(title) Written: January 19, 2004 For Molly, who inspired me to get over my fear and just write Hobbits already. Happy Birthday, love. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ January 19, 1412 “Pippin Took, what on earth are you doing?” Only ten small fingers and the top sprouts of ginger curls were visible over the huge volume Pippin held open in front of him. “What does it look like, Cousin?” Merry took one look at the state of the kitchen around them and replied, “It looks like Auntie Eg is going to have your hide when she sees this.” Pippin let the book fall to the table, sending up a white puff of flour into his face. “Sees what? It’s my house too, isn’t it?” His offended manner was lessened somewhat by a giant sneeze that sent more flour gusting across the table. He quickly recovered. “Anyway, Mum and the girls have gone to Cousin Peony’s to have a knit and a gossip by the fire. I’ve been left to my own devices.” “Lady help us,” muttered Merry. Pippin narrowed his eyes and lifted the book between them again. The giant, ancient-looking volume had a single ominous word emblazoned on it that confirmed Merry’s fears: Recipes. Merry crossed the kitchen and leaned on the table, taking in the array of jars, canisters and utensils scattered between the stack of bowls and the gaping bag of flour. The winter sun shone in thick stripes across the clutter, the air swirled with flour-dust and warm from the fire crackling in the oven. Merry plucked a raisin from the packet and popped it into his mouth. “Whatever are you on about, Pip?” Pippin’s voice was still prim and short behind his book. “I should think it was obvious, Merry. I’m baking cookies, and I’ll thank you not to eat all of my raisins beforehand.” Merry bit back a giggle at hearing the austere tones of Paladin raised an octave and trying not to lilt. “Pippin, you’ve never lingered in a kitchen longer than to nick the cherries off a tart. Are you sure you should be doing this by yourself? Besides, I thought we were going to walk down to the creek today.” “There’s ice on the window,” Pippin replied. “It’s too cold to go walking.” “So you thought you’d warm up by burning the house down?” Pippin dropped the book again, this time hard enough to make the table shake and tower of bowls wobble precariously. “Why does everyone think I’m too stupid to stoke an oven by myself?” Merry stopped chewing, taken aback by the sudden outburst. Pippin set his jaw and glared back, green eyes snapping with anger, and Merry’s brow wrinkled as he leaned forward and laid a hand on his cousin’s arm. He dropped his cheeky grin and made his voice gentle. “Pip, love, what is all this about? What has got you so cross?” Pippin’s eyes fell to the pages on the table and he let out a sigh, softening as Merry’s thumb stroked his arm. “This morning. I mean, this morning I came into the kitchen, and the lasses were making baked apples to take to Cousin Peony’s, and I... I said to Mum that they smelled good and maybe she could show me how to make them sometime...” His scowl scrunched up deeper, but his cheeks began to burn fiercely pink. “...and Vinca laughed at me, they all laughed and said ‘Peregrin Took in the kitchen! Wouldn’t that be the end of us all!’ and then they just left, still laughing like it was the funniest thing they’d ever heard.” Pippin looked up at Merry, and the anger in his eyes had sputtered out into hurt. “I’m twenty years old, Merry. I’m not a lad and I’m not stupid. Vinca and the girls make me feel such a fool sometimes.” Merry reached over to pick a speck of dust off one wayward curl. “They’re your sisters, love. It’s their job to make you feel a fool. They’re only teasing, you know that.” He waited for Pip’s frown to ease, then tilted his cousin’s chin up and looked him in the eye. “No one thinks you’re a child or a fool, Pippin. You know I don’t. But,” he added with a grin, “can you blame them for being a bit... wary? Remember when you declared you were going to learn to ride, and it took my Da three days to get the ponies back in the stable? Or when you decided to teach yourself to chop kindling, and nearly took off your own foot in the process?” Pippin's smile returned. “It wasn’t my fault the axe-head was loose. And it got you to carry me around for a good month, didn’t it?” “Six weeks, more like. You milked that for all it was worth. How could I think you stupid after you came up with such an ingenious plan?” They were both giggling now, Pippin’s bad humor vanishing as quickly as the raisins they picked through. Merry looked down at the open cookbook and said, “So now you’re going to prove your sisters wrong by baking something while they’re gone, eh?” “Exactly.” Pip smiled and pointed at the page, labeled clearly in Eglantine’s flowing script. Walnut Raisin Cookies. “I thought cookies would be the best thing. I mean, I’ve eaten enough of them, I should kind of instinctively know how to make them, wouldn’t you think?” Merry shook his head, reading over the directions. “Are you sure about this, Pip?” Pippin waved a hand in dismissal, reaching again for the packet between them. “They’ll be gone all day, I’ve got plenty of time to figure it out.” He smiled and winked, his cheeks puffed out around a mouthful of raisins. “Especially if my older, wiser cousin were to help me.” “What makes you think I know anything more about cooking than you do? Do you think my mum lets me any nearer the sharp objects and fire than yours does? But I’ll gladly lend you a hand, my poor simple baby cousin.” Merry ducked to avoid a flying raisin, then added, “My first bit of advice is to change recipes. We seem to be out of raisins, somehow.” Pippin looked down into the empty packet and bit his lip. “Whups. Well, currants would be just as good, wouldn’t they? We’ll use those.” He turned to the shelf above the kitchen window, reaching up to get to the jar of dried currants. His fingers brushed the bottom of the shelf and he braced himself on the counter and stretched, swearing under his breath. The jar began to wobble, and Pip flexed his fingers and tried to will his arm to lengthen another inch. Merry shook his head and came around the table. He rose to tiptoe beside Pippin and reached, his long fingers bumping the jar and drawing it over the edge. The jar tipped off the shelf and Merry caught it before it could fall. He turned, handing it to Pippin with a smug grin. “Your father would be none too pleased with your language, young Peregrin,” he said. Pip scowled and snatched the jar from Merry. “I almost had it, you know.” “What you almost had was a lump on your head.” Pip’s eyes narrowed. “Just you wait. I’ll be taller than you one day, Meriadoc Brandybuck, and then we’ll see who gets a lump on their head. Now help me measure out the flour.” Merry leaned over the book and ran his finger down the faded writing, reading the instructions aloud. “Two and one half cups of flour, sifted into large bowl. Do you have a cup?” Pippin glanced around the kitchen. His eyes fell on his father’s beer mug hanging from its peg by the sink. “Use that.” Merry grabbed the huge mug and peered into the bag of flour. He reached in and scooped out a heaping cupful, drawing out an arm stained white to the elbow, and dumped it into the mixing bowl. A second cupful joined it, then a half, and the bowl was nearly full to the top. Merry looked at it suspiciously. “That’s an awful lot of flour, isn’t it?” Pippin shrugged. “Two and a half cups, right? What does it say next?” Merry bent over the recipe, his fingers smudging white trails across the page. “Mix one cup sugar and one cup butter in separate bowl.” Pippin grabbed the sack of sugar and took the flour-coated mug from Merry’s hand. He filled it with sugar and poured it into a smaller bowl before giving the mug back and wiping a huge white smear across his weskit. Then he plucked the lid off the butter dish and looked inside. “It’s still hard. How can you mix it like that?” Merry looked at the stove. “Maybe you’re supposed to melt it first.” Pippin beamed. “Clever thinking, Merry! I knew you’d know how to do this.” He picked up the butter dish and set it down on the hot stovetop, replacing the lid tightly. “Right. What else?” “Add one egg, beaten, to sugar mixture.” Pippin nodded and reached for the egg basket. He pulled out the biggest of the bunch and held it over the bowl, then hesitated, perplexed. “Ehm.” He squeezed the egg experimentally, chipped at it with his thumbnail, and then shrugged and smacked it hard on the tabletop. The egg exploded under his hand, squishing out between his fingers. “Ugh!” “Don’t waste it, Pippin!” Merry said. “Get it into the bowl!” Pippin cupped his other hand beneath the table’s edge and scooped the mangled egg into it. He dumped it into the sugar and then shook his hand in disgust. “Oi, Pip!” cried Merry, wiping his eye. “Sorry,” said Pippin. He peered over the bowl, his sticky hands picking up flour off the tabletop. “There’s a bit of shell in it.” “Well pick it out, ninny!” said Merry. Pippin reached a finger into the bowl and poked at the offending specks of eggshell. “I can’t. It's stuck.” Merry leaned over the bowl. “Are you daft, Pippin? Just stick your finger in and –“ Merry’s fingertip touched the jiggling mass of unbeaten egg, trying to get at the shell. “It’s stuck!” he said. They huddled together, blonde curls and auburn hanging over the bowl, and prodded at the gelatinous gloop, giggling. “Oh, that’s disgusting,” said Merry. “Do it again,” said Pippin. “What’s that smell?” said Merry. They looked at each other and gasped simultaneously, whirling in horror to face the stove. The lid of the butter dish was rattling and whistling, white foam bubbling out and pouring across the redhot stovetop. The kitchen filled with a loud sizzling noise, and Pippin yelled a word he was certain his father would not approve of and ran to the stove, coughing and waving at the white smoke rising from the scorching dish. “Get it off!” yelled Merry. “I can’t, it’s too hot!” replied Pippin. “Give me a towel, Merry!” “It’s going to catch fire!” Merry said, squinting his eyes against the darkening smoke. Pippin hovered over the stove, panicky, and Merry thought put it out, put it out and did the first thing that came to his mind. He picked up the mixing bowl of flour and upended its contents over the stove. The sizzling died instantly. Pippin blinked at him slowly, one hand still frozen in place above the dish. The hand was covered in flour, as was the rest of Pippin -- he looked like the snowhobbit they had built just yesterday by the barn, but with distinctly more dangerous eyes. Finally he sneezed, hugely, and great clumps of white fell off of him onto the floor. Merry clapped his free hand over his mouth, trying desperately to stifle his laughter. He wasn’t entirely successful. “Merry,” said Pippin, low and calm. “I saved your life, Pippin,” said Merry gravely. Pippin took a step forward. “Meriadoc.” Merry scooted back until his bottom bumped the table. He shook with laughter, still trying to keep his face calm. “It was all I could do, Pip.” “Cousin.” Pippin sneezed again, his white-frosted curls bouncing a cloud of fine powder into the smoky kitchen. Merry tilted his head. “You look rather like Uncle Ferumbras, I think.” The mixing bowl clattered to the floor as Pippin lunged for him. They crashed to the ground in a flurry of white, laughing at the tops of their voices, knocking into the table as they wrestled. Pippin had the leverage and flipped Merry onto his back, looming over him and raising one hand threateningly to the tabletop. “Give over,” he said. “You wouldn’t dare,” said Merry. Pippin grabbed the bowl of sugar and egg and dumped it smoothly over Merry’s head. Merry yelled and thrashed, and Pippin got both hands in Merry’s hair and rubbed the sticky mess into it until it stood out in crazy angles like a wet sheep. Merry coughed and spluttered, and threw handful after handful of flour off the floor until the air was filled with it. They rolled over and over, shrieking with laughter, wrestling turning quickly to tickling (their preferred method of fighting), a big sticky sugary tussle in the middle of the filthy kitchen. “What in the name of Elbereth is going on in here?!” Both hobbits froze in place, heads looking up as one to the doorway of the kitchen. “Hullo, Mum,” said Pippin. The look on Eglantine Took’s face curtailed any further greeting. She stood with her hands on her hips and stared at the spectacle before her – the clutter on the table, the sticky mess on the stovetop (now beginning to smell faintly of burnt biscuits), the layer of smoke and flour hovering in the air – and finally down at the pair of them lying in the drifts of sugar and flour and covered in drying eggwhite. “Exactly what,” she finally asked, “do the pair of you think you are doing?” Merry smiled. “Pippin’s making cookies, Auntie Eg.” “Merry’s helping me,” Pippin added. Eglantine stared at them, speechless. Her mouth twitched with what threatened to be a grin, but she scowled it away and crossed her arms. “Cookies,” she said. Pippin nodded, raining flour down onto Merry’s absurdly spiked hair. “For you and the lasses.” Eglantine cocked her head at that, and looked at Pippin keenly for a moment. Then her face softened and she let out a long sigh. It was a sound familiar to both of them. She crossed the kitchen silently, lifting her skirts as she stepped over the mess, and picked a box of tea off the countertop. She wiped the flour off of it with one hand and stood towering over the two silent hobbits. “Cousin Peony was out of chamomile. We were wanting wanted it for afternoon tea.” Merry and Pippin looked at each other as she walked away, then raised their heads when she stopped by the door. “We’ll be home by 4 o’clock, Peregrin. I’ll be needing to make supper then.” She smiled at their matching looks of bemusement. “The measuring cups are in the pantry.” Still smiling, she turned and walked out of the kitchen. Pippin looked back down at Merry. “They have cups for measuring things?” Merry shrugged and wriggled out from under Pippin. They regarded each other for a moment, and then both broke out into loud gales of laughter. Merry picked a currant off Pippin’s shoulder and ate it absently. Pippin brushed a spot of sugar off Merry’s cheek with his thumb, and frugally stuck it in his mouth. “I have decided,” he declared, “that cooking is much more fun than chopping kindling.” “Safer on my back, too,” replied Merry. “Shall we continue?” Pippin grinned. “We shall.” They struggled to their feet, slipping on the slick floor, and leaned once more over the pages of the cookbook. Their curls were too messy now to tell apart as they bent together and blew the dusting of flour off the page. Pippin pointed at the words and scratched his head. “I think we’re out of butter,” he said. Merry clapped an arm around his cousin’s shoulder. “I’m sure you’ll figure out something.” Pippin looked at him, their smiles softening, and slid his own arm across Merry’s back. “Meriadoc Brandybuck in the kitchen,” he said. “Won’t that be the end of us all,” Merry smiled. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ home