Welcome to Gaia! ::

A member of the symphony had passed her off a little brochure with a web address on it at the end of one of their practices that day. Cerissé looked up at him curiously. “What’s this?” she asked and the man - an older gentleman who played second seat clarinet, if she recalled correctly his name was Nathaniel - smiled. “I just see you working so hard all the time, I wasn’t sure if you had time to go grocery shopping and cook. I recently hired this young man to do shopping and meal prep for me and all I have to do is cook so I thought perhaps you would like it too.” Nathaniel explained. Cerissé nodded and opened the little pamphlet.

‘Cassian Norris - No time to prep AND cook? I take all the guesswork out! Enjoy a perfect meal every time!’ it said, the paper a nice red and the pictures crisp and clean. At the bottom of a page there was a box that added; ‘Need evidence I know what I’m doing? Check out CookingCassicorn on Youtube or Twitter!’

There had been a lot more information than that on it, but the brief summary made her nod. “I’ll consider it. Thank you.” she offered a smile to the older man. He was very kind and attentive to notice such a tiny detail.

When she’d gotten home later that evening, Cerissé - waiting as her dinner cooked in the oven (Lasagna, delicious!) - pulled up the account on her computer. The face of the channel was a bright-eyed young man in a unicorn shirt and he had quite the video playlists on his channel. There was a whole category called ‘Foodie Fails. From what she could tell, it was him sharing results from trying to mix ingredients and sharing what had worked and what hadn’t. She really wasn’t curious about that however.

Instead, she clicked the first video in the ‘recently uploaded’ list (lord, he updated often) titled: ‘Baked Chicken Alfredo’. It was 15 minutes long, and most of it wasn’t even a dubbed-over timelapse. She looked at the food he had assembled on the counter - and there was a lot of it. Dairy, chicken, egg, flour...Cerissé realized quickly that the young man was going to go seriously from scratch. It was almost enchanting as he diced up and breaded small bite-sized chunks of chicken while a mix of cream, cheese, pepper, and garlic simmered on the stove behind him. The breaded chicken was put in the oven - quote ‘so it won’t be so greasy when we’re done! But if you like it fried, I can do that too!’ - as he took the sauce off the stove and put it aside, explaining that it would thicken upon standing and it’d be best that way. A pot of water was put on the stove to boil as he mixed eggs, flour, and water and strung them through a pasta machine. He gently explained where he had gotten it from and gestured to a link in the description.

Cerissé briefly saw part of herself in the young man - where she had a violin, he had a kitchen, a knife, and a pasta maker.

It wasn’t long before the chicken was cooked and he explained the bite-sized breading made cooking take less time. The pasta was tossed into the water for barely any time at all to allow the heat of the water to cook it before he used a hand-held strainer to pull it out and start plating up.

He offered a view of the plate to the camera.

“This recipe will be offered on my website, in my cookbook - only a month more to get your preorders in guys! I appreciate all the support so far!- and for people here in my new city, if you follow the link below, you can sign up for my new service where I do all this prep work for you! You only have to throw some food in the oven, maybe a sauce on the stove, put it together with my instructions and enjoy!”

Cerissé hovered her mouse over the link he had mentioned before her own oven beeped that it was time to eat! She rose, quickly running over to pull the Lasagna out to sit on her counter as it cooled off and returned to the computer, ‘hmmm’ing thoughtfully. Was it really that much of a hassle to shop and cook for herself? The notion that she didn’t have a car (nor did she want one) did make her limit her trips and instead of one big trip a week, she went out nearly every other day….time she could be spending to write music or get a piece transcribed into the program on the computer.

Gingerly, she clicked the link and a simple, but pleasant, website opened.

‘ABOUT’ ‘FAQS’ ‘PLANS’ ‘MENU OPTIONS’ ‘ORDER’

She clicked ‘ABOUT’ and read. It looked like the young man selected nearly 21 meal variations a week ahead of time, let people make their selections for the week, then he prepped everything and delivered it on a certain day - Sunday mornings, it looked like. So while she and Nathaniel would have the same cook, they wouldn’t be eating the same meal.

Interesting.

She quietly clicked ‘MENU OPTIONS’ and saw he had everything listed out in a calender listing what week offered what options to order AND when those options would be delivered as well as a cut-off date for that week. It looked like if she ordered before she went to bed, she’d still make the next week’s cut-off.

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try, she figured, pulling up the ‘ORDER’ screen and starting to go through the fairly detailed form. It looked like he offered it on a limited basis - in order to keep things personal and authentic. Plus it looked like he had more to do than just...cook for other people. He looked young, probably in High School or maybe even starting college.

Click.


Click.


Click.

It took only 20 minutes to fill out everything and fill out both delivery and payment information. She hit ‘send’, then rose to go slice off a piece of Lasagna for herself (even though it had only really been enough for two servings. She wasn’t going to eat Lasagna alone for a week. Ahh!)

By the time she returned to the table, her phone buzzed with a text. It wasn’t a number she knew, but the contents made the sender fairly obvious.

‘Hey Cerissé!

Just confirming that I’ve gone through your form and I’ll be delivering to you this Sunday! If you have any questions for me or would like to change anything, let me know before Saturday at 1:30 and I’ll do my best to accomodate!

Otherwise, I look forward to meeting you!

Cassian.’

He hadn’t been kidding about ‘personal’.

Still, it was perhaps a little daring to try letting someone else cook for her. She’d see how she felt once Sunday came around.

She’d have to thank Nathaniel again either way.

Cerissé unpacked the labelled box she’d left on the counter, carefully setting everything out. The young man who had brought the box had been very thorough, she discovered, as she looked at the tiny containers of seasonings (perfectly portioned out, how wonderful!) which were labelled with a very professional label that was printed on clear sticker paper. The meat was carefully labelled as well, and once everything was unpacked, she looked over the paper that had been in the box to make sure everything was there.

It was.

The paper lined out a very simple order of operations as well. She read through the entirety of the instructions first, gently placing a hand on each of the ingredients as the recipe called for them. For the most part, she just needed to dump things into the pan and be careful to stir correctly. It was pretty easy sounding, if she was honest.

Dumping the butter, which after being severed had been re-wrapped in a wax wrap almost as neatly as any grocery store butter was, she carefully scooted it around the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon as it melted. Then, the garlic from it’s small plastic bottle (where did he find these plastic containers?). There was also vaccuum sealed shrimp that upon being opened (with a neat little tab!) was rinsed off, then tossed into the pan as well.

‘Cook until shrimp is pink and starts to curl.’

In a second pot, more measured out ingredients were set in - pre-whisked cream cheese (it was so light and fluffy!), pepper, some cheeses, flour. Stir, stir, stir. Instructions said to not let it get to a rolling bubble, but to make sure it did cook through. Cerissé shifted between the two pans, turning down the heat on the shrimp finally and setting it off to rest on the counter before she started boiling water for the homemade fettuccine noodles that apparently would only need 5 minutes to cook. They were so novel (but they also looked hella brittle...hmm).

Eventually the sauce was also taken off the stove and the shrimp was gently folded into it. Her kitchen smelled better right then than it normally did - mostly because instead of cooking, Cerissé normally cooked pre-prepared meals in the oven. Like her Lasagna.

Once the noodles were cooked and strained, outside of the garnish that the young man had also included in the box, dinner was ready. For the first time in her life, Cerissé felt like a super fancy cook and it had taken her what...30 minutes of cooking? She hadn’t even had to chop anything! The containers and boxes were sorted between her trash and recycling before she returned to plate up her self made fancy meal.

Shrimp Alfredo! It smelled amazing!

Briefly, sitting at her dining room table with her dinner, she considered snapping a picture of it...to show who? Cerissé reconsidered, then changed her mind. She snapped a picture, set her phone to the side, and took the first bite.

It tasted as good as it smelled and it was better than the last Italian Restaurant she’d been to! She was already highly impressed with the Youtube boy, that much was for sure. She opened up her phone and attached the photo to a text captioned with a - ‘It turned out great! Looking forward to the rest of the week, Cassian.’ and sent it off to her new sous chef.

She had finished her meal before he texted her back.

‘Glad to hear it! Keep me updated!’

Cerissé would text him every meal for the rest of the week.