The house is empty when she gets out of the shower.

She looks around briefly, and then returns to the corner by the door, leaning her head back against the wall. It feels strange being her without Pradnakt or Daisy. She probably isn't going to move much until one of them returns.

I'm back, Pradnakt announces some half an hour later. Scoot out of the way so I can open the door.

She does so quickly, moving over to beside the table.

And in she comes. The bag is much fuller, now, and she goes to the fridge and starts transferring brown-paper-wrapped parcels from the bag to it. Oryx, yeah. You can try some of the meat tonight.

She watches thoughtfully for a second, before stepping closer. Would you like help? she asks. (There's a level of confusion of the oryx as food, but she is working through the idea from animals supplying food stuffs to them themselves being foodstuffs.)

I'm okay. I'll show you where the dehydrator is in a minute, you can help with that.

She smiles very slightly and then nods.

She manages to fit all the meat in the refrigerator, though she has to displace some things to the counter to do it, and then she heads to the back closet, gesturing for Rhoda to join her. Getting the dehydrator out is a bit of a process, buried as it is under other things - this only happens a couple times a year, she explains - but a few minutes and liberal use of telekinesis later, she has the boxy device free.

There's too much meat on something as big as an orxy to eat before it goes bad, but dehydrating it helps - it'll last maybe a week, fresh, but the stuff we make into jerky will keep for a month or two if it's stored right, and it doesn't need to be kept cold. Making the jerky is a bit of work, though. It needs to be cut up into pieces small enough that they'll dry properly, and then marinated, to add flavor and make it safer, and then we can dry it.

She goes to try and help, and then realises that she'll probably just get in the way what with telekinesis being a thing.

So where do we start? she asks curiously.

Well, let's get this set up, to start - she starts moving toward the main room with the dehydrator and deposits it next to the cabinet.

Hmm - probably nobody's ever talked to you about food safety, huh.

You said...not to lick fingers with raw egg on them? But it's pretty clear that's the entirety of Rhoda's food safety.

Mmhmm. Have you ever gotten sick before?

She thinks about that, has a few impressions of feeling less than perfect, but not that many. She nods hesitantly.

She nods. Nothing too bad, good. What happens, with that, is that there are these tiny little creatures called bacteria kind of everywhere, and most of them are fine, but some of them aren't, and if those get inside you they'll make you sick. And one way they can get inside you is if they're in or on something that you eat. Plants are mostly fine - they're very different from us, so the bacteria that can live in them mostly can't live in us at all; they need to be washed, and don't eat ones that have gone bad, but that's about it. But animals are a lot more like us, so the bacteria in them is more likely to be dangerous, so when you're dealing with something that comes from an animal you have to cook it, which kills the bacteria in it, before you eat it. Milk is an exception; unless the animal the milk is from is sick, it's safe, since it's meant to be eaten in a way that meat and eggs aren't.

...In a way that meat and eggs aren't?

Yeah. Meat isn't really for eating, from the animal's point of view; you can't get meat from an animal without killing it and they'd really rather you not do that. And eggs are supposed to turn into baby chickens; ours won't, since we don't have a male, but that's what chickens think they're for. But milk is for feeding baby animals, that's why they make it at all, and they don't want their babies to get sick, so they have ways of keeping the bacteria out of it.

She nods thoughtfully at that explanation, and tilts her head, waiting for the next piece of information.

So, heat kills bacteria, if it's hot enough; cooking food kills the bacteria that's already there, though if you leave cooked food out, more will get into it and it'll get dangerous again. Cold slows bacteria down - if there's already some there, it won't do anything about that, but bacteria will grow, and cold makes them grow slower, so if there are dangerous ones there will probably be few enough that your body can handle them. And dehydrating something takes the water out of it; bacteria need water just like we do, so if something is really dry they can't live in it. Salt helps, too: it makes bacteria need more water to survive, so it works well with dehydrating. We'll add some salt when we marinate the meat.

She nods again filing all the information away.

So, the first thing we need to do is get it into small enough pieces that the dehydrator can get all the water out. The normal way to do that is to freeze the meat, so it stays still when you cut it, but I can just hold it still with the Force, so we don't have to wait for that. What you can do is, while I'm doing that, -

The door opens: Daisy's home.

Rhoda turns immediately, takes an eager step forward and then rocks back on her heel, very not sure what to do.

"Hello, Rhoda. Was everything all right this afternoon?"

She's holding something, carefully, one hand cupped, the other hand covering it protectively.

She nods. "The art was pretty." She takes a step forward, curious about the way Daisy is holding her hands.