Failure is a Step Towards Success

Sitting at the kitchen counter with my head in my hands, I stared at the five failed jars. That's right, not even one of the jars was even remotely a success. Not even the big jar. Every single jar had gone stale, sour, the not good kind of sour, and gave off a very putrid scent.

The only good thing was that the fifth jar, where every ingredient was added, had the least putrid scent and looked the most promising. And the only difference between that and the other jars is the sun dust.

However, more promising does not equal edible. All five of the jars had to be thrown out.

Going back to the drawing board, me and Ken assessed the available ingredients available to us again. We had set out five more jars, two with modified concentrations of the ingredients used in the fifth jar of the first run, and the other two similar to it's predecessors with the base of the red kelp and the red bean and one other ingredient, this time with the addition of sun dust. And the final one was an experiment that I wanted to try, Boiled sun dust together with the red base.

In the original recipe, as well as countless other recipes that Ken and I had searched up, the sun dust was always added to boiling water. Noticing that, we wanted to see whether boiling the sun dust together with our ingredients would yield any results.

And indeed, we did observe some results. The fifth jar of the second batch was much more pleasant to smell then the other jars. If you count smelling like rotten eggs in comparison to smelling of decomposing flesh to be more pleasant.

And so we did the third batch, where everything had the same recipe except for the concentration of Sun dust. Each jar had 10%, 20%, 25%, 50% and 75% of sun dust to water added, and was left to soak for 1 day. The most ideal solution seemed to be the 20% sun dust to water solution together with the red base.

Building off this knowledge, we used this percentage for our fourth batch, where we continued to try out different combinations of ingredients. As well as different amounts of base solution. And by batch 15, we had finally gotten some progress.

Staring at the only jar that had a slightly sweet together with its usual sour smell, as well as ingredients that seemed to stay together, after so many tries we had created something that was remotely edible.

In the jar was the red base around a quarter of the jar, added with the sun dust, boiled for around 5 minutes, and then left to cool. Then we had added in the uncooked ingredients, blue bok choy together with some red ribbon parasite, and let them soak for 1 day.

As early as batch 8, we had tested out several types of bases for our dish and had found out that the base of red beans, red kelp and sun dust, boiled for 5 minutes, was an edible base for our dish. However, it was quite plain in comparison for what I was aiming for, so we continued to add more ingredients and experiment around.

"Ideally, I want to create a slightly spicy dish to round out our menu, as well as to incorporate red ribbon parasite into the food."

I sighed as we threw out another 5 jars worth of trash into the exponentially growing compost pile in Ken's backyard.

"It feels like we are so close to succeeding! The base is finally edible, now we need to figure out the ingredients. But what kind of ingredients would work well with this sort of dish.

Ken set beside me at the counter and pulled up his personal terminal.

"Since inspiration from the recipes of other dishes led us to create an edible base, maybe we should look over other types of recipes again to see if we can come with anything else to try.

He went into our shared documents where dozens of different recipes, their ingredients as well as their cooking methods and some common chemistry was written down in words and comments. Copying him, I scrolled through the list again, letting the words scroll through my mind like a slot machine.

Then suddenly, I hit jackpot!

"On this recipe, they soft fried their ingredients before adding it into their soup in order to produce a hybrid cooking method where the outside of the fish is slightly crispy, but the inside is mostly boiled, giving a crispy but soft and slightly chewy texture. If we base our new ingredients off of this, maybe it will work? Like we can fry our red beans and red kelp before soaking them in sun dust."

Ken looked at the recipe I was referring to and showed a thoughtful expression.

"Hmmm. But this changes the original base that we made. But we can try this for one of the jars. And since we are testing frying then boiling, I was thinking we could incorporate more international ingredient then just the blue vegetable. Maybe we can substitute the water with jasmine milk. And another variation we can try is to substitute the sun dust with jasmine milk. Since jasmine milk is widely available, it's easier to order for us, cheaper, and one of the more well known international ingredients."

"Ok, then for the last two jars maybe we can combine both of our ideas. "

We settled the procedures for batch 16, and silently split the steps between us. More than two weeks of cooking in this kitchen with Ken, of arguing over differing opinions and then having meetings to sort these differences, the both of us became much closer and more knowledgeable about each other. We also trusted each other more.

One day in the middle of cooking, Ken had started mentioning his sister. In an almost desperate need to talk about someone who would never be with him anymore, he had shared stories of her from young right up until the day before she died. And in turn, I had shared my worries about my own little brother.

Confiding in each other, I felt a huge weight lift off my heart. As if I was ten times lighter, as if I could hover over the ground, I felt so relieved that I could feel tears start welling up in my eyes. To have someone to confide your fears with was something I had never had the luxury to experience in my previous world.

That day when both of our barriers towards each other came down, was the day when Ken and I had hugged and silently patted each other on the back. Then, we parted and resumed to cook.

Now, as we bustled around the kitchen, we quickly finished our five jars in practiced moves before moving on to practicing our menu, as well as cooking some other dishes on the side to make sure we don't go crazy from taste the same four dishes for weeks.

"I think after this I might have gained so much weight I can roll down hills."

Ken burped as he rubbed his stomach, full from consuming the umptieth time we cooked fried star.

For the sake of not endangering the population of sea dragons, the starry sky soup was basically off the menu once we practiced it around three times. However, since fried passion could be cooked with many different types of fish, and we had a reliable supply through Jim and his fish farm, that dish was cooked 6 to 7 times a week. We also tried cooking some other dishes, and when we were not cooking Ken was educating me about the Piscus cultural history, specifically the side that was mostly related with food.

The Piscus usually served the twin gods of the sea and sky, Mare and their brother Caelum. Born as twins attached to each other, Mare and Caelum were twin gods who were also known as the Gods of balance. They both loved to seek balance in the relationship between creatures, whether that relationship was predator and prey or parasite and victim. And so the reliance of piscus on the ocean as well as the ocean on piscus was created.

Piscus required the ocean to feed themselves, to live, while the ocean relied on piscus to be it's assistants in ensuring the delicate balance between life and food were kept. This was one reason why conservation was such an important issue on this planet. Due to it's lack of land mass, and naturally lack of edible food found on land, most food was found in the ocean. And the moment disasters like underground mineral leaks, or unchecked proliferation of certain animals, the piscus were the fastest to respond.

Their name, piscus, was given to them by Mare, after the word 'fish', in order to remind the people of their reliance on sea food, how much they are relied on by sea food, and that both their fates are tied to each other.

A symbiotic relationship between everything above and under the sea.