New Traditions

It was official, her Mum or sister were going to ground her for life...depending on who came home first. The normally pristine kitchen, thanks to her Mother's borderline obsessive cleanliness as well as her sister's interior design skills was covered in sporadic splatterings of flour,sugar,nutmeg and half melted choc chips. In the midst of this culinary nightmare, Jessie sat caked in these ingredients in a sobbing mess on the silvery marble countertop.

She had less than 72 hours to remember her grandmother's famous christmas loaf recipe, a recipe that had been located in the family recipe book...a book that had been ruined a few months before when she had accidently flooded the kitchen. Her family didn't know she had ruined the book yet which was part of the reason why she had taken control of making grandmother's famous holiday loaf, a loaf that was incredibly hard to perfect based upon her hundreds of attempts in the last month and the current mess around her.

It was especially important this Christmas as it was...

1. Their first Christmas with her sister's fiance and his family. 

2. The first Chrimstas that Natalia had offered to actually help with the Christmas cooking.

It wasn't that she was anti Christmas or lazy, she had just simply never offered and no one had asked her. Abigail, her sister and their Mother were always in charge of the cooking...which made sense considering that her sister was an actual chef, her finance was one as well...it was how they had met. 

As Natalia remembered this fact, she let out a exasperated groan as the complexity of her situation increased. Now, not only did she have to recreate her grandmothers recipe for her family, but it also had to be passable in the eyes of two professionaly trained chefs. Her sister was going to pick up on the slightest difference thanks to her hyper sensitive palate and years of practice making the recipe. Her fiancee would be able to pick up on the slighest problems with the recipe due to his profession as well, she was so screwed.

As the hallway clocked chimed, indicating it was 3pm Natalia groaned in exasperation once more, leaving white streaks in her ebony hair as she pushed it behind her shoulders. In approxiametly two hours her family would be home...that meant two hours of intense cleaning and stressing. Pushing herself up off the sticky countertop she surveryed her surroundings with blatant dislike as the weight of the work needed to be done threatened to have her giving up and just accepting whatever punishment her Mother came up with. 

As she started to wallow in her self pity, she headed over to the hardening bowl of frosting she had made as a sort of incentive to keep working on her seemingly impossible goal. As she licked the sickly sweet cinnamon flavoured icing off her finger, she found herself jumping back in shock...hitting her head on the stove over head as she glared at the sheepish looking man standing before her.

" I did knock numerous times Nat, I guess you couldn't hear me over that."

He gestured towards the tiny wireless speaker sitting on the far countertop, it's neon pink colour hidden by the culinary ingredients currently caking the rest of the room. Silently pointing towards her phone sitting idle next to the speaker, Robert...her sister's fiance walked over to the device, tapping it's screen once as the techno beats of an AVICII song abruptly stopped. 

" Now that I can actually hear myself think, shall we try to tackle this...this situation before your Mother and my lovely fiancee come home and have a heart attack?"

 Nodding mutely, Natalia allowed herself to be walked over the the fridge where he poured them both glasses of lemonade.

" I was trying to recreate a recipe for Christmas."

She stated frankly, shrugging as she retrieved the icing bowl and offered it to Robert as she helped herself to the comfort food. 

" I can see that." He chucked out with a smile as he looked around the kitchen.

" I can honestly say this is impressive Nat, I've been a professional chef for 5 years and have been cooking since I was old enough to speak...yet I haven't seen a mess like this since culinary school. "

Laughing at the obvious bewilderment on her phone he gave her an awkward side hug as he headed over to the sink and started soaking various sponges.

" Whilst I start scrubbing the countertop why don't you start putting the ingredients away and we can have a chat about whatever you want. I came over to just drop off your sister's dry cleaning before dinner but there's obviously a story here and you know me, I'm a sucker for a good gossip...especially if it involves food.

Laughing softly at this Natalie soon found herself spilling the entire narrative regarding her attempts at recreating her Grandmother's christmas loaf and the currently absurd state of the kitchen. She couldn't help it, perhaps she was too trusting but she liked Robert and he was the type of person to get even a spy to spill their secrets...probably. 

She found tears welling up in her eyes as she recounted her tale, feeling geuninely sick at the thought of having lost her grandmother's famous recipe...she had let down the family and she had no idea what to do. Blaming her waterworks on the strong floor polish she was currently using to mop the kitchen tiles, she found herself in the confines of a warm hug as her soon to be brother in law comforted her. 

" Nat look at me."

As the dark haired woman stared at the older man she found her tears slowing a little as his words sunk in.

" It's going to be okay Natalia alright. First of all your intentions are pure, the execution was a little rusty but you mean well which is all that matters. Second of all, yeah you are a little...okay a lot clumsy the fate of your family's recipe book being a key example. However, there are reasons why we make new traditions...there is a reason there is a saying everything happens for a reason and this case is no exceptiom. We shall make a new and improved recipe before the big Christmas dinner in a few days. For now though, let's just clean up and finish off that icing before your family gets home."

Smiling in gratitude at the man in front of her, she hugged him back before contuning to clean up all the floury goodness she had spread all over the kitchen in the last few hours. Perhaps this Christmas would be okay afterall, it was a chance to make new traditions...with new family.