Advent Calendar - 15th December 2008

A/N: For those who have no idea what a Christmas cake is, check out this site here.

Thank you to Jayne Perry for the beta-reading.

He wanted a Christmas cake; a tradition his family had always followed what with his mother being from England. Of course, he couldn’t risk buying a shop made Christmas cake, even if he had time to go back to Earth (and go to Canada, seeing as the Americans didn’t know what he was talking about half the time and considered fruit cake as some kind of joke, at best) because, hello, citrus, anyone?  Death by cake was not on his list of ways to die and all the recipes he’d read contained lemon juice somewhere along the line. 

So he’d have to find someone to make one for him. 

His mother had made a guaranteed citrus-free cake each year and he wished he’d gotten the recipe from her as well as learned to bake, but he’d never been interested in the so called culinary arts, science and math being so much more exciting.

As for why he wanted a Christmas cake so badly, he wasn’t sure.  Maybe after being cut off from Earth until recently had made him crave familiar things.  Certainly, he’d hit the supermarket when he’d returned to Earth, buying more food than he could possibly eat and smuggling as much back to Atlantis with him as he could.

Whatever the reason might be, the fact remained; he wanted a Christmas cake.

There was no point in asking Teyla, she was a terrible cook.  They’d discovered this recently with her tuttleroot soup experiments.  And yes, he was sure they were experiments.  You couldn’t call what she produced food.

Not that he’d told her that.  After all, she had big sticks and wasn’t afraid to use them, usually on the pretence of improving his fighting skills.  Yeah, like he bought that.  She only seemed to want to spar with him when he’d done something to really upset her.  Thank goodness she had a thick skin, or else he’d always be sporting bruises.

The new guy, Ronon, was unlikely to have the finesse or patience, let alone skill.  Besides, there was no way he was going to ask him.  He didn’t want to end up being trained by the guy who could make marines tremble in fear if the big lug took it the wrong way.

Sheppard... was American and wouldn’t know a decent fruit cake if it hit him on the head, which was a bizarre if amusing image.  Anyway, Sheppard was unlikely to know how to bake, and if the colonel did, then he really didn’t want to know.  Not that there was anything wrong with a man being able to bake, but Sheppard?  Just, no.  So not the image he wanted of his team leader.

Maybe if he asked Elizabeth nicely she’d, well, probably not make him a cake herself, but maybe get the cooks to make one that he could eat?

Yes, that was probably his best bet.  He knew Carson was wanting a Christmas cake and pudding along with the more normal American fare, and he could use the ‘you want everyone who celebrates Christmas to enjoy the day and I can’t do that if I can’t have a Christmas cake, a tradition in my family may I add, that I can have without risk of dying, now can I?’ approach.  Yes, that’d be sure to work.  Elizabeth was always trying to ram home the need for cultural sensitivity, after all. 

He rubbed his hands and headed to Elizabeth’s office.

Christmas cake, here he came.