Harmony Chapter 28: Cream of the crop

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This entry is part 28 of 31 in the series Harmony

I quickly went to my apartment to take a long bath.

It had been great wearing some clothes today, but somehow, I had missed being naked during that hour or so. It’s odd how used to nudity I was beginning to be.

After I finally felt clean, I walked to the kitchen to see how my new tools were progressing.

To my surprise, I couldn’t find Laura anywhere. Most cooks were busy putting the last touches on the banquet and it’s only after asking half a dozen of them that I discovered that Laura was outside in the back of the town hall.

I wouldn’t say I ran toward her, but I was definitely anxious to see her and get an idea of how things were progressing in the kitchen.

Laura wasn’t alone. Three of her colleagues, a man, and two women joined her using big wooden boxes to move a kind of stick up an down.

“Hi Harmony, are you coming to help us?”

“Can you explain to me what you are doing?”

“We’re making butter… we were almost out of it and had plenty of cream”, Laura replied casually.

“Wait, are these… churns?”

“I don’t know. We call them butter barrels.”

“Yeah, but why are you using them, I brought you new mixers. Just whip up some cream and you’ll be done.”, I explained, incredulously.

“Harmony, let the cooking to the cooks. A mixer makes whipped cream, not butter…”.

“Come with me…”

I almost grabbed Laura and pulled her back to the kitchen.

I picked up some fresh cream from the refrigerator and one of the commercial mixers. You know, those which are attached to the bowl so you don’t have to actually do anything?

I began the process and soon enough, we had some good looking whipped cream.

“See, just what I told you… not butter…”.

Laura moved to turn it off, but I pushed her hand aside.

“Just wait”.

“It’s going to harden! It’s a waste of good cream!”

“Yes, it is going to harden into butter.”

“No, it won’t be butter, it will be all disgusting and squishy.”

“Yeah, but then you strain it and you extract the buttermilk, leaving perfectly good butter without having to strain a muscle”.

The cream was slowly turning into butter. The color was even beginning to change.

“We never went that far…”, Laura explained, dumbfounded.

“We are almost there…”, I explained, excited.

I had seen by accident one of our servants making butter and was fascinated. I had gone to the kitchen to steal a snack and was wondering what she was doing. My mother apparently only liked fresh butter and insisted it to be made in-house. She was the same way with peanut butter.

Soon enough, the butter was slid. I strained it, making sure to keep the buttermilk, and gently pushed the butter so that all of the liquid was expelled.

Laura touched the butter and after lightly tasting it, hugged me tight to thank me.

“It’s going to help us a lot! No more cream beating!”

She kissed me passionately on the lips and soon enough, was caressing my body. I was a little ashamed of being in public like this, but no one seemed to bat an eye…

“Shouldn’t we warn your help outside?”

“I guess… as long as you promise to stop by my apartment after supper.”

“Sure.”

I left her to her work and returned to my own apartment.

I took the remote terminal and redid a survey of our resources.

Yes, it would be possible to automate a few mines. It would require a lot of work on my part to organize everything, but that would just help me convince Rita of my usefulness.

I did spot in the catalog a great monorail cargo train and placed a pending order to be transmitted to the next ship coming by. It would certainly help with the exports, even if, in reality, it wouldn’t arrive for another 4 or 5 years. In the meantime, we’ll make due…

Series Navigation«Harmony Chapter 27: Solving LogisticsHarmony Chapter 29: Talking about Pigs»
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