Raiding the Kitchen

[North Korea]

As far as Sang Kyu was concerned, there was one, single advantage to being invited to live in a giant house with all his enemies for several weeks:

The food was free.

Once he'd taken his luggage up to his room, unpacked, organized, and hid all the things no one else was supposed to see, he hit the kitchen. He'd brought a few food ingredients with him, including canned kimchi, but he didn't want to have to dig into it just yet. Hopefully, since this was basically the equivalent of an international house, there would be stuff in the kitchen that wasn't American. Despite the fact that the juche ideal was constantly broken in his country by accepting foreign aid from America, he had always boycotted the stuff. Food was food...unless it was American, and he wasn't about to let himself eat any of it just because he happened to be in the country where it came from.

He slid in quietly, like a child sneaking into the kitchen late at night in search of cookies or candy. He had a lot of exploring to do. There was a large refrigerator and countless drawers and cabinets, as well as a pantry. However, the fridge called to him louder than anything else, and a moment later he'd popped the door open and was staring in amazement at the variety of delectable goodies before him. There was food from all over the world, practically! China would have had a field day cooking with all the stuff just in the fridge alone! Oh, how he wished China was here now. He missed his cooking a lot.

He glanced down in the meat drawer and a package of fish caught his eye. Instantly snatching it up, he looked it over. It had been a long time since he'd had a good hardy meal with fish in it. The gears in his mind were already spinning. What would he need for saeng sun jim? He was listing off the ingredients in his head as he remembered them...onions, radishes, red pepper, sesame oil...

Before he could do anything though, he would need something to cook it in. Shutting the meat drawer, followed by the fridge, he set the package of fish meat down on the counter and dug through one of the lower cabinets for a pot. When he found one, he started looking through the cabinets for other ingredients. Soon enough he'd gathered vegetable oil, sesame oil, rice wine, garlic, soy sauce, and crushed red pepper. Back to the fridge, and he dug around until he'd located an onion, a red pepper, and what he thought was ginger, though he couldn't really tell since it looked like some North American variety. There were a few ingredients he couldn't find, but he was fine with leaving them out. Soon enough, he was cutting up peppers and onions and combining everything in one big pot.

[port]

Portugal was bored. No, no, that wasn't right- Catarina was bored. And that wasn't entirely accurate either. Catarina had been bored, and for a while, too- she didn't really have to do paperwork, and her government was too busy panicking about finances to pay much attention to her, or to give her anything to do that would be useful. So when her boss had told her about- about a 'reality' something-or-other, who knew, she hadn't been paying much attention- she had jumped right on it. They'd said something about international cooperation, but more literally, as in between the nations themselves and not the people or government?

Who cared? She would be out of her own house and have something to do for a few weeks, which was good enough for her.

She was a little late- apparently she was a replacement for someone else, something that might have bothered another person, but she didn't really mind. She wouldn't really have been her first choice, either. She had copious amounts of brandy in her bag, as well as, of course, the necessities, changes of clothes and the like. Even her jacket was carefully folded in her bag, though her hat stayed firmly perched above her head, and bugger the flight officials, she would wear what she wanted.

Sometimes being a nation and being allowed to take anything she wanted with her, no matter the mode of transport, was really really useful.

It also, she recalled as she wandered into the house, seemed that she didn't have a room. They hadn't really specified one for her, but they'd said she would probably be sleeping in a different room each night. That was fine, she could probably just find a couch to crash on or something... unless it was against the rules. Hefting her bag on her shoulder, she decided to head to the kitchen and put away her brandy right away- it was, after all, for cooking, not for drinking.

(Hopefully there was beer, Francesinhas just weren't the same without it.)

There was someone cooking when she entered, but she didn't pay it much mind, just setting her bag on the table and starting to rifle around for places to put her stash. There was one cupboard, pretty high up, that was mostly empty- the bottles would have to lay down, but she could make them fit. She slid off her shoes, then clambered up onto the counter, dragging her bag with her, slight clinking noise emanating from within. Four, five, six bottles fit perfectly. The seventh was a bit awkward, but she managed. The eighth didn't quite fit, and she sighed, closing the cupboard.

Ah, well, she could keep that one with her. She turned her gaze to the person cooking finally, offering a faint smile. "Hello~"

[Iran]

After her thirtieth year of Ramadan, Iran was able to fast without having to sleep all day. It hadn't been easy, since the days were hot in Iran and she was an extraordinarily busy person. At the beginning, she fainted twice a day, but now she was used to it.

She had also worked out a schedule. Said schedule had called for her to get up during the night, after iftar, every two and a half hours to eat something, then have suhur and go through the day.

Feeling confident in her piousness in the face of those (filthydisgustinginfidels) other, non-Muslim nations, she padded down the hallway from her customary chair to get an inventory for her iftar dinner.

She had brought many of the things she had needed, shanghaiing some innocent boys with a smile and five dollars to bring in the delicious food because of her "weak, female arms". Her lips pursed as she formulated the meal plan. Dates were customary to start off and tea was important for any meal. Halva, lavash bread, paneer, it really was a no-brainer to come up with the designated starter (and later snack) for the dinner, but there was always the main course to worry about.

Was today an estamboli mood? Chelo kebab? Gehmeh? Aash? Iran bit her lip. It wasn't proper to start salivating at the ideas of nice food. She had self control! She could cook all of those lovely dishes and then some, even though she hadn't eaten in seven hours and twenty two minutes. She could do it!

She clicked into the kitchen and stopped. Someone.... was already cooking? She bit her lip once more and felt the inevitable shake of her confidence. She was used to the smell of her food.... but someone else's? She drew herself up and bustled her way into the kitchen. In her hunger-addled state, it took her a minute to recognize him before she tried to grin.

"Hello Korea. Chetori?" she beamed kindly.

[North Korea]

While he brought what was in the pot up to a boil, he worked on combining some of the other ingredients to make the sauce in another bowl. He muttered the Korean names of the ingredients under his breath as he mixed them in, only distracted from his cooking when he noticed someone else banging around in a cabinet nearby.

There was some girl up on the counter trying to shove some bottles into one of the highest cabinets. Sang Kyu didn’t recognize her from the back, but he had a feeling he’d recognize her if she turned around. But for the moment, he went back to his cooking, dribbling a little of the sauce over what was in the pot as soon as he’d finished it. He brought the concoction back up to a boil so that the sauce was bubbling and sizzling in the bottom. At the point he removed the fish meat from the package and gently laid it on top of the vegetables and sauce that was already in the pot before dribbling more of the sauce on top.

It was at that point that the other person seemed to have finished whatever she was doing in that cabinet and offered a small hello to him. He looked up from his cooking, recognizing her as Portugal finally. “Hello,” he mumbled softly, giving her a little nod of acknowledgement. His eyes fell on the bottle of brandy in her hand. He couldn’t read the label from where he was at, and assumed it would probably be in Portuguese—a language he was no where near fluent in—anyway.

He was in the process of cutting a very thin slice of ginger, the root in one hand and a knife in the other. He gestured to the bottle of brandy with the knife. “What is that?” he asked, genuinely curious. He didn’t have any plans to drink it or cook with it, but he still wanted to know what it was.

There was the sound of footsteps and suddenly another person had entered the kitchen. A familiar voice followed. “…Iran?” he said, not quite sure he was hearing right. But he turned around and it was, in fact, Iran. “I didn’t know you would be here.”