Food Fixations - Season One

Caretaker

• Tom Paris holds the distinction of being the first member of the crew to be sighted with coffee cup in hand. He drinks raktajino in Quark's bar prior to rescuing Harry from the Ferengi's clutches.
• Kathryn Janeway drinks her own coffee in her ready room while saying her farewells to Mark shortly afterwards.
• Tom Paris also holds the dubious distinction of being the only crewmember to complain about the food before the replicators had to be turned off! He was singularly unimpressed by their ability to reproduce tomato soup. Trouble is, I don't think he later found Neelix's cooking any more to his taste.
• Nobody seemed interested in the pitcher of lemonade, sugar cookies, corn on the cob or devilled eggs that were being offered around during the Voyager crew's softening up period on the Array. Pity really, given its illusory nature, since it would have been fascinating to learn whether it evaporated from the stomach when the illusion was dispensed with. You know, just like holodeck food doesn't...
• Neelix hires on as a guide in return for the promise of all the water he wants. And even when he discovers the joys of going on a replicator spree, that highly prized substance is right up there on his list of exotic delicacies to be sampled...
• The Kazon seem to have pretty simple tastes. Water is top of their shopping list too.
• Finally, Neelix begins his culinary reign of terror by threatening Voyager with the prospect of his angla'bosque (see also Before And After). And Janeway still lets him join the crew!

Parallax

• Chakotay orders B'Elanna Torres to make her peace with Lieutenant Carey by apologising to him over a hot cup of pejuta.
• The replicators are down. Everybody's on emergency rations, which are in limited supply.
• Neelix, making his second pitch for the job of cook, claims to be able to do wonderful things with vegetables. He also informs Janeway that his feragoit goulash is known across twelve star systems. He doesn't however say whether it is revered or feared.

Phage

• Janeway invites Chakotay to breakfast. She says she's thinking about eggs Benedict with asparagus, and strawberries and cream. Energy reserves being what they are however, what she's actually going to eat is Ration Pack #5, which is stewed tomatoes with dehydrated eggs. I think I'd want to fantasise too.
• Chakotay declines the power breakfast offer. Seems he's a vacuum packed oatmeal kind of guy, and he's breakfasted already.
• Since hinting hasn't worked, Neelix assigns himself as cook, commandeering Janeway's private dining room as a galley and serving up breakfast with the help of the vegetables from Kes's hydroponics bay. He warns one of his early customers that the meal is a little spicy; an understatement if ever I heard one. Soon they'll know without being told...
• When Neelix is called away from his galley, Ensign Parsons is asked to keep an eye on things and is given strict instructions to rotate the darvot fritters every ten minutes until they turn a deep chartreuse.

The Cloud

• Janeway is less than impressed by Neelix's even-better-than-coffee substitute. Perhaps it's the way that it crawls out of the jug rather than pours. Perhaps she doesn't appreciate the thought of it being a richer blend - especially when the person describing it as such is Neelix, who's prone to underestimation in such matters. But probably it's just that this particular caffeine addict thinks that there can be no substitute for the real thing. Although she'd settle for the replicated real thing if Voyager's energy shortages didn't require her to set a good example with her replicator rations.
• Janeway also passes up Neelix's offer of takar loggerhead eggs for breakfast.
• Taking time to get into the spirit of things, Harry Kim asks for a cup of tea when Paris introduces him to his holographic reproduction of a Marseilles bar. Paris himself opts for a bottle of '46 Saint Emilion (see also Year Of Hell: 2).
• For dinner Neelix serves bantan which is - naturally - a little on the spicy side. He instructs the hapless customers not to eat the little pink things, which sounds distinctly ominous...
• Neelix tries taking up a refreshments tray to the bridge. On offer are ailis pate, felada onion crisps and stuffed cardaway leaves. Presumably Janeway didn't appreciate the thought that much, as he's never been seen to do it again since.

Eye Of The Needle

• Janeway and Kes talk about the Doctor's rights as a hologram, over a cup of vegetable bouillon and a spinach juice with a touch of pear. Apparently Tom Paris introduced Kes to the latter...

Cathexis

• Janeway is offered tea in the Gothic mansion setting of her new holonovel. She takes it with two lumps of sugar. The holocharacter Lord Burleigh opts instead for something suspiciously alcoholic looking, which he pours from a crystal decanter.
• While being examined in Sickbay, Tom Paris lapses into nostalgia for an older and more compatible medic. Doc Brown, his family doctor when he was a child, kept lollipops in the waiting room, and whipped up a pot of garlic soup to bring over for him when he had a bad cold at the age of nine.
• With random members of the crew being taken over, Neelix is concerned by the fact that, after months of ordering hot pejuta with lemon, today Ensign Parsons asked for it cold and without the lemon. He suggests to the Doctor that this inexplicable change in habits is grounds for calling Parsons in for a checkup.

Faces

• Neelix offers Tuvok a bowl of "authentic" Vulcan plomeek soup as a little taste of home. The only trouble is, he's diverged from the recipe in the computer databank somewhat. Finding it a little too bland for him, he's opted to spice it up, in time honoured Neelix fashion. Tuvok is less than impressed by plomeek soup á la Neelix. It seems he prefers his little tastes of home to taste like they came from home.
• Other native dishes of the crew that Neelix has tackled so far are corn salad for Chakotay, and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Paris.
• Harry talks about breadcrumbs, but he's really trying to describe a trail of subspace transponders to be used to keep an away team in constant touch with Voyager while in a signal blocking underground cave system. He could equally well have talked about balls of string.
• Their Talaxian fellow prisoner offers water to the human B'Elanna Torres after her DNA split makes her too weak to work in the Vidiians' mines.
• The Klingon Torres is more generous, and kills and roasts a rodent she found in the tunnels as dinner for both of them. Human B'Elanna is a bit revolted by the thought of it, but as her other half points out, she can hardly replicate them a soufflé when they're on the run from the Vidiians. Even if they had a replicator handy, and enough rations left to use it.

Learning Curve

• Cheese. It won't be the last such problem Neelix causes though (see the photonic flea incident in The Voyager Conspiracy).

Twisted

• Neelix serves a special birthday punch at Kes's surprise party. Temporary bartender at Chez Sandrine, the Doctor, asks her if she'd like it on the rocks or straight up.
• Neelix has also made Kes a birthday cake. The Jibalian fudge cake (see also Before And After) consists of seven layers of the aforementioned fudge, and has an icing made from puréed L'maki nuts. Apparently however, it's a particular favourite of Kes's. Neelix is a little upset when a shipboard crisis cuts short the party before the cutting of the cake, but Janeway does ask him to save her a slice. She's probably just being polite, but how wrong can he go with fudge and nuts? Even blue ones.
• After going missing for a while during the ship implosion, Neelix shows up safe and sound on the bridge, bringing the cake with him. Paris manages to grab and steady it just before he plonks the plate down on the helm. Probably a good thing. After all, they'd only just got navigation back.

The 37's

• Fred Noonan, holding the team from Voyager who revived himself and his colleagues at gunpoint, takes a swig from his hip flask. The exact beverage that his little pick-me-up consists of is unspecified, but the alcohol level in his blood because of it is so high that it takes the Doctor a while to repair the damage to his circulatory system when he accidentally gets himself shot.
• Neelix enthusiastically researches twentieth century cuisine for the 37's, and comes up with pot roast, green beans and Jell-O with fruit cocktail for Fred Noonan, and rice and fish with ginger seasoning for the Japanese soldier. Is it any wonder they all stayed behind on the planet?