Considering how many toxic things humans ate, it was a little surprising that their cooking was not only edible, but delicious.
“YE-HE-HEEESSSSS! It’s here!”
The nervous Passeri crew gathered at a safe distance to watch the Ship Human - somewhere between lucky mascot and terrifying on-board entertainment - cackle and sing to herself.
They had been told that female humans were far more trainable than the males. That they were, on the whole, quieter and less dangerous than the males. The Passeri had since become convinced that they were told lies.
Right now, the human was singing “It’s here,” over and over as she towed the large freight box towards the segregated kitchen set aside for her bizarre human foods.
Inside the box was a series of smaller boxes. Something Vaishnavi greeted with glee. “Sweet! Individually wrapped. You’re getting five stars, InterShip Galactic.”
The smaller boxes had warning stickers on them. Biohazard. Caustic substance. Carnivorous enzymes.
“My pardon,” said Tyrti, the closest Passeri crew-member the human had to a friend on board, “those stickers are… normally cause for alarm. Why do you express joy?”
“These?” a negligent wave at the brightly-coloured warnings. “This is just alarmist rubbish. They do the same sort of thing for cheese.” Yes. Some human cheese had escaped at Sygnus Twelve. The entire installation had to be heat-sterilized off the surface of the moon. “These are just pineapples.”
The surrounding Passeri took a collective step back, as if the human had said ’it’s only uranium 238’ instead. Only Tyrti stayed in her place. Thus, she was in a prime position to watch Vaishnavi gather ingredients. These included some biohazard-isolated cheese, a caustic material called Tomato Paste, and the ever-present tins of the Terran delicacy, Spam. There was also a flat disk of something bread-like. Thankfully, the packing labels declared that the biohazardous yeast had been killed by irradiation.
“You cook now?”
“Why not? I’ve been waiting for these babies for ages. I want to celebrate.” And, out of deference to her ship and crew-mates, Vaishnavi turned on the isolation protocols before proceeding.
The number of things humans just casually ate without concern inevitably boggled the galactic assembly, so Vaishnavi’s cooking inevitably gathered an audience. It was why all four walls of her kitchen were transparent.
Vaishnavi treated it as an opportunity to educate, and ignored the gasps as she sampled various ingredients. “Today, little birdies, I’m cooking an Earth favourite all over the world - Pizza. Pizza began in a nation-state called Italy…”
What was most surprising to the crew was how… delicious it smelled. Many were barely restraining coos of hunger in anticipation of being fed. They had seen the toxic ingredients. They knew it should have been hazardous. One of them had fainted when the human negligently ate a piece of raw pineapple.
Yet all wanted to try some.
It was almost as if the legendary human insanity was… infectious.
They watched in eager anticipation as the steaming creation journeyed through the scanner to determine exactly how toxic it was to the ship and her crew.
Many cheered at the green light. It passed the first test. It wasn’t poisonous.
Tyrti the Brave tried the first piece. “This defies logic,” she announced. “It tastes of beauty.”
Vaishnavi grinned. “Share and enjoy, birdies. I’ll get some batches going.”
And that was how the phrase Unsuitable Food got coined.
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