A Study of Hummus

"It's... It smells right," Alice brought her face close to the  foot-sized lump, still warm from being fired, inspecting it for  imperfections, cracks, burns - "Is this... your first try?"

"Hardly.  This version 8. We have worked on it for year - two year ... Asteroid  have not have nearly the ordering planetary sediment does." Kyott  couldn't help but cross her eyes as she spoke. She had been practicing  her English a lot the past few days, but pulling the right words back to  mind was difficult. She really wanted to impress the human. She glanced  at Lainyng, who nodded encouragingly.

"How did you get it to raise? This whole place is like - sterile."

"To..."  Kyott looked at Lainyng, alarmed. One of her antenna  waved up and  down. Lainyng responded by drawing her hands outwards, as if holding a  balloon being blown up.

"Ah. Mass had carbon dioxide reaction components ready, mixed in. Baking Dust."

"Baking ... Powder?"

"Yes, yes, baking powder."

"And  everything from asteroid mining... wow -" Alice glanced back at Lainyng  for a moment and, drawing a length of her own slimy hair, joked, "The  future sure is awesome."

"Will you try?" Kyott picked the round mass up and held it close to Alice's face.

"Oh,  oh no, that's not the traditional way. We need a knife - a sharp edge,  serrated works well. To cut it." she traced a series of parallel lines  across the service. "So we get both textures at the same time."

"Cut... will plasma torch work? We have more than two."

"Oy, we aren't looking to toast it quite yet. You're sure you don't have a knife?"

Kyott  turned away from the table for a moment, shouting something that  definately wasn't English at one of the few Slime Aliens working at the  food court at that hour. Her head tilted for a moment, before retrieving  an object from as shelf at the back of her stall. She tossed it to  Kyott.

"Oh heck, apollogies," Kyott almost caught the knive - but  in the wrong place - the knife sliced through her arm. She took a  moment to wipe off the blade on her apron and safely put it on  the food  court table, before picking the limb up and jamming it back in place,  "This will do?"

Alice tried to calm down. She was sure at some point she'd be used to these people. Not quite yet. "It'd better be."

Carefully she took up the knife, and sliced the loaf of bread, darkened crust revealing a light fluffy interior.

It tasted delightful.

"Ok, now let's talk about toast. And jam."