Chapter 29: Fantastic Feasts and Where to Find Them

Mary puts her twin grandsons to the test once more by entering them in a local cook-off, in hopes of filling in the remaining slot in the family's trophy case.

Mary often had a habit of standing around in the dining area of her restaurant and scanning the whole room, and who could blame her? Even after three decades and then some, part of her still couldn't believe she'd accomplished her biggest goal in life. It was almost like the feeling new parents get, where they're still in shock at how they just had their first kid, and thus can't stop taking minutes out of their day to stare at it, trying to make sure such a miracle wasn't a hallucination. Mary had a tendency to do that with her daughter, Monica, as well, but that had faded away a little as she grew up. At the moment, she had just finished checking out most of the walls, admiring the family and marriage photos, alongside several framed newspaper clippings that detailed the restaurant's milestones and glowing reviews. Not to mention that professional drawing of Bernie Sanders near the front door, colored in with oil pastels and watercolors.

But the decoration that she loved the most was a set of three shelves built into a shallow alcove in the wall, covered in a sheet of glass for protection. Each shelf contained a series of golden trophies shaped like various foods or kitchen utensils, all a result of those years of cook-offs she partook in and was subsequently banned from in the past. Mary had looked over these shelves countless times over the years, but it wasn't until today when she noticed that there appeared to be room left over for just one more trophy. And as soon as she noticed that, a mild pang of frustration immediately made its presence known on her face, occupying her mind to the point where she stopped paying attention to her surroundings and was startled by a thump against the front door, accompanied by the chiming of a bike bell.

"What the hell?" Mary looked over her shoulder, cautiously walking over and pushing it open.

Looking down, she saw that the morning newspaper had been dropped off, alongside a few cooking magazines. Always eager to be kept in the loop about the local goings-on, she cracked the former open and instantly her irate mood was swapped out for a more intrigued one.

---

Upstairs, the rest of the Lloyds were left to their own devices, enjoying the last of their leisure time before Mary & Maxwell's would start its Saturday shifts. Monica stood in the kitchenette with a flute of wine in one hand, sampling and carefully analyzing various types of cheese, presumably to determine which one to use in a recipe she was thinking up. Morty read a dense graphic novel on the couch, but he couldn't stop himself from watching his twin fool around, running while playing with an empty champagne flute, and raucously laughing all the while. Meanwhile, Xander and Hank were busy sleeping late in their rooms, taking advantage of the fact that they wouldn't have to work until the dinner shift.

"You should probably be careful, Scott. If that thing breaks, Mom's gonna gut you like a fish," Morty warned.

"Yeah, right. Like she'd do that to her own son," Scott rolled his eyes with a giggle.

"Well luckily for the both of you, I don't know how to gut a fish! It's actually the one blemish on my culinary degree!" Monica snarled. "Now if you two don't mind quieting down, I'd like to be able to focus here. I'm trying to create a non-fondue dish that incorporates both cheese and wine, and while I've already decided on a wine, I'm still figuring out which cheese compliments it the best."

"Our bad!"

Before anything else could be done, the door to the apartment was kicked open, startling Monica into dropping her glass.

"Ugh, these f*****g… what is it now, Mom?" she groused. She loved her family more than anything, but she loathed it when someone, anyone, dared to interrupt her while she was focused on her work.

"Guys, big news! There's a local cook-off taking place in the park next Sunday, and I'm looking forward to taking home the trophy so I can fill in the one empty space in the case downstairs!" Mary explained as she jittered a little.

"Now I'm not sure if Scott got his demeanor from his dad or you," Morty snarked.

"Har har."

"Mom, you do realize you were permanently banned from all local cooking competitions many years ago, right?" Monica perked a suspicious eyebrow. "Hell, they went so far as to extend that ban to me before I was even born. And having Hank or Xander do it instead might be too risky, since everyone knows they knocked me up."

"Well maybe we can't… but they can!" Mary pointed at her grandsons.

"Pardon?" Scott and Morty asked at once.

"You heard me. Since nobody really knows you, you two are gonna enter that cook-off, present a dish well beyond anyone's comprehension, beat all the amateurs out there, and harvest their tears so we can boil some pasta in them! Then you'll bring home that shiny trophy so we can show it off to our customers. You thought cooking for us was tough? Well, try cooking for the general public!"

"Hey, I'm game." Scott nodded.

"So long as there's some compensation, I'm fine with it," Morty remarked dryly. "So does this cook-off have a theme?"

"Yep, and that would be none other than pizza. An American classic derived from an Italian classic. No other dish offers nearly the same amount of room for creativity when it comes to execution, so you boys are gonna have your work cut out for you," Mary described.

"So lemme get this straight. Not only are you forcing them to enter a cook-off in your place, but you're gonna make their first outing a difficult one?" Monica butt in. "Coming up with an original take on pizza is borderline impossible, even for us."

"Well, maybe for our generation, but there's always hope for the next one."

"Yeah Mom, quit being so pessimistic," Scott said.

"Look at you, brushing up on your vocabulary." Morty sneered.

"Shut up!"

"If you say so, kids." Monica shrugged, knowing she was in the minority. "Welp, you'd better get started on brainstorming. After all, that cook-off's just over a week away."

"Right. To the bunk beds!" Scott pointed at the ceiling with a goofy grin, before zipping upstairs with his arms spread out like airplane wings. "Nyeeuumm!"

A grumbling Morty just rolled his eyes and followed him at a normal speed.

---

From there, the two boys hardly ever stopped trying to figure out a battle plan over the next few days, pitching ideas before either holding onto them or scrapping them in an instant. Didn't matter if they were in the lunch room at school, training in the kitchen, on the couch in front of the TV, or in bed before it was time to shut off the lights. Just so long as they got at least some brainstorming in, then the half-twins considered their day a productive one. All the adults would've been happy to see them getting along and collaborating on something, had they not been able to tell how much the siblings were struggling to come up with a concept. Mary sure wasn't kidding when she said this cook-off would be a difficult one to win.

One evening, the twins stood side-by-side in the third-floor bathroom that they shared with Xander and Monica; the only bathroom in the apartment to not be located inside a bedroom. They were brushing their teeth as they continued to throw ideas at the proverbial wall, trying to see which ones stuck and which ones slid down to the floor.

"Y'know, maybe we could try doing a breakfast pizza?" Scott turned on the tap to wash his spit out of the sink.

"There's a specific reason as to why I neglected to bring that one up, and that's because breakfast pizza has been done to death," Morty replied, carefully flossing his teeth.

"Well sure, maybe the bacon, egg, and cheese kind, but maybe we could channel the more sweet side of breakfast? Y'know, like fruit, cinnamon rolls, that kind of thing."

"Sounds tempting, but something's telling me that's been done too."

"Hmm… well why not use some international breakfast as an inspiration? Like, the full English? Heh, I always found it weird how many words they spell wrong in that country."

"Actually, every country outside of America uses those spellings. Take Canada, for instance-"

"Hey, wait a sec!" Scott cut his twin off.

"What is it? What about Canada? …y'know, besides being the place where all the low-budget films set in New York are shot?" Morty tried to joke, but it fell on deaf ears.

"Well… how about we use poutine as our basis?"

"Hmm, not a bad choice… but back to the breakfast thing. When I think of Canada, I think of Nova Scotia, where we went last summer."

"And maybe one of the foods that Nova Scotia is best known for could be the key to our victory!" Scott jumped at his own realization.

"If by 'one of the foods', you mean Nova Scotia lox, then yes! Nice to see you use your head for once," Morty giggled.

"Please, when's the last time I haven't used my head?" Scott sneered with folded arms.

"You really want me to go through the whole list?"

---

On the morning of the cookout, a glasses-free, messy-haired Monica was pacing back and forth in her mother's room, dressed in a baggy crop top and some pajama pants covered in the Mary & Maxwell's logo, rolled down at the waistband. Mary sat up under the covers as the two talked things out, and by the looks of things, their discussion seemed to lean more on the serious side.

"So… today's the day at last," Monica said. "Personally, I'm hoping they win, mainly so they can go back to their normal lives."

"And why would that only happen if they win?" Mary asked.

"Because knowing you, you'd probably keep hounding them every time a cooking competition comes up until they can eke out a victory. It's not healthy for boys their age to be put under so much stress, you know."

"Nonsense, darling. I only wanted to notch one more victory for our family in order to fill up the last available slot in our trophy case. After that, I'll back off. S'not like we have the room to build another one."

"Ugh, you would make this about your legacy again. Look Mom, you're already one of the luckiest women in Burlington, even without all those trophies to your name. Does it really matter if we still have room for one more trophy? Is it even worth working your own grandchildren too hard and putting them under this much pressure just to appease your OCD?"

"I don't have OCD! …I just like maintaining order and don't like seeing something look a little off."

"Uh-huh… well, lucky for you, we've already paid the ludicrously high entry fee and it's too late to drop out, so we might as well get ready for this." Monica pinched the bridge of her nose, massaging the small indents that resulted from wearing her glasses all the time. "Who's taking them?"

"You are, since you're not the one in charge of the food truck." Mary shrugged.

"Fine. Do we still have any temporary dye lying around?"