Page 24 of The Kitchen Contract

She accepts the coffee but eyes me suspiciously. “I’m okay. You?”

“Oh, I’m great. Dandy, even.”

She narrows her eyes. “Have you been reading more comments about yourself on our videos?”

“No. Why, are there some good ones?” I make a mental note to check later.

She rolls her eyes. “Why don’t you make yourself useful and help me carry this stuff inside?”

“Yes, ma’am.” I salute and hurry to grab the first crate. “You know what, you should go inside and enjoy your coffee. I can handle this stuff.”

She looks like she has questions, but she’s too smart to turn down an offer to do all the heavy lifting, so she heads inside without argument.

“What are we making today?” I ask once I get everything inside. I notice she has her electric griddle with her again today, and I make a mental note to purchase one for myself, to make it easier to replicate the magic when she’s not here.

“Buffalo chicken quesadillas and lemon poppy seed cake cookies.”

“Nice. What can I do?”

She takes a long pull of her coffee and sets it aside. “We’re doing dessert first today so that it will be closer to lunchtime when we make the quesadillas.”

“Dessert first is my life motto,” I say cheerfully.

She smiles. “I believe that.”

“So what do you want me to do?” I repeat.

“Why don’t you set up the second tripod with your phone beside the oven so we can get shots of the cookies coming in and out. I’ll sort out these ingredients while you do that.”

We flow through our set-up and recording efficiently, falling smoothly into the grooves we’ve carved out for ourselves as we’ve worked together over the last few weeks. It feels like the chemistry we have on-screen continues to grow as we become more comfortable with each other, the playful banter flowing easily as I follow her instructions for the cake mix cookies.

“The first thing you’ll want to do is add the poppy seeds to the cake mix,” Nora tells me. “You need two teaspoons.”

“Right, two teaspoons.” I pop the top open on the tiny jar of seeds and tip it into the spoon. The seeds pour out much faster than I expected, however, and Nora leaps back with a yelp as the tiny grey balls overflow the spoon and rain down on her feet.

“Oops.” I grimace, setting aside the jar. “Sorry about that.”

“That’s okay, messes are part of cooking,” Nora says, looking back and forth between me and the camera with an amused smile. “The lesson to be learned here is to measure over the bowl. Go ahead and add those to the mix.” She points at the full teaspoon in my hand.

We keep rolling through the rest of the steps, ignoring the sandy crunch of poppy seeds being pulverized beneath our feet as best we can. I hope the sound doesn’t come through in the video. Finally, I slide the cookies into the oven, and Nora hits the button to stop recording.

“Thank goodness.” Nora drops straight to the floor. “I couldn’t take it anymore.” She pulls off her ballet flat and dumps poppy seeds out in a little pile with a little sigh of relief.

“Sorry about that,” I say again, shaking my head with a rueful smile. “Guess I know what I’ll be doing while we wait on those cookies.”

“Sweeping?” Nora says with a laugh. “You got that right.”

I start off with the broom, but quickly switch to the vacuum when I realize that sweeping is just spreading them out. It takes me far longer than I would have anticipated to track down all the tiny seeds—and I’m positive I didn’t get them all. I’ll probably still be finding seeds here and there for the next year.

But the important thing is the cookies turned out great, despite my clumsiness. They are pillowy soft with a burst of lemon flavor, like clouds of citrus delight. Nora won’t let me have more than one until we make the second recipe, which turns out just as good as the first—better if you take into account that I don’t spill anything this time. The quesadillas are perfectly golden brown and crispy, with a hint of heat from the buffalo sauce that plays well with the cool blue cheese dressing we dip them in. It’s the most satisfying meal I’ve had since the last time she was here.

Nora is in a particularly good mood today, buoyed by the still-rising views and subscribers on our channel. I do my best to feed into her happiness with generous coffee refills and copious compliments, as well as an update on the progress I’ve made designing her website. I have a few more tweaks to make, and then it will be ready to go live with copies of all the recipes we’ve recorded so far. She seems happy, oohing and ahhing over the sample screenshots I show her on my phone.

As we clean up after lunch, I decide it’s a good time to broach the topic that’s been in the back of my mind all morning. I glance over at her from where I’m loading the dishwasher.

“Hey, so I have a question for you.”

She doesn’t look up from wiping down her griddle. “Shoot.”

---