It was a man-free Monday at the Confrence Room thi morning. It wasn’t intentional. Section Leader Miles Milligan was apparently down at Tampa with some old CENTCOM shipmates talking about convoy escort duty. Vapor, Splash, Vic and Rocket had not returned from their real estate investigation yesterday, which suggested they had found new places to sleep. Or at least more interesting ones.

Which left Deirdre holding a glowing tablet at her place between Gwen and Holly. She and Akira had been working on concepts for the new Socotra House Cookbook. “We can’t call it that, of course. We need to cloak it in some other genre, like Crisis Logistics Management and Watch Team Support. she slid the pad out to the middle of the table with the screen glowing bight

“I was working on something so simple we could have The Boys just do it themselves in the afternoon to have something for the shift change and turnover. Thy can do this one with water, pasta and the skillet. Which got me thinking about how to streamline the culinary side of crisis management.” She poked at the screen with a finger. “I would like to get a new slow cooker in the eight quart size. That is enough to feed ten, which is about right for non-crisis periods. Amazon has the original Crock Pot in the large size for under a hundred. If i get two, that will handle periods of kinetic conflict with augmentees from the Communications Department at George Mason.”

“Do you have the ingredients and directions?” asked Akira, rolling her eyes.

“I do but they are so simple i didn’t bother. They would be something like “Fill pot with water and bring to boil. Put in two 16 oz. boxes of noodles and stir slowly until noodles are al dente. Drain, then open the Ragu sauce bottles and gently pour over noodles, bringing to a slow simmer. Serve with baguettes and salad.”

“That doesn’t sound like much of a recipe,” said Joyce, She is our accounting section rep and an accomplice in Deirdre’s campaign to have a fully equipped Galley to keep production standards high.

“Have you seen The Boys do much more than carve sandwiches? We will keep it simple and bring them along. Plus, we need to train them to operate the Russell Range cook-top.” Deirdre smiled at the prospect of attempting to get splash engaged in dicing and slicing to dress up the spaghetti sauce. If the Boys ever returned, of course.

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