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There were kitchens at Chronos were nice and all, but word got around about how crazy and Opulent the kitchens and dining rooms at Leo were, so she'd made sure to find a way over there to do some cooking. She still wasn't much for handling a main dinner course, but she was doing her best to pick through the things the Senshi had brought, trying to locate enough supplies to make something involving chocolate. There wasn't enough chocolate in the assorted bags to make dipped chocolates, and it certainly wasn't the quality she was used to cooking with, but she thought she might be able to make some fairly basic fudge. Someone had brought containers of fluff, and she was hoping no one was going to miss THAT enough to complain about part of the marshmallow based spread going into a tray of fudge.

She heard someone enter the room behind her, which made her jump slightly, half expecting to be cussed out.

"Uh, Hi!" She called. "I'm um, trying to do a little bit of cooking. I uh, thought I saw a bag of those little red and white peppermints.... can you maybe help me find them?"

"Uh, not yet." She admitted. "Mostly I was checking the bags and stuff. It's kinda hard to tell how things are organized with who knows how many people handling the organizing." She admitted, before starting to rifle through the cabinets. Quite a mix of things, canned just about everything... including the condenced milk she was looking for. (Thank heavens for that, though she wondered if someone had mistaken it for being 'regular milk, just add... something.) It wasn't a very charitable train of thought, but Holi was never sure what people knew or didn't know about certain types of cooking supplies.

"Oop, here we go. It was opened but I think there's enough for what I need." She took out a bag of the little striped mints and held it up triumphantly, the condensed milk can in her other hand.

"Hey you've got a hammer, that's probably better than a rolling pin. You want to see if you can unwrap these and then smash them up small? Like powder and little crunchy bits. I'd probably unwrap them and then put them back in the bag and try and seal it until you're done, it'll keep us from spraying the kitchen with Peppermint bits." She suggested, without entirely waiting to see if he'd agreed.

"I'm making fudge." She explained. "...the peppermint is going to replace the nuts in the original recipe. I don't think there's such a thing as being allergic to peppermint."
Not liking it, sure, but she hadn't heard of anyone going into shock because of peppermint.

"Maybe about half of what's left..." Holi debated, tapping a finger on her chin thoughtfully, and adding mentally that she was thankful for the healing that made the gesture... well... not suck. "The whole bag might be too much, and we're trying to make fudge, not a substitute York Patty."

She couldn't help but look a little proud at being referred to as a candy maker, though she tried to hide this by searching to see if someone had spontaneously thought to bring any vanilla extract. It seemed like a stretch, much of the food still was an assembly more suited to camping than candy making, but you never knew.

"I'm jealous of your aunt!" She admitted. "There's some fantastic chocolate made in Germany. Maybe I'll have to see if I can get together a day trip i... when we get back." She suggested. "Yeah my dad introduced me to the idea when I was seven. He brought me back some amazing stuff from a trip to Germany... and..."

She paused, lost in thought for a second, looking at, but not seeing, the labels of one or two jarred spices.

"I've been trying to match that first taste ever since." She offered. It was as close to bearing her soul about the story as she thought she wanted to give right now.

"Fortunately I've gotten better since I was seven... and I haven't tried to melt chocolate on the radiator in years." She admitted, with an sheepish grin. "...Back home I've got everything. Pots, pans, molds, paramount crystals... they help make the chocolate melt smoothly."

The term for the crystals, and the fact that they were called crystals sounded pretty strange even if you knew what they were, and they were even odder looking up close.

"I... thought about seeing if someone wanted to make a cake with me, but I didn't think it would be a good idea to co-opt the eggs."

And she'd launched into conversation without introducing herself. Again. Smooth, Holi. Smooth.

"Holi by the way. Short for Holiday."

"They're not bad, but I don't have the stuff to really do something based on them justice. I'd really want to make a really nice... smooth peppermint filling and I don't think I can do that." She admitted. "So I figured on more of a even chocolate and peppermint balance."

"...Stop me if I'm being boring." She offered, apologetically. "And yeah... it was... yeah it was a mess. About half of it melted, then split, and pretty much all of it got down into hard to reach places when it got bumped by someone trying to carry through a big box of Christmas decorations."

She was decidedly fixated on her search, though growing frustrated with the lack of vanilla. Maybe if she got up the nerve she could actually ask for some real supplies without feeling ungrateful.

"Damn... I can't find any vanilla. I hope that doesn't screw this up too much. Oh do you like Joshua or Josh?"

"Well with the sort of 'camping meets red-cross vibe I'm not too surprised, but maybe I'll consider including stuff like spices and extracts next time I get asked to help with a food drive. I guess this counts as an educational experience, huh?"

She'd never really considered it before, but the tiny luxuries of having the spices and flavors on hand made a huge difference, even so far as just adding a little pepper to a bland canned meal.

"I hope it's ok." She admitted, uncertainly. "I remember it but I haven't made this version in a long time, and the peppermint's totally off the top of my head. I really do appreciate the help though. Usually I just get lazy and buy it pre-chunked. Last time I tried to do it on my own I smashed my thumb and then the bag exploded because I wrapped it too tight. I had to vaccum little bits of peppermint from everywhere. At least the kitchen smelled good though."

They didn't usually show you that kind of disaster on the 'professional' cooking shows, but she was sort of half sure that this was because of careful editing. Everyone made mistakes, even with things you'd done a hundred times, or a billion times. Maybe even more so if you were so used to it that you expected everything to follow routine.

"I'm sort of torn between being morbidly curious and quite afraid to know what you were doing with the screwdriver at the time...." She admitted. Normally the pointy bit pointed -away- from you. At least that had always been her experience, which she had to admit wasn't particularly much, with using screwdrivers. It certainly gave her curious mental images, including the ridiculous version of an enraged screwdriver lunging to the attack.

"Well, we'd certainly have a lot less interesting technology. I mean, the whole moon landing thing never would have happened if some guys hadn't decided to say 'ok we've prepared as much as we can, we're going for it'."

The Moon Landing. That had a funny feel to talk about, since they were in the middle of freaking space, where there should be no atmosphere to speak of, and yet there was. She hadn't even tried to search out familiar constellations. Partially because she'd never been very good at that either, partially because she sort of half remembered trivia about how constelations really only made sense when you were standing on earth. She'd never have been able to pick out the North Star from... pft, who knew. Joe-Shmoe star out here, she was pretty sure, though it would have been interesting to have any capacity to know at some level how impossibly far they were from home... or would that have just made it worse?

"Man, I thought when most people hurt themselves with toasters it involved a fork." She joked. She didn't know anyone who'd ever been silly enough to stick a fork, spoon, knife or other utensil down an plugged in toaster, but the trope was common enough.

"Nope, thats good!, give me a minute and I can show you how to mix it all together if you want?"

"Well I greased the pan already, but that kinda sits off to one side for a bit. What we're going to do now is put the butter, the sugar, the salt, and the fluff in a sauce pan..."

She'd already pre-measured the ingredients as best as she remembered from the "Never Fail" recipe, and put them in the pan as she showed him what she'd measured out, giving it a quick prod and stir with an long spoon she'd uncovered.

"Right now we don't want it to get too hot, we're just going to heat it until everything blends. Once it blends though we're going to turn up the heat until it boils for a bout five minutes."

That seemed like a pretty reasonable start to introducing him to the process.

"The peppermint will go in, but It waits for a bit." She promised. "I don't want it to just melt in, I want it so that they add a little bit of crunch in place of having nuts or anything. Plus the red and white will look kinda nice on top too." She explained, paused as she stirred over the heat, trying to mix it together and added.

"Think we should take it over to Virgo when it's done? There might still be some people resting up, they'd probably like something other than canned chicken soup, don't you think?"

She had half convinced herself of the idea, but wasn't all the way sure of it, and fished with him to get his thoughts on the matter.