Page 27 of Cooking Up a Christmas Storm
‘There are fun ways to cook anything.’ Bella paused. ‘I mean you can do them with bacon and chestnuts, or with chilli, or pancetta.’
Jodie wasn’t a food expert but still. ‘Isn’t pancetta just posh bacon?’
Bella pursed her lips. ‘Basically yeah. So I can’t count that as a different thing?’
‘Maybe not.’
‘OK then. Cheesy creamy sprouts. Like cauliflower cheese.’
‘But sprouts?’
‘Exactly.’
‘So that’s three fun things to do with sprouts,’ Jodie confirmed.
‘What else is on your list?’
‘Massive Christmas dinner.’
‘Obviously.’
‘And then…’ She scanned down. ‘It gets a bit thin, to be honest.’
Bella leaned over to read Jodie’s pad. ‘What’s Sproutapalooza?’
‘I have no idea.’ This was her first work task and she had nothing. Gemma would probably have built some sort of sprout empire by now.
But Bella was laughing, not frowning. ‘It’s OK. We didn’t hire you to work for the sprout marketing board. Filming some recipes for socials is a good idea though. We could release them in the run-up to Christmas?’
Jodie nodded. ‘And we can do other clips and stuff before then. Like from the cookery lessons, like you said?’
She could film Bella’s demos. She could even film herself and make a thing of it. ‘We could make a virtue of me not being a great cook,’ she suggested. ‘Sort of compare and contrast what I make with yours, and show the progress over time?’
Bella was nodding.
‘Like if I can learn,’ Jodie continued, ‘then you can too?’
‘Sounds great. You don’t mind being online though?’ Bella asked. ‘I did look at your socials. You’re pretty private.’
Jodie froze. Of course she’d have looked Gemma up online. That was what everyone did these days, wasn’t it? Jodie could picture her ex’s profiles. Her privacy was tight, and her profile pics were all cartoony images rather than actual photos – the result, she’d said, of some ex before Jodie’s time who’d got weird when they broke up.
Jodie’s socials, on the other hand, were a catalogue of drunken nights out and hot takes she probably should never have posted. ‘It’s fine,’ Jodie reassured her.
‘Excellent. You can be the public face of the Highland Cookery School then.’
Jodie was an idiot. Her socials might be an open book but that wasn’t her book any more. She couldn’t be the public face of anything. ‘OK.’ She nodded.
Maybe the next session wouldn’t be for ages anyway. Maybe by then this problem would somehow have gone away.
‘OK. Well, tomorrow’s class…’ Bella started.
Tomorrow was not ages away.
‘…is technically supposed to be specifically for blokes. Cooking for useless lads and hopeless dads, sort of thing.’
‘Is that the official name?’ Jodie tried to sound relaxed.
‘I don’t think it ever got an official name. We sort of talked about it at Ladies’ Group and then Jill told some of the women in her congregation and now it’s full. Anyway, we can squeeze you in and we’ll tell them you’re there for work. It’ll be fine. Two until five tomorrow.’
