I’m thinking of you all today. I’m in the kitchen making a bunch of different sauces and components for a big dinner tomorrow a chef friend and I are making, and the shopping trip and rainbow produce just have my heart warm and full of little QI thoughts.
I think of Chef Lexa anytime I go to specialty grocery stores or the produce is particularly good, or I have an excuse to go to Whole Foods. I think about how she shops, what catches her eye. She’s well liked at the bougie Butcher and the seafood wholesalers have inside jokes with her. She has an account at the caviar shop and they know what she likes at the wine shop and the owner texts her when he gets a large stock in so she can stock up. She likes running errands for food in her small city where she knows everyone. It’s a quieter and simpler part of her day and she looks forward to it.
I was thinking fondly of Quality Ingredients last night, and thusly, of all of you.
I've got this big list of different food I want to either learn to make or get better at making this year as part of my 2026 goals. I'm trying to fill in some gaps in my skillset, improve some techniques, get into stuff I've always admired, etc. It's a varied list, but high up on it is being able to comfortably and confidently make at least one great cake.
I don't even necessarily like cake that much, but every now and then, a great slice of cake just really slaps. We're on a path to get into a lot more dinner parties and ticketed dinners and different kinds of event work, and I'd love to be able to whip out a great cake. My ice cream game is extremely strong, so I want to get cake to catch up.
Chloe worked last night so I had the house to myself and my first day of intentional cake work. I like to be alone and make a lot of notes when I'm learning new foods. Pay attention to each step etc. A picture is worth a thousand words, so here's a summary of how it went:
Lincoln mentions in passing that Chef Lexa claims she isn't very good at making cakes (her cakes are fine, they are just not exceptional or the best). I will say it with my full chest that apparently I am not good at making cakes at all!
I took that cake failure personally, and now I'm on a path full of science and research and I'm setting up my next test days. Mark my words. I'm gonna get great at making a cake!
It’s Chef Lexa’s birthday today, and I can keep track of hers because she is a Virgo and I didn’t want to work too hard, so I gave her the same birthday as me! I hope she is somewhere far away with Clarke doing something fabulous and extravagant. I’m pretending we switched places and mentally I’m in Italy eating everything and drinking wine with my lovely wife like they probably are cause I’m just understaffed at work pretending it’s fine.
Happy Friday! Everyone go do something fun and eat something good and have a good time with people you like to celebrate my and Lexa’s bday!
They say you never forget your first, and my first Lexa, Chef Lexa from Quality Ingredients, has been on my mind a lot lately. I think a lot about how she and Clarke's relationship matured, how they live now that they've been together for a long time, what her friends are like, how she is at work now that she's changed so much, and how she treats herself differently now. I like thinking about how she's figured out how to truly be happy, and it took her a long time to believe she deserved it and that it was real.
Sometimes she feels like the clearest and simplest of all of my Lexas, but I think she's actually the most complex. Of all of my Lexas, she's got the most nods to canon happening at the same time. I live in her city, I work in her field, and she crosses my mind at least a few times a day. Hoping to turn some of those strings of thoughts into writing soon.
Happy Moodboard Monday, y'all. I hope you all have great weeks ahead!
I confused myself yesterday in a very funny way, and I think many of you will get a kick out of this.
Chloe and I are headed into a big revamp of our food site and getting ready to add a bunch more recipes and more stuff, and I made a folder to keep track of all of the recipes for the first quarter of the year. We make sure they all have been tested, have a certain series photos, a schedule for all of that as well as posting, shopping and prep lists etc.
I was going to work in the morning and she was off for the day so I left my recipe guide folder out for her to look over the night before, kind of forgot about it and was doing a million things in the morning, then saw it sitting there:
So it says “Q1 Recipe Writing Guide” on the label, but because my brain is so so used to seeing QI for Quality Ingredients, I had a weird short circuit and was like “…did I….did I start writing recipes for Quality Ingedients and completely forget?” Then I realized my handwriting is just bad, and that’s a 1, not an I!
I started Quality Ingredients almost ten years ago, and it takes up so much of my brain I don’t even realize it! Writing is wild!! It made me laugh and I had to share it with y’all.
I hope you’re all having a great week and have spectacular weekends to look forward to!
So Anya and Lexa from QI talking about Lexas feelings for Clarke, in the kitchen of Anyas house (or wherever you think this conversation would take place. Just Lexa talking about her feelings for her for the first time, did Anya notice something different with her or did Lexa go to her for advice?).
Would Anya be the first person she tells?
Hello my friend! Thank you for sending this! It made a few random half ideas that have circled around in my brain in the past bubble to the surface and I wrote a whole conversation! I'm busting out of the slump!
I changed this a little bit, and rather than have it be Lexa talking about her feelings for Clarke for the first time, I changed it to Lexa and Anya talking about Lexa's feelings for Clarke changing and getting very serious in the kitchen at Anya's house:
“Hey! It’s me!” Lexa called as she walked in Anya’s front door.
“I’m in the kitchen!” Anya called back. Lexa rounded the corner to find Anya in a pair of gym shorts and a faded and stained Warpaint t-shirt with her hair piled up in a chaotic bun on her head mopping the floor. “Take your shoes off! I just finished cleaning this filthy man house I live in!”
“I see cohabitating with Roan is going well,” Lexa smirked and toed off her sneakers at the edge of the wet kitchen floor. She’d been running errands for the restaurants all day and was dressed down in jeans and sneakers and a casual button down.
It was a warm and sunny Monday in early June. So much was happening. Clarke had recently moved into Lexa’s house. Roan moved into Anya’s in May. The new restaurant was in the exciting phase of construction where the kitchen was in and they could cook there and the dining room just started shaping up. Clarke joined Lexa on a trip to Vegas in May that made Lexa fall more in love than ever. Aden’s eighteenth birthday and recent high school graduation shook Anya to her core the few weeks prior and caused her to call Lexa to drop by more than usual.
“I love that man so much, and I would walk into traffic for my sweet baby son who is a full blown adult man now, but I’m outnumbered and playing zone defense against two sweaty, active, enthusiastic men who cook for a living, and pretty much every moment they’re home, too,” Anya sighed as she quickly mopped the last corner.
“At least they’re great cooks,” Lexa shrugged and gave Anya a knowing look. She stayed at the edge of the kitchen floor in her socks waiting for permission to enter.
“A little too great,” Anya blew a short burst of air up to push some flyaways out of her eyes. “As I’m sure you know, it’s Halibut season, which I have been far more educated on recently than I ever needed or wanted to be.”
“It’s not bad, but it definitely smells like fish in here,” Lexa tried not to laugh. “For what it’s worth, it doesn’t also smell like men?”
“Thank you for that,” Anya huffed. “Roan bought Aden some cookbooks and a new fish butchering knife for his birthday and they came home from work on Saturday night with a whole fucking halibut that Roan got on the cheap from his fish guy, which they proceeded to break down on a tarp on my dining room table. I woke up in the middle of the night to friggin’ fish stock on the stove, my home smelling like the goddamn docks, and those two were deep frying beer battered halibut nuggets from the scraps. He cleaned up really well and brought home that professional grade shit you keep at the restaurants, but I feel like you can never truly clean something like that up. This house will never smell the same.”
“Ooo, Roan’s stocks have been really good lately. Did he freeze it? Can I have some?” Lexa perked up from across the room.
“I don’t fucking know, Lex. He has like, four freezers in the garage. Just text him,” Anya muttered as she dropped her mop into the bucket in the corner in accomplishment. “You can walk on your side.”
“I brought beer?” Lexa grinned and cheerfully held up a six pack.
“Fantastic,” Anya softened into a tired smile. She carefully tip-toed across the wet floor to meet Lexa by the fridge. Lexa opened a drawer with the familiarity of a decade of helping herself in Anya’s home to find a bottle opener. Wordlessly, they clinked their bottles together and took a sip. “So, what’s up? Why’d you need to stop by?”
“I didn't need to. I just wanted to. I see you all the time, but we’re always working. Or something’s going on. Or everyone else is around. We haven’t spent any time just the two of us in ages,” Lexa shrugged with a sheepish smile that snuggled into Anya’s chest in a little corner she’d forgotten about lately. It was the type of smile that eased Lexa’s ever serious eyes and reminded Anya of their teen years. “I miss you a little bit.”
“Well, that’s damn darling of you,” Anya broke into a matching, loving grin. “Are you sure that’s it? You look a little tense.”
“I’m always a little tense. This is just what I look like,” Lexa raised a brow. Anya ran a scrutinous eye over Lexa and didn’t seem convinced.
“You’ve been a little funny since you got home from Vegas,” Anya stated after a long lull simmered between them.
“What?” Lexa huffed through a nervous little laugh. “No I haven’t!”
“It’s subtle, and I don’t think anyone can tell but me, but something’s definitely different about you, and it’s been different since you got home from that trip,” Anya pointed around the beer bottle in her hand at Lexa with that same look she’d been giving since they were in junior high and she caught Lexa in something.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lexa muttered and furrowed her brow in a nervous glance away.
“What happened in Vegas?” Anya planted a firm hand on her waist and checked a hip as she took a swig from her bottle.
“An, you know that what happens in Vegas stays in-”
“Clarke’s been walking on air and looking at you with even bigger dreamy, moon eyes, as if that’s even possible,” Anya jumped on Lexa’s nonsense answer. “I swear to god, kid, if you two secretly got married in Vegas without me, I’m gonna lay a guilt trip on you so thick that it will knock Grandma Wood’s socks right off her corpse.”
“Jesus! We didn’t get married!” Lexa yelped and stood up straighter. There were four months when Lexa was ten and Anya was twelve that Lexa was taller. Lexa’s growth spurt came early and Anya’s showed up late. Lexa chased the high of being taller in a sisterly dispute ever since by stiffening up as much as she could any time they bickered.
“Then what the fuck happened?!” Anya’s voice rose another notch to match Lexa’s escalating defensive tone.
“We drank a ton of champagne and we TALKED about getting married!” Lexa blurted out. Anya gasped and clamped a hand over her mouth.
“When?! Where?!” Anya balked.
“The last night we were there in our suite at the Bellagio,” Lexa answered, annoyed.
“I meant when and where are you getting married?” Anya threw her hands up.
“I don’t know!” Lexa mirrored her and made the same heated gesture. “We just talked about it hypothetically, and danced around it a little. We didn’t make a plan or anything like that.”
“Okay, alright, I’m sorry! It’s just so believable with the way the two of you have been lately. I’d just hate it if I wasn’t there,” Anya spat out frantically.
“Anya,” Lexa snapped out of it and warmed right up. “If and when I ever get married, you’re gonna be there,” she finished firmly.
“Good,” Anya huffed a deep breath in and out to slow herself down. “So who brought it up?”
“She did,” Lexa bit the insides of her cheeks to keep her grin in check as she let the memory of Clarke lit up on champagne and cocktails in a perfect black dress pushing her down onto the couch with one sure hand and climbing on top before bluntly asking a big question.
“What did she say?” Anya spoke slowly and calmly so she wouldn’t annihilate Lexa with questions that ultimately made her clam back up and keep to herself.
“She asked me if I could ever see myself getting married,” Lexa replied and couldn’t stop glimmers of lovey smiles from sneaking out. The Vegas memories rolled through the back of her brain like a high speed highlight reel of all of the moments she knew things between them had changed for the better again.
“Just like that?” Anya drank her beer to keep from firing off a string of follow ups.
“We talked in passing a while ago about how I didn’t know if I’d ever be right for marriage. It came up after all that prenup talk when we were getting the ball rolling with Octavia on the new place,” Lexa shot Anya a look, knowing they both knew all too well how uncomfortable a lot of that time had been. Everything was going so well now between everyone that it felt like a distant memory.
“Right,” Anya hung her head.
“So, you know,” Lexa trailed off and flicked at the label on her bottle with her thumb. “We didn’t talk about it much after that.”
“Until she brought it up a few weeks ago?” Anya rolled her jaw in an effort to stay patient enough to ask one question at a time.
“I was kind of surprised. She was pretty bold with it,” Lexa’s eyes widened slightly as Clarke’s words whispered in her ears again.
“So? What did you tell her?” Anya folded her arms across her chest to keep them to herself and not end up in a loop of sisterly swats and gestures. She had learned over the years that in order to get Lexa to really open up, she had to stay cool and collected. She loved Lexa so much that it was hard not to get wound up.
“I told her that my life with her has shown me that I absolutely could see myself getting married someday,” Lexa replied with a delightfully confident smile and proud posture.
“Shit, dude,” Anya exhaled. “I hope you made sweet, sweet love after that.”
“I wouldn’t call what happened after that sweet, exactly, but it was hot as hell and pretty magical, and I loved it,” Lexa grinned smugly.
“Lexa! Come on!” Anya couldn’t stop herself and a playful swat in the arm at Lexa’s antics made its way between them. Lexa yelped out a childish laugh and flinched away. After a few beats of letting the facts settle in, Anya let out a dramatic gasp.
“Are you good?” Lexa snapped to attention in concern.
“You went to your Cartier guy!” Anya cried and gave Lexa a little shove in the shoulder.
“How could you possibly know that?” Lexa set her beer down on the counter and planted her hands on her hips.
“The catalogue’s on your desk with that custom folder they give you when you get new watches! You had that day trip to Boston in your calendar last week! None of the execs knew why you were there! They asked me if you were going for personal reasons and I had no idea and said it was probably restaurant stuff, but you were buying a ring, you little SHIT!” Anya lit up and couldn’t close her mouth, she smiled so hard.
“How?!” Lexa trailed off. She looked for the right words and couldn’t find them. “How do you always do that?”
“I KNEW something was up with you!” Anya kept up with her excessive grinning. “You bought her a fucking engagement ring!”
“I did, I really did,” Lexa’s eyes fluttered shut and she blushed profusely. She wasn’t even mad that Anya had figured her out and instead found comfort in the fact that Anya truly knew her so well.
“Lexa! That’s so exciting!” Anya growled with glee through clenched teeth. She slammed her beer onto the counter and threw her arms around Lexa into the tightest hug. At first, Lexa stiffened in surprise, but she loosened up and returned the embrace.
“Thank you,” Lexa smiled genuinely.
“What’s the plan?! When are you going to ask her?” Anya clenched her fists in excitement.
“No plan yet,” Lexa held her hands up to stop the impending deluge of fact finding and detail mining that she could feel Anya riling herself up to. “I don’t even have the ring yet. I’m having it made, and when it’s ready, I’m going to keep it in the safe at the office for a while. I know I’m going to ask her eventually, I just want to make sure we’re both ready and we weren’t just on the vacation high. I want to give it a while to settle in and get my head around it correctly. Do it all right.”
“You really do feel ready, huh?” Anya said with a sense of pride.
“I really do,” Lexa matched her smile. “I’m so happy. The way Clarke sees me and treats me? I’m just so grateful I met her. She makes me feel like myself in a way I never knew I was going to get to. I’ve felt different ever since we met. Secure, maybe? Everything just feels right.”
“I’ve never seen you so calm,” Anya agreed.
“And I love her so much,” Lexa’s voice cracked and Anya winced out a loving smile in support. “I want to wake up every day knowing she’s right here in my life, that we get to just be each other’s forever. This gets to really be our life forever. Isn’t that crazy? That I can just…have that?”
“Damn, the world really did a number on you,” Anya mumbled as she took in the new light in lexa’s eyes.
“All worth it if it was all the path to a life with her,” Lexa shrugged.
“That is so fucking romantic,” Anya hissed.
“I haven’t told anyone else,” Lexa swallowed hard and her jaw tensed nervously. “I’m going to have to ask you to keep this between us.”
“Under two conditions,” Anya scowled and held up her hand with her pinky out prepared to make a pinky promise, the most sacred bond of trust that went back to their earliest memories.
“What are your terms?” Lexa held her pinky up as well, but kept it close to her chest.
“We have to get together like this just us more often so we can talk about it because I’m gonna go crazy keeping it to myself,” Anya began and left it hanging as her first condition.
“I can do that,” Lexa chuckled through the happiest grin. “What else?”
“I want to be there when you get married. Please no secret eloping, no running off to some private corner of the world richer person stuff,” Anya begged. “Unless that’s really what you two want, but I don’t think it is.”
“I was hoping that you’d walk me down the aisle when the time came,” Lexa replied, grinning ear to ear.
“Really?!” Anya yelped.
“You, Aden, and your dad are literally my entire family,” Lexa said flatly.
“I just figured my dad would do it,” Anya said quickly.
“I mean, he can if you don’t want-”
“I’d be honored,” Anya jumped on her words with a new seriousness and hooked her pinky with Lexa’s and gave it a shake.
“We don’t have to make any plans. I don’t know if she’ll even say yes,” Lexa’s shoulders sank meekly at the thought of the possibility.
“Oh please,” Anya snapped right back to herself and rolled her eyes. “The only thing you have to worry about is if she gets around to asking you first. You two are made for each other.”
“I guess,” Lexa laughed, relieved.
“I’m so proud of you, Lex,” Anya’s face scrunched up in happy tears. She yanked Lexa into another tight hug and squeezed her close.
I’m running my final wedding of the season today and I have a spectacular day of lounging around planned for Sunday. October 5th is Quality Ingredients’ ninth birthday which absolutely blows my mind, so I’m hoping to dump out lol kinds of head canons and some love for QI and the QI gang. Feel free to send your head canons, your questions, your thoughts! Its their birthday and they should get to celebrate.
I love Quality ingredients, I think I’ve reached out before to tell you it’s the first fic I read. I didn’t even know fanfic or AO3 existed before then. I still can’t remember how I found it but I’m glad I did I read fanfics more than books now.
I think QI is perfect, it’s always left me wanting more and wondering what happens next. I’ve re read it a few times now. What would you change about it?
I am so honored to be your introduction. I have never known anyone who just found fanfiction, I've only ever known of someone getting introduced by a friend! That is so interesting.
Thanks for the kind words on Quality Ingredients! It's coming up on ten years old, so I was a different writer then and there's stuff I would change stylistically. I don't even know how to describe it but I feel like some of it is clunkier than it would be if I wrote it now. It sticks out like crazy to me, but if you're not me, you might not notice.
I have changed a lot professionally as well. At the time that I wrote this, I had a lot of experience and I knew how restaurants work, but the life I've lived since makes me want to change a lot of the nuts and bolts of the industry stuff. Nothing crazy. I would write some of the specifics about Lexa professionally in a different light, maybe?
The industry is portrayed kind of PG in QI, it's squeaky clean. Normally there's a lot more drugs, it's definitely grittier than this story. When I wrote it, I had a lot of experience in the restaurant industry, but I didn't have this kind, I didn't have so much specific industry experience right here in the same very city in these types of places. I have lived the motions and patterns of their daily lives for years now, and it wouldn't be this shiny and tidy. I like to think that if QI was a TV show, it would sort of have that shiny "everything is just a little nicer than it is in real life" aesthetic to it, so maybe it makes sense.
It makes sense that the Woods Group is pretty clean because Lexa strictly is off drugs and she would not tolerate it in the house but like, Roan is definitely a stoner. The functional kind where it's a performance enhancing drug for him. Everything about Blake's reads like the places here where drugs are available/done openly secretly, but I guess it makes sense that having a trauma surgeon in the house who is pretty vocal about what that does to you might explain why Blake's is kind of tame.
Honestly most of the stuff I would change is small and specific and you might not even notice it, but I notice it any time I re-read it to get back in the space to write in that universe. No major plot points, all the characters are how I'd like them to be, it's the mechanics and specifics I guess.
This happens with a lot of writing once you've grown and changed a bunch since you wrote it. It's not a bad thing. We're supposed to! At this point, those characters kind of live in the future now in my head. I often think about Clarke and Lexa having been together for years, I think of them 40 and married and happy and comfortable and Aden is in his 20s and everyone has aged and grown. I feel like I see it very differently, and maybe I have to. It's fun, though!
