I managed to get quite a bit of ingredients from them not only for today but also for our own stockpile of food.

Hey, I wasn't going to let a chance like this pass! Do you know how rare it is for people to pay for our food?!

… Ok, it has happened at least three times for us already but that's beside the point! The point is that I wasn't going to let a chance like that go to waste!

I didn't even hold back this time on the account of how much they were charging for these pathetic portions, which meant they must be really making a killing with how they were selling their food.

That's why I didn't even feel bad ordering two weeks' worth of food from them and having most of it be delivered to my ship while the others were brought back to the apartment.

When Deidre showed up wearing casual clothes instead of her chef jacket, she was looking at the things we ordered on her personal terminal with a frown on her face.

At first, I thought she might be upset that we ordered so much food from her but it seemed like that was not the case because of her next question.

"Ummm… Teacher? Are you alright with this little? You don't need to hold back, you know?"

I blinked at her, "Erm… We sent most of it to our ship."

"Yes, I know about that… Even coupled with those, isn't this really little to cook with? Are you sure this is enough?"

"I'm… Not feeding an entire restaurant full of people, you know? There's only like… Four of us? Five, counting you."

She nodded, "If it was me, I would have needed about… Three times the amount here just to make a day's worth of meals though…"

"A day's wor-- What the fuck?" I blurted out before I could stop myself.

She seemed surprised by my words and quickly waved her hands, "Ah! My apologies teacher! I should have known! This is just for one meal, right?"

I stared at her weirdly.

For the record, the food that I was bringing to the apartment consisted of eight pieces of steak of different cuts, nine pieces of fish fillets, twelve pieces of chicken fillets, four bottles of eggs, another large bowl of leftover rice, one sack of uncooked rice, six packets of noodles, and three entire basketful of vegetables that included potatoes, broccoli, corn and several leafy vegetables.

There was way more than that that I had delivered back to the ship. Aside from the leftover rice of course, I just had them deliver the uncooked rice instead for storage.

I had planned to make use of the mentioned food earlier to feed us for the next few days and here she is saying that it's only enough for one meal? Is she actually being serious right now?

Ok, I have several questions but I don't really want to stay here because I'm actually starting to get hungry so we should just return to our place right now.

I told that to the others and they all followed me out to head back to the apartment building.

Deidre had the look of some excited puppy following behind us right now and I was quite sure that if she had a tail, it would be wagging pretty hard.

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The other girls didn't seem to mind her that much so I also kept my mouth shut about it.

When we reached our place, I immediately set aside the ingredients I would be using for lunch and instructed the others on preparing them for another teppan session.

I also had Deidre participate as well just so that I could see how she worked.

First thing I did was to let her divide up the steak into slices so that I could cook them later.

I was afraid that she might be using an autocooker to prepare her ingredients and thus have no idea how to handle a knife, but it seems like that was not the case as she expertly sliced the knife into the meat.

Just as I was thinking that I could leave it to her, she suddenly pushed the rest of the steak aside like it was trash to pick up the next piece.

"Wait, what the heck are you doing?" I asked, stopping her.

"E… Eh? Umm… Preparing the steak like you asked?"

"You just sliced one part of it and tossed the rest away, how is that preparing it?"

"Umm… Why do we need the trash part?"

I stared at her and the fact that she actually had a look of confusion on her face told me that she was being serious.

I sucked in a breath, "What do you mean by 'trash part'?"

She pointed to the small slice that she had on the cutting board, "This is the best part of the steak. We only need this, right?"

"Who the hell taught you that?"

"The… The culinary academy I attended? They taught us that we only ever use the best parts of the food and the rest is useless…"

Holy fucking shit.

Everything makes fucking sense now…

The food in her restaurant cost that much because you weren't just buying a single item, you were purchasing several of them just for her to take out small pieces from multiple ingredients to combine them into one fucking piece.

The portions were that small because that's all that she could arrange together in order to keep the price still reasonable…

This also explains why they would throw away the leftover rice as well because it was deemed as trash…

"Did you do this in that school as well?" I asked, hoping against hope that this was not the case.

She nodded, "We would even be graded on how well we could identify the best parts and toss away the trash parts… If we used too much of the trash parts in our cooking, we would even be penalised…"

Oh my god… That means there's an entire school centred around this… How the hell do they even… You know what? I don't want to know…

I pointed at the steak she had set aside, "Forget everything that those idiots have taught you and cut that up as well."

She seemed extremely conflicted by that instruction, "E… Eh… That… I need to… Prepare… The trash part too?"

Damn, it's so heavily ingrained in her that it actually physically repulses her to do it, huh…

Fuck it.

"You, go and sit over there and watch me," I instructed, taking a moment to wash my hands.

She did not protest and did as I told, though I saw that she had taken out her personal terminal to take notes as soon as I stepped up to the counter.

I then started slicing up the steak she had placed aside into pieces to join with the tiny slice she had initially cut.

She actually looked a little ill when she saw that but she wisely chose to keep her mouth shut.

I then went ahead to prepare the next steak as well before placing all of them on a plate for me to cook later.

I then told the girls to leave the rest of the preparations to me as I wanted Deidre to see what a proper food prep for each of the ingredients was like.

At least she was open minded since it was clear she did not agree with what was being done, she still noted down the process anyway on her personal terminal.

If she had tried to say or protest about anything, I would have already kicked her out just because of all the food she had wasted throughout her career.

Then again… I suppose I can't blame her for that but rather, I should be blaming whichever idiot thought of this cooking style in the first place…

There is one thing I was curious about though…

"Did you learn how to decorate from that school as well?"

"Eh? Umm… Yes. Though it was more of an elective class than a mandatory one…"

Fuck… Is that a culinary school or an art school? Because I feel that it might have been an art school pretending to be a culinary school instead…

"Is this school located within the inner colonies then?"

"Ye… Yes! It's regarded as one of the top few culinary schools as well! Within the top fifty!"

This bloody trash of a place is top fifty?! I'm not even a professional chef and I want to beat up the founder of that school!

Also… I see now why they can afford wasting so much food since the organic food were produced literally at their doorstep. Maybe that's why it's so expensive out here because the idiots there are wasting it!

Actually, that's not even surprising to learn because I'm pretty sure there's other ways that the food was being wasted there…

Damn… I guess I really need to reset this girl's knowledge on cooking right now…