But nothing had served as a sufficient distraction; nothing had made that sense of incompleteness go away. Finally, he'd found himself standing in the kitchen staring at the oven -- and suddenly he knew. So here he was, two hours, one Yahoo search and one shopping trip later, standing in the kitchen, ready to bake. Jesus. And why raisin pie? At least *that* question was easy to answer: It was the only type of pie his mother had ever made. Other families had mince pie, pumpkin pie, apple pie, even rhubarb pie. But for the Mulders it had always been raisin pie. And it had been damned good. He hadn't had one in years. All right. The sooner he got started, the sooner he'd be finished -- and hopefully the sooner he'd be rid of the damned compulsion that'd been following him around all day long. First things first: Two cups of seeded raisins dumped in a small saucepan with an equal quantity of water, and the heat turned on high to bring it to a rapid boil. Check. While he was waiting for the water to boil he scanned the on down the instructions -- and oh, shit. He was supposed to be preheating the oven. He quickly reached out and twisted the knob to 400 degrees. Better late than never. Hopefully. And now the water was boiling. Unfortunately, he hadn't been paying close attention, so he didn't really know how *long* the water had been boiling. It couldn't have been more than a minute or two, though. Probably. It was supposed to boil for five minutes, so he'd just give it another three or four and call that good enough. The next step was to add half a cup each of sugar and chopped walnuts, then stir in a tablespoon of flour, two tablespoons of grated lemon rind and three tablespoons of cider vinegar. No grater in the house, so forget the lemon rind -- and why the *fuck* did this stupid recipe even *think* he might own a set of measuring spoons? Well, nothing to do about it now. He rummaged around in the sink, trying not to wonder too hard about what some of the things were that his hand encountered, and finally pulled out a reasonably clean soup spoon. He looked it over, squirted some dish soap on it and rinsed it off, just to be safe -- safer -- and then rapidly scooped the rest of the ingredients into the water and raisin mix and proceeded to stir briskly for one minute. Okay, time to bring it home. Even in his current state of domestic frenzy Mulder hadn't been so delusional as to believe he might be able to make a pie crust from scratch, and so he'd bought one at the store, ready made. Now he poured the bubbling raisin mixture into the bottom crust, laid the top crust down on top of it, and slid the entire assemblage into the oven -- the oven which he devoutly hoped was now at 400 degrees. And then he had forty minutes to kill. Three games of Maelstrom later, Yahoo dropped an email to let him know the pie was supposed to be done, and so he put the game on pause and went back into the kitchen. It smelled good in there; maybe he'd actually gotten it right. He popped open the oven door -- and suddenly realized he needed a hot pad. Four minutes of frantic searching later, he found one in the bathroom, sitting beneath a pot which was half full of congealed macaroni and cheese. He must have been in a hurry one day last week.... He ran back into the kitchen with the hot pad, bringing the pot of mac and cheese with him since he was going in that direction anyway. He dumped the pot into the sink, then stooped down and pulled the pie out of the oven and set it on the counter. It looked good. It looked really, really good. The crust was golden brown, and the filling was bubbling up out of the holes he'd poked in the top crust. And the smell -- the smell was wonderful. Just the way he remembered it. Perfect. Now there was only one thing missing: Someone to share it with. You just didn't eat pie alone -- not in Mulder's experience. And there was really only one person he could call. Scully. Of course, he *could* call the Gunmen, but he had a feeling his culinary masterpiece would be wasted on those cretins. Not to mention the weeks of Julia Child jokes he'd have to put up with. So it pretty much had to be Scully. He left the pie cooling on the counter and went out in the living room, but just as he was reaching for the phone, it rang -- and Mulder cursed. There were a limited number of people who might be calling him late on a Saturday afternoon: It could be the guys. It could be Skinner. Or it could even conceivably be Kersh, since they were still tying up a few loose ends on some of those earth shattering assignments he'd given them while they were on the manure patrol. He grabbed the phone, intending to get rid of whoever it was as quickly as possible so he could call Scully.... "Mulder," he said, making his voice sound as bored as he could manage. "What are you doing for dinner, Mulder?" It was Scully. Mulder smiled. Fini -- This sig has been repressed at the request of the ATXC Decency Patrol. ================================= My fanfic is like a big bumbling puppy that likes to chase Frisbies: http://www.avalon.net/~publius/MyStories.html