Cooking - Judith Albietz

Lily was hungry again. It didn’t look like they were going to find food anytime soon in this creepy dark tunnel. She could really use a slice of deep crust pizza with cheese melting off the side. Even a bread stick would be nice. It had been too long since she had eaten that delicious piece of fruit.

Yes, she realized, a real live pizza was not in her future, especially in this future. No one here cooked or baked anything. When she asked Sam about it, he explained that just as all living creatures on the island had become telepathic over 2000 years, the molecular chemistry of the plants had also evolved. Most of the plants on the island were edible fruits and vegetables, eaten raw. They were never cooked and they were always delicious. You could just wander around this island all day, eating fruits and vegetables to your heart’s content, and never even have to turn on a stove or nuke a frozen dinner in the microwave. Sam said the plants provided all the nutrition anyone needed. Not only were they good to eat, but also Lily had noticed a quiet surge of energy each time she ate one.

Sam had taught Lily how to touch a plant to sense whether it was okay to eat. If so, then her contact with the plant would trigger the creation of a sensory link between Lily and the plant. Sam explained how Lily’s desires for taste and smell would be picked up by the plant’s receptors. A vegetable Sam had picked for himself tasted like beef jerky to him while that same vegetable tasted to Lily like tofu with garlic and pea pods. So, when they got back up to the surface, Lily planned to immediately find an edible plant and dream up an artichoke and mushroom pizza.

As she and Sam continued down the tunnel, Lily’s stomach growled. She thought about their last meal, the bright yellow fruit which looked like a fat banana but tasted like another one of Lily’s favorite dishes—spinach lasagna. Even though thinking about food only made her more hungry, it kept her fear under control. Hanging on tight to Sam, Lily remembered yesterday’s breakfast, the orange plant which tasted like it looked: a sweet orange, but it was very filling, like it had protein powder in it.

Continuing to distract herself from the danger ahead of her, Lily thought back to five years ago—or was it 2005 years ago--when she was seven years old. At that age Lily already knew how to scramble eggs and how to read recipes. She asked for a cookbook and her mom gave her one with Julia Child’s round ruddy face smiling back at her. Her first baking success was apple pie, an obvious choice and one her whole family supported. Lily made a lot of apple pies, perfecting the technique of making the top crust puff up high. When Uncle Nate he found out he had lung cancer, he asked Lily for one of her famous apple pies and she made him one which rose over six inches tall in the center. She could still remember the smells of apple and cinnamon.