Tools of the trade

[Faith Augustin]

85th Ashan 717
Just before dusk

"All invitation letters sent!" Faith called as she came back in. Although Padraig had been at the university later than her, Faith hadn't been there when he got home. However, she'd left a note saying that she was going to send the letters and walk the dog. The moment she took him off the leash, Cosmo bounded into the living room proudly holding a stick in his mouth which he deposited at Padraig's feet and then promptly flopped in front of the fireplace where he proceeded to fall asleep. Faith grinned at Padraig and shook her head. "I don't know why that stick. It was outside the house and he carried it all the way there, around the park and all the way home. Evidently, he thought you'd like it."

Faith had gone out without a coat, happy to wear just a light bolero-style jacket. She didn't need one, of course, but now that the weather was clearing and summer was definitely on the way, Faith was delighted to be able to walk out without such. So, she'd worn the cream coloured dress she'd bought in Rharne with Kura. The light cotton jacket she'd flung over her shoulders had been shrugged off as she came in. "It's glorious out there. Cosmo met another dog and they were very well behaved with each other. Except, Cosmo would not let go of that stick." She slipped her hands around him as they met between him walking out to meet her and her walking in to meet him and lingered in a kiss.

"Right, you've got study to do." Faith looked at him rather regretfully as she said that, but it did not change the facts. He'd told her that morning that he was going to put together the last of his project in chemistry and she'd immediately offered to help. Admittedly, she was intrigued by his description which had been so vague as to border on enigmatic.

"So, we are combining cookery techniques with your project in chemistry in order to help you as a professor? You know, I love a good mystery but I thought about it all trial, and I can't work it out." There was no doubting it, he had her interest and she quirked an eyebrow. "So, Professor, spill the beans. What are we doing?"

[Padraig]

Padraig had been working in his lab alone after blocking the door to keep Quattro out. He didn't mind the four tailed, electrified cat ordinarily. In fact as a pet he liked her quite a bit and as a study in science, she fascinated him. But physics' experiments and electromagnetic cats tended not to compliment each other when she insisted on bounding up on his workbench or winding herself around his legs. For both their sakes, better she was barred from his lab.

He grinned though when he heard Faith come in the front door, calling out to him about the invitations. He had to admit, it had surprised him a little how quickly she'd taken to the idea of an engagement, and had up and run with it. He was still riding the high, admittedly, of her agreeing to her proposal. But all the little details that seemed to go into planning a wedding, well, he wouldn't be so foolish as to say aloud that it was a woman's domain. But nonetheless she had seemed to embrace it.

Padraig nearly tripped over Cosmo in his attempt to get to Faith. But having got there, he folded her in an embrace and kissed her, before grinning down at the dog and his new prize. Picking up the stick and making a show of examining it, while Cosmo excitedly panted up at him and thumped his tail on the floor, he nodded in apparent satisfaction. "Well it is a very good specimen. Nice and straight, well balance, good feel for throwing," he added and handed it back to the dog. And she was right, Cosmo was getting larger and heavier by the trial.

But what were they doing? Well she knew that cooking wasn't really his area of interest. However, "Well I remember there were some things you were wanting to try with the caviar. And I was thinking," he said, "that I might be able to use the method as a lesson for one of my classes. Volume, displacement, buoyancy of different compounds. That sort of thing. Interested?" he asked.

[Faith Augustin]

She was glad to have posted the letters. It finalised a date and set it in stone which the young woman could only think was a very good thing. That meant that they had a clear goal to work towards and that they could plan. She knew nothing about weddings, nothing at all. Certainly, she had never attended one and had no real idea what one looked like. The limits of what she knew was that people wore formal clothes to them and often quite expensive outfits; that particular piece of information she held from her time working in a seamstress' shop. There, however, her knowledge ended and so Faith had made a decision.

As she felt Padraig's arms wrap around her, Faith vowed to Vri that this was going to be done the right way for them. It was, she was absolutely certain, the only wedding either of them would have and she did not want her lack of knowledge to be a source of embarrassment for either of them, nor a cause for regrets. That was why she had determined that she would approach it in the way that she had approached pregnancy; reading up on it as much as she could and then planning to the best of their ability.

With a sigh of contentment she had once not dared to dream she could feel, Faith joined him in his examination of the stick. "It may be the very epitome of stick, I agree. Other sticks can only aspire to it." He gave the stick back to their puppy and Faith glanced at Cosmo with a critical eye. The dog had insisted on that stick, yet now he seemed unconcerned with it. What a strange creature he was.

Having spent the trial wondering what he could be suggesting for his chemistry project, when he explained what he was going to do Faith beamed. "Oh that's very clever!" There was so much of what they both did which could be used together, this was just another example. Was she interested? Faith shot him a glance which more than answered that question, "I wonder, Professor, do you really need to ask?"

With a raised eyebrow, she wondered. "So, what substances are you going to use and how can I help?"

[Padraig]

What Faith didn't realize, or on second thought maybe she did, was that Padraig would have been content, happy to marry, just the two of them privately together. The trappings were just that, a public acknowledgment of what they already had together, and would for eternity so far as he was concerned.

On the other hand he wasn't at all unhappy with the idea of a ceremony, one shared with friends and family and including traditions that were perhaps unique to the island. After all Faith had been through, she deserved every bit of it. And he was determined more than anything to ensure that she had it. It was that part of the process which gave him pleasure, watching her eyes light up with anticipation.

In the meantime, there was still study and work to do. There always would be and he grinned when she seemed excited to help. "If it's clever, it's only because of the work we did together already, with the caviar," he reminded her. As for substances, well, he wasn't completely sure yet.

However, "Actually I had another idea for something you could use in your restaurant, for cocktails, maybe. You could," he considered, "either use olive or cherry juice to create large-ish spheres, to use in the place of ordinary olives or cherries. They'd have a very delicate membrane on the outside, and a burst of flavor when you bite into them."

Come to that, oil...such as olive or almond, was a substance he might like to use to create spheres for use in his teaching. Some he might treat to a calcification bath, he mentioned, in order to make them more solid. And then ask his students which...the firmer or more liquid ones might float, sink or displace more water. Or if, they thought, it would make any difference at all.

"Also," he told her, "I've been thinking about a thermo-reversible gelling agent, one that sets as it heats up, rather than as it cools down. Have you considered serving hot deserts that might ordinarily be served cold? Like iced cream for instance?" Padraig asked.

[Faith Augustin]

"Oh, so I'm going to be vague, you're going to clarify and then I'm going to be demanding?" Her smile was wicked as she stole a final kiss before they got down to actually doing some work. The idea of the cherries and olives, though, that caught her imagination and the slight frown of concentration she so often wore when working appeared on her face. "I like that. I like that quite a lot, actually. Could we make spheres out of the alcohol, too? It would be a fun way to serve shots with coffee, for example. Or the milk for it." All just thoughts, however, and Faith shook her head as though forcing those thoughts out of it. "It delights me how one technique can be used for such a myriad of things."

He wasn't sure, yet, which substances he was going to use and Faith nodded at his thought. "Does the viscosity of the liquid make a difference? So if you used oil, coloured water and honey, would those three react differently?" With a raised eyebrow as they made their way into the kitchen where she could grab the ingredients he wanted, Faith confessed what she suspected he already knew. "I have no idea if what you said would make a difference. Would it? What does make a difference?" In case he needed to be told, she quickly added, "Don't tell me. Just tell me if I'm wrong after."

Thinking about it, though, as she retrieved ingredients and handed them to him, she considered. "I can't imagine that viscosity nor the solid or liquid state would make a difference to the displacement of water. That's about the volume of the sphere, isn't it?" How quickly things sunk in the water she assumed was to do with the weight of them. That was more tricky, but then she recalled something he had said to her in one of their earliest lessons.

"If we change the sphere from liquid to solid, or more solid because of the calcium bath, we are condensing it. So, two spheres of the same amount of the same liquid would be different sizes if one was more solid wouldn't they? No, I'm confused. I think a calcified sphere would sink faster than a liquid one of the same size. Because it weighs more, because it takes more original liquid to make it that size?" Faith shook her head and proclaimed that she was never going to study either physics or chemistry, because they hurt her brain.

Once they'd gathered all that he needed, though, and made their way into the lab, Padraig asked her a question which quite confounded her. "A thermo-what where now?" Something that set as it heated up, rather than as it cooled down? Faith looked at him in astonishment. "So, how? What?" Her expression changed from confused to amused in an instant and she let out a laugh. It was a rare sound, but less and less so as time passed. "No, strangely, I haven't considered serving hot ice cream because that is warm slush which people often don't want to pay for. What on Idalos are you talking about?" Hot iced cream? Glancing back at the living room where the sounds of the dog snoring could be heard clearly, she wondered if she would ever be able to keep up with him; she decided then and there that she already knew that answer and it was no.

"Go back a step or ten. What now? And how does this relate to your project?"

[Padraig]

Caviar from alcohol? He hadn't thought of it, but only the garnishes that could be dropped into a mixed drink. However, "Yes," Padraig said. "I believe you can. Do we have any rum? And brown sugar?" Transformed into caviar, he imagined the small orbs could be poured into a fancy glass and would remain that way until exploding on the taste buds in an explosion of flavor.

When she asked about viscosity and volume, he smiled, waiting for her to work things out on her own. "I'm guessing you're referring to the viscosity of the liquids used in the creation of the spheres, and not that of the fluid that it's dropped into. That would make a difference," Padraig told her. Viscosity referring to the magnitude of internal friction, measured by the force per unit area...

"The viscosity of water is much different than oils, so depending on the weight of any given object, some may float or displace less fluid, while others may sink to the bottom and displace more." Much was about resistance, he went on to explain. If one was to drop two objects of a different size and weight simultaneously from the same height, they would reach the ground at the same time. But that was air, water and oil and other fluids were different.

And a larger object, he explained, wouldn't sink any faster that a small one. Necessarily. It depended on what the object was made of, and the extent of the air pockets inside it. Padraig laughed though when Faith wondered why he'd thought of such a thing as hot ice cream, and how it might relate to his lessons. "It relates, because it would appear to turn established rules on their head."

One would expect coffee to be hot, or hot buttered rum to be, by its very definition, hot. But what if the coffee or buttered rum was served cold, and the ice cream dropped into it, hot, he suggested. It would certainly be an unexpected presentation, especially when the ice cream continued to hold its shape while consumed, rather than melting into a hot beverage.

[Faith Augustin]

She looked at him with a perfectly straight face when he explained and she replied, deadpan. "I think that's what I just said, isn't it? Are you copying me, Padraig?" Yet, she could not manage the whole of the second sentence before she burst into a grin. "I believe that the most intelligent thing I can manage right now is 'oh'. Or maybe 'ooooh', but nothing better." She smiled at him, kissed him briefly and stood from where they were. "I'll go get some rum and sugar."

As she went to get the extra ingredients, she considered carefully what he had said. So, she had been focusing on the liquid in the sphere, he was right. She had done that because she had considered that the liquid they were suspended or held in would be a constant. What he was talking about was beyond her current level of learning, there was no doubting it, but equally she was fascinated by it. "When you finish your licentiate," she said, as she arrived back in the small study that was his lab in their home. "Will you pick this back up at Charter?" If it was an odd question, she didn't seem to think so."Or will you just lounge around in bed and become a layabout?" Not likely, she thought. He had studied and learned, taught and thought since the first time she had met him.

"Well, that's what I mean about the calcium bath, I think. If we're making the sphere more solid, we're changing its state so that there is less air in it. So, it would sink faster, wouldn't it?" Because the air pockets made it more prone to floating. "But something you said, earlier, I don't understand. You said that if we took two object of different sizes and weights and dropped them from the same height, they'd touch the ground at the same time? How can that be? A feather would float slowly down and a brick would drop, surely?" She frowned as she thought of that, trying to make it make sense.

It might well be one of those things which seemed logical until tested, she knew, but she had to ask. Then, however, what he had said next came to her. "It's resistance, though? The shape of the feather means that it's caught on drafts and so on. But if I dropped a tiny pebble and a big rock, they'd hit the same time?" If that was right, then it was about interaction between the object and the environment it was in, she wondered? Which, she realised, made sense. "It's why water falls in air, but not in water. It's the interaction of the object and the environment. Oh, you know, my brain might melt."

He had no idea just how much her brain might melt, she considered, but in that moment Faith had an idea. It wasn't about food or alcohol, not at all. "I think that helps me with something medical. Blood is used to being in a particular environment, and in a surgery. I need to think about that." The problem with people bleeding in surgery was an enormous one, after all. She'd thought previously about blood and putting blood into someone who was losing it, but what if the environment was important? Their own blood, circulating around might just be enough to buy the surgeon the time needed.

That was for another trial, though, and she turned her thoughts back to hot ice cream and frozen coffee. "It would be amazing. If you can pull it off, it would be astonishing. Lets focus on this project, though. How do you want to present it to your students?" She guessed, she said, that the caviar spheres could be made and re-used, but if he was wanting to create this as a teaching tool, what would he want to create that was hot and should be cold, and vice versa. "Before we even get to how, just to be clear, the coffee, buttered rum and ice cream taste like they should? It is actually coffee and it is actually ice cream, just hot where it should be cold and vice versa? I... how?" Faith grinned at him, delighted at the prospect, but only just grasping it at the same time.

Off Topic

Deducted from ledger:
Rum: 9gn (usually 10, but she gets 10% discount due to her fame)

[Padraig]

"They pay me to be insightful and to offer some sort of inspired feedback you know," Padraig teased her, referencing his job at the university. "If I were to simply say that yes, you are correct, then surely I'd be doing my students a disservice?" he added with a grin as Faith ran off to get the rum and sugar.

In the meantime, he lit a burner and prepared a work space for them. A licentiate, he considered when she returned. But he frowned and shook his head. "I'm required to earn a diploma in Chemistry, in order to comply with the terms for teaching at the university. I think that's where it will end however," he said. He'd advance farther in physics, he added. But with out without the degrees, his knowledge of chemistry was enough to serve him well as both a physicist and an alchemist.

"I'd rather not give up those extra few bits a trial devoted to eating and sleeping," Padraig told her and shrugged. As for shapes, feathers, objects and environments, she was correct. And he told her so this time, without elaborating. And of course she took what they were experimenting with, and related it to medicine. Blood in particular. He was impressed and his smile showed it. "I think it might just work."

As for hot ice cream and a cold drink, and how he might present a similar concept with his students, Padraig considered it before responding. "I think I'll present it exactly the way you would in your restaurant." And why not? Not every experiment or concoction in chemistry needed to be comprised of something toxic or even inedible.

And of course. The coffee would be coffee and the ice cream, just that. The coffee was simply cooled and chilled after all, but not frozen. And the ice cream would be made in a different way so that it held its expected shape, flavor and texture, but was warm or hot instead of cold.

[Faith Augustin]

"That's good. Some trials, they're the only ones we see each other." Those bits associated with eating and sleeping, that was. "I would hate to do either of those things without you." So, they were going to make the small caviar-spheres and the cold coffee and warm ice cream. Faith put the ingredients down and grinned when he said that he would present the teaching aid and project in the way she would in her restaurant.

"Alright, so your project is going to be these spheres, which we've done before, and the hot cold food with cold hot food" Looking at him with a raised eyebrow she smiled. "The actual proper term for which I know you know. I will maintain hot cold food and cold hot food. So. The spheres, we have agar-agar and the oil to store them in. We've got the calcium bath. Shall we make those first, then do the cold-hot?"

Faith looked at him and smiled. "Do you remember the lesson where we made chocolate fondant and experimented with baking powder?" Her Bellinos blessing, given by Vri meant that she had a perfect memory but in truth she remembered that lesson clearly anyhow. "I let slip about my room, the storage cupboard." Faith looked at him and shook her head, slightly, in disbelief. "I understood that you didn't like it, but I didn't really understand why. It was luxury compared to sleeping on the floor." Her expression told a simple truth, though. "I understand now." Those trials were over and had been for a long time, now. More than that, her way of thinking, of considering herself was different.

"So, I can make ice cream. That is not a problem. At what stage do you need to add something and what is it you will be adding?" The look Faith gave him was, frankly, downright suspicious. "Please tell me it's tasteless? Can I taste it, please?" There was a glint of amusement in her eyes when she pointed out. "I think that my sense of taste is somehow better developed than anyone else's. I know that is not true, but I can taste something and then know how it will taste with other things. If I think about it, I can taste what it will be. Which I'm sure everyone can."

Depending, then, on when he wanted to add this ingredient in to the mix, Faith would set about the process of making ice cream. She would do it as she normally would, getting the heavy and lighter cream, mixing it with very fine sugar, some vanilla and honey. But it was the process of making it very cold which she suspected he was going to do differently, and so she needed to wait and see.

[Padraig]

He'd been joking about the lack of time for eating and sleeping. But there remained an element of truth to the observation. Padraig had wondered from the start if he'd been taking on too much at once. It wasn't a matter of knowing, but one of actually doing. It was a temporary state of affairs though, and so long as the end remained in sight, it was manageable.

So, the spheres first, he agreed, then the hot and cold. "I remember," Padraig confirmed when Faith mentioned the cupboard. How could he forget? It had been a sore spot then and had he chosen to consider thinking about it, it would remain one. It had been her reality then and she'd thought nothing of it. But looking back on it now, understanding, also meant that it would never be an acceptable thing again. Not for her, and in a better Idalos, not for anyone.

"You have better trained taste buds than I do," he agreed. "But the ice cream will taste like exactly that." So, he told her, they'd be using a thermo-reversible gelling agent called methylcellulose that he'd created in his lab. In short, it was a vegetable-derived chemical compound that had no scent or flavor of its own, and a texture that wouldn't at all interfere with that of the ice cream.

"It sets as it gets hot, rather than as it cools," he added with a grin. Chemistry combined with alchemy, combined with cooking techniques could indeed create wonders. "It will require the night to set," Padraig warned her. But there was no reason she couldn't taste it along the way. So as she made her ice cream in the ordinary way, into the mix went 20 grams methylcellulose.

Once everything was blended she'd need to store the stuff in a sealed container overnight, chilled. "So next trial, bring a saucepan of water to a low simmer. Use an ice cream scoop to place small portions into the water," he explained as they worked. But as she did that, he warned, it would take one bit at least for the stuff to maintain its shape, so she could keep it in the scoop itself before letting each portion loose in the pan. "Let them simmer another two minutes, pull them out and there you have it. Hot ice cream," he told her with a grin.

Off Topic

methyl cellulose, fancy name for a natural, thermo-reversible agent that is sourced from the fibers of cellulose rich plants and has been in use for centuries for thickening, gelling, etc.