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Roxy feels like, before they continue on with this adventure, letting you, the intrepid reader intruding in on their dinnertime thoughts, know a couple of things. Well, not quite, they would like you to know exactly one thing: They are not using a recipe, because they are the kind of person that hates recipes. Where's the fun in the recipe? You follow the steps and you probably end up with the correct thing unless you fucked up somewhere in some small imperceptible way that means your product comes out completely busted. There's no experimentation involved! And Roxy was nothing if not a scientist. They knew vaguely about the things that you needed in all of your Cookings, and figured out a meal that would hopefully be impossible to fuck up.
Hopefully.
What's in it? Shut up and read and maybe you'll find out, goofball!
Roxy had never used a vegetable peeler before, but how hard could it be? There was only one thing that needed to be peeled, a carrot, something they had never eaten in their entire life. It was orange, much like a pumpkin, but the flesh was wayyy harder than pumpkin stuff, which could be indented with a particularly firm thumb poking. And a vegetable peeler looked kind of like a razor, but sideways, and Roxy was a very smart scientist person. You got this. You have seen people do this before. They put the top of the vegetable peeler at the thickest end of the carrot and, pressing down, slide it smoothly all the way across, removing a thin ribbon of dirty carrot-flesh from the surface.
Oh, hey, that was kind of fun.
Rotating the carrot a couple degrees at a time, Roxy continues to de-skin it with all the grace of a walrus learning how to use a vegetable peeler for the first time on a vegetable they have never eaten or handled before. This was a particularly apt metaphor for many reasons, all of which should be obvious. It did go without saying, though, that Roxy was not a walrus (probably). A couple of more skimmings of those annoying corner bits and the carrot had become a bright orange cone of vegetable flesh and (supposedly) sweetness. WHACK. Knife chopping the root end off, and then, slowly, excessively carefully, grabbing the wet, firm surface of the carrot by the fat end and beginning to slice it in half lengthwise. That was simultaneously far easier and far more difficult than the onion.
Then, a second time, into quarters. It was a lot easier when the carrot was lying completely flat on the cutting board. Roxy noticed something curious - if they cut every section into equal length pieces, then they would almost certainly cook at different times, since you would have the narrow tip end and the bulbous root end. Thinking themselves particularly clever, they proceeded to mow through the carrot, cutting the thinnest parts the longest and making the cuts particularly perilously close at the end. Carrot was a much more pleasant smell than onion, they decided.
The two stalks of celery were, as if a gift from G-d, the easiest part to prepare. Just hold it by the end and roll their knife across it, with a motion not unlike one was... stirring a soup, vertically? Moving diagonally downwards, and then pulling up and back, over and over again. The celery made a particularly enjoyable sound when they cut it, crunching and cracking like they were popping their knuckles, but over and over again. Something else Roxy was noticing was that vegetables tended to feel like what they sounded like to cut. The carrot was solid pretty much all the way through, and the only thing they could really hear was the noise of the knife gently going thunkthunkthunk. But the celery, the celery was ribbed, made of sprawling, narrow strands of plant material, and as they cut, they could feel every single strand getting ripped through by the sharpened, honed edge of the kitchen knife.
Putting the knife under some warm water, they wiped it off with a paper towel and stared at their accomplishment with no small amount of pride. Grabbing their phone, they took a quick picture and sent it over snapchat. One could certainly get used to this "cooking" business - it wasn't entirely dissimilar to ectobiology, or computer programming, if you looked at it in the same, slightly roundabout fashion that Roxy did. You had components being input, and you had to render them in a particular fashion in order to achieve the particular endpoint. Maybe less like "programming" and more like "algorithms", applying various operations to the input at knifepoint, and then applying further operations in a particular order through judicious application of heat.
Roxy turned around and squeezed the dial on the stovetop, pushing it in enough and then twisting it to the number they wanted the heat at. It didn't start. They looked at it with a disgruntled sort of huff, and then turned it slowly, first, all the way to the right, (they could hear the gasoline wooshing), and then all the way to the left. When the dial, smooth black plastic with little white lettering and notches, hit a tiny little "lite" label, there was a sudden clicking and sparking before Roxy was quickly met with a puff of flame. They jumped back, startled, and then adjusted it to a low flame.
Okay, vegetables ready to go in. They reached into a cabinet to the left and down from the stove, pulling out a large pot with a long handle, the kind you might cook rice in, or something to that effect. Making sure to grab the lid, Roxy's fingertips felt at the black, teflon(?) handle, squeezing it tight, unsure of what material it was made out of. Then, they set it down on the open flame. Time to cook!