Food Fixations - Season Six

Equinox: 2

• When the crew of the Equinox decide to try to extract information from Seven of Nine, the Doctor gleefully tells them that her cranial infrastructure is so complex that it will take them months just to figure out what she had for breakfast. My guess would be some nutritional supplement or other, since there's no real indication that Seven's succumbed to the delights of real food any more than she has to yet.
• Morale being particularly low after discovery of the other Starfleet crew's perfidy and their apprehension and/or deaths, Neelix takes it upon himself in his role as Morale Officer to host a pot luck supper. Chakotay tells Janeway that he's committed himself to replicating the salad for it, and she volunteers herself to bring the croutons.

Survival Instinct

• Neelix serves marsupial surprise for both the crew and their many and varied visitors from the Markonian space station that Voyager is docked at. It turns out to be massively popular, and he has to apologise for running out. Apparently he only had two kilos of pouches to begin with.
• As a substitute, he offers pizza. Clearly Tom Paris has worked on him enough in the two years since Mortal Coil that he's now introduced it as a regular item on the menu, despite his previous objections.
• Tom Paris and Harry Kim find a bar on the space station. We don't know what exactly it was that they were drinking in there, but it's probably fairly safe to assume that it wasn't synthehol, since it short-circuited their judgement enough for them to agree to play a game with a couple of Kinbori without first making detailed enquiries about the rules. They sound, incidentally, to be a cross between tennis and a street brawl.
• Eight years earlier, after the crash landing of their Borg sphere, Seven of Nine and the other three survivors of her unimatrix cook some "biomatter" over a fire. According to Three of Nine, aka Marika Wilkarah, it tastes similar to a bird she once ate before her assimilation. Since she's Bajoran, we'll assume that the bird in question resided in the Alpha Quadrant.

Barge Of The Dead

• In the coma induced dream version of her return to Voyager after a perilous away mission, B'Elanna Torres is drinking coffee in her quarters when Chakotay comes to bring her a Klingon artefact which somehow got into her shuttle's port nacelle. After he leaves, she heads to the replicator for a refill... but gets a little distracted when the piece of metal in question starts bleeding.
• Neelix replicates five barrels of blood wine for a Klingon celebration in honour of the finding of the artefact.
• At that Klingon celebration Neelix serves gagh. In an attempt to induce the ever-squeamish Tom Paris to try it, he tries a little Klingon on him: "Sop joq jih yuv gagh drek!", which B'Elanna translates to "Eat this or I'll force it down the gullet of your corpse". In the tone of voice which suggests that it's only a marginal improvement, Paris gets Neelix to confirm that the gagh in question is in fact replicated, and then enquires how and why it's moving. According to Neelix, he used a kinaesthetic agent to give it a little oomph. Paris definitely looks as if the less oomph it has the better he'd like it. Neelix leaves the dish behind him when he moves on to talk to someone else, somewhat pointedly.

Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy

• Amongst the other fantasies he experiences when his daydreaming subroutine gets corrupted by alien monitoring of the ship, the Doctor imagines Neelix baking him a cake. Since he's blowing out candles on it, presumably it's a birthday cake, although it'd be interesting to know what the Doctor thinks of as his birthday. The anniversary of his first activation, perhaps?
• In one of the fantasies where B'Elanna Torres is competing with her fellow female crewmembers for the Doctor's attention, the sad and lovelorn Tom Paris is watching while drinking coffee alone at a table in the Mess Hall.

Alice

• Neelix tells Abaddon that nowadays he concentrates his efforts on food and diplomacy rather than commerce. It doesn't stop Abaddon from trying to sell him an isoconvective oven (only one careful owner), but we don't actually learn whether he makes the sale or not.
• Tom Paris replicates a bottle of champagne to break over Alice's bows to christen the refurbished ship. He and B'Elanna Torres later decide that it's a waste of good champagne and toast the ship by drinking it instead. One can only assume that Alice gets jealous at not being allowed to share, since she distracts Paris from the occasion with a few more parameters that need tweaking, so that the champagne ends up only partially drunk.
• Neelix offers to whip up some hors d'oeuvres for the crew to celebrate Alice's christening, but it's planned to be a private occasion with just Paris, B'Elanna and Alice herself present.

Riddles

• Neelix poses Tuvok a riddle: a lone Ensign finds himself stranded on a class L planetoid with no rations, with his only possession being a calendar. When Starfleet find him 12 months later, he's in perfect health. Why didn't he starve to death? Tuvok, ever literal, hazards a guess about hot water springs on the planet which might sustain the hapless ensign for a few weeks, but both agree that it is physically impossibly for him to survive a year in this manner. Neelix's solution is that he survived by eating dates from the calendar.
• Deputy Investigator Naroq gave his supervisor two bottles of Kesatian ale in order to be assigned the investigation of the attack on Voyager. The Fox Mulder of the Delta Quadrant is well used to having his theories about the mythical Ba'neth scoffed at, but apparently he's not above a little bribery in order to attempt to prove himself right.
• Janeway asks the recovering Tuvok to lunch, just the two of them. But Tuvok is still clinging to the newly familiar rather than his old habits and acquaintances, and opts to stay with Neelix instead.
• Invited by Tuvok to teach him how to do something that he likes to do, Neelix naturally thinks of cooking. Shortly afterwards, Tuvok is turning out desserts to universal acclaim. Paris asks why he only does desserts, and while he seems amused by Tuvok's answer that it's because they taste good, you can't help wondering if perhaps he's a little disappointed that the main course won't be seeing the Vulcan's helping hand any time soon. Harry actually goes ahead and says it, if only in jest: that Tuvok might well put Neelix out of a job. The full list of Tuvok's creations is as follows:
  - triple-chocolate wikki fruit sundae with fettran sauce.
  - terra-nut soufflé
  - Jibalian fudge cake with peppermint coulis
  - sweet leola root tart
  - pistachio cake with parra creme sauce
  Paris questions the choice of fettran sauce on a sundae, but he certainly approves of the results. Janeway finds the terra-nut soufflé to be delicious, and is promised the first piece of the pistachio cake that Tuvok is currently preparing, upon his learning that she adores parra creme. It should be noted however that nobody actually tries the leola root tart, so we still have only Neelix's word for it that leola root can be put to good use!
• Unable to find the technical terminology within his damaged brain to describe the cloaking frequency that he saw on his tricorder just prior to being attacked by the Ba'neth, Tuvok ices it in parra creme on the top of the pistachio cake which he is making.
• Neelix offers Tuvok a glass of champagne to celebrate the fact that the Doctor has declared him fit to return to duty. As further proof of this, Tuvok declines Neelix's suggestion and states that a cup of tea will suffice. Poor Neelix looks a little sad.
• Tuvok also declines to prepare one of his desserts for the dinner to be held in honour of his recovery, stating that he has more important things to do than to engage in the preparation of nutritionally deficient foods. He does, however give enough thought to those frivolous consumables to come up with a second solution to Neelix's riddle about the starving ensign with the calendar: that he could have eaten the Sundays/sundaes. Perhaps there's a little of the fun-loving Tuvok left in him, after all.

Dragon's Teeth

• After Paris likens the Vaadwaur subspace corridors to a maze, Janeway instructs him to be a good rat and find them the cheese. Or at least a way out.
• After Gedrin is revived, he and Janeway go to the Mess Hall and look out of the windows of the landed Voyager at the devastation that was once his planet. Neelix joins them, having prepared a large assortment of Delta Quadrant dishes for their Vaadwaur guest, in the hopes that something will be to his taste. If the Delta Quadrant quirk of heaping on the spices is of ancient enough origin, it's quite possible that it might.
• Neelix later gets to cook for 200 - the revived members of the Vaadwaur battalion. Hopefully he cooks for the 150-ish Voyager crew as well, although as he doesn't mention it maybe they went hungry that day.
• Janeway is drinking coffee in her Ready Room when she summons Gedrin to point out that his people haven't been entirely honest with her about their motivations. I guess it does have fortifying properties for those unpleasant occasions.

One Small Step

• Chakotay is reading in his quarters and drinking coffee when the communications system goes haywire and interrupts him.
• Janeway is sipping coffee during the briefing concerning the graviton ellipse.

The Voyager Conspiracy

• Janeway (or rather her replicator) is cooking that weekly dinner for Chakotay. She nearly burns her hand on the plate, because the computer inconsiderately doesn't warn her it's hot until she's actually touching it. Main course is unidentified, but is apparently a dish she's never tried before. As she says to Chakotay, they are explorers. The wine they're drinking with the meal is white, in case that gives any clues.
• Nowadays Janeway is carrying her mug of coffee around with her as she wanders the bridge.
• Eight weeks earlier the ship traded with a Kartelan freighter which had previously had contact with a Talaxian colony. Neelix took the opportunity to purchase twelve kilograms of amber spice, a delicacy among his people, to use in his cooking... and the photonic flea larvae contained in his spice jar hatched and took up residence in the Mess Hall replicator, which Harry was repairing at the time. It could be worse though. At least this particular food threat only causes the sensor emitter resolution to blip occasionally when they tap into the sensor conduit for nourishment (see the cheese incident in Learning Curve).
• Conference time in the Briefing Room with their new alien friend Tash. There are a couple of coffeepots on hand, not to mention the usual scattering of mugs. Tash borrows the coffee paraphernalia to do a little demonstration of his space catapult. One of the mugs, demonstrating what he hopes is the fast route home for his own ship, skids along the conference table to be neatly fielded by Chakotay. I guess he's had lots of practice. You wouldn't want to upset the captain by ever letting a coffee mug get away.
• Janeway is having a quiet mug of coffee in her quarters when Seven shows up to suggest that Tash might be too good to be true. She looks a little miffed at having her coffee break and report reading time interrupted.
• When Seven wanders into the Mess Hall after hours, Neelix wonders whether she's after a midnight snack. In fact she only hungers to swap conspiracy stories with him.
• After another of those dinners, Janeway pours coffee for herself and Chakotay while they swap conspiracy stories. In Janeway's version, there was a mutiny in which the First Officer walked the plank. In Chakotay's, the Captain poisoned the coffee. Janeway doesn't exactly confirm or deny it, just says that she's not interfered with it any more than usual. Of course, that does beg the question of what she might be doing to tweak the caffeine formula on a daily basis. Double strength at the very least, I reckon.

Pathfinder

• Reg Barclay invites Deanna Troi over, and offers hospitality. Would she like tea or coffee? Then he finally recollects just who's standing on his threshold and offers the obvious chocolate ice cream. Deanna accepts, but asks for just the one scoop, since she's watching her figure. She has to prompt him a couple of times in order to move the process along from offer to replicator, but is then too busy analysing why Barclay has invited her over to get around to touching her ice cream. It's eventually claimed by Barclay's cat Neelix. I guess if you give a cat a name like that, it's too much to expect it not to have a food preoccupation.
• Barclay's boss Pete Harkins tries to drag him away from his simulations and projections for getting Voyager home by inviting him over for coffee, and to meet his wife's sister. Poor Barclay looks terrified at the prospect, and can't politely decline fast enough. Is it just that he's chronically uncomfortable in the company of women, or is the real problem...
• ...the beverage on offer? When Barclay heads for his Voyager simulation, in which he's the life and soul of the party and the killer card player in the senior officer's poker game, he orders warm milk. Since a lot of the background crew in his little holofantasy are sporting the regulation coffee mugs, he's obviously got a lot of the details right though, so perhaps he's just a man of strong personal preferences.
• Barclay arrives in the Mess Hall of the holo-Voyager the following morning and chats with Tom Paris and Harry Kim, who are at the counter, coffee mugs at their elbows. The guys are lobbying for Barclay to whip up one of his famed cheese omelettes for them, but he declines, giving the important meeting he has at 0900 (a Pathfinder Project inspection by Paris's father) as excuse for his lack of time, and reaches for the coffeepot to pour himself a mug instead. I guess he does drink coffee after all, just not all of the time.
• The Voyager crew celebrate making contact with Starfleet Command again with a champagne toast. Neelix pours, and Tom Paris does the honours, as befits someone who's just heard his father's voice for the first time in years, only to discover that he's in charge of the project dedicated to getting them home. In addition to toasting Admiral Paris, they also express their thanks and gratitude to the unknown Reginald Barclay, and nominate him as an honorary member of the crew. Barcaly would be touched by the gesture. Perhaps he wasn't so far off in imagining himself everybody's best friend after all.
• Barclay's own celebration drink with Deanna is a little more sedate. They're drinking wine from the look of it, and they've moved on from the Pathfinder communications breakdown. Barclay has managed to get himself a date... with the sister-in-law of Commander Harkins that he was avoiding contact with a few days earlier. It's amazing what a little success can do for his general confidence.

Fair Haven

• One of Tom Paris's Fair Haven holocharacters, Seamus, spins a fine tale. As a conversational digression it's something of a red herring, but he waxes lyrical about the quality of the trout fishing to be had in Kilkee, and the late Timothy Ryan who apparently said something about it.
• Janeway sits alone in the darkened Mess Hall, drinking coffee while reading reports on the ship's status as it battens down the hatches in anticipation of the coming storm. She has an extra jug of the stuff at her elbow in case of emergencies.
• Joining Janeway, Neelix tells her that the owner of the Ox and Lamb offered to share some of his recipes with him. Perhaps this is a cunning move of Paris's, aimed at exposing the Talaxian to a type of fare more in keeping with the crew's native tastes.
• When Janeway visits Sullivan's alone, she opts to drink tea. It's a shocking request, but it may just be that she saw that freshly brewed pot on Michael Sullivan's table and was just being polite. She probably knows that most people don't drink coffee out of their teapots, after all. She takes her tea with cream, by the way.
• Later that night, as the rings contest turns into an arm wrestling match, Janeway switches drinks to spirits. The exact brand is unidentified, but since we're in Ireland it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for it to be whiskey.
• Neelix's debate about what he should prepare as a main course at the Ox and Lamb is more than Tuvok's queasy stomach can cope with, and the normally stoic Vulcan has to flee for the safety of Sickbay. Mutton as a lunch prospect is fairly tame, but thought of creamed cabbage or blood pudding would be enough to make me queasy too. I'm surprised that the normally finicky Tom Paris should be so strong an advocate of the latter, even when Neelix recounts the difficulties of replicating lamb intestines and heating blood without coagulating the milk, since he's usually the first to start clutching his stomach. He must really have been throwing heart and soul into his traditional Irish experience at the time.
• Grace is examining the fruit and vegetables on George Pattrick's stall when Janeway stops to ask her if she knows where Sullivan might be.
• Michael Sullivan turns down the prospect of having supper with the King of the Faeries, but is more than happy to have a picnic lunch with Kathryn Janeway.
• There's a neglected coffee mug next to the pile of books that Kathryn Janeway recycles back into the replicator after she decides to break it off with Michael Sullivan.
• Pining for his darling Katie O'Clare, who seems to have left him in the lurch, Michael Sullivan takes to drinking spirits (from the same bottle that he was pouring shots for Janeway a couple of days earlier). This comes as a complete surprise to Paris, who programmed the bartender to be teetotal, but it would seem that Janeway's program modifications caused him to fall off the wagon after 15 years of abstinence. He doesn't seem to like the taste much though.
• After Fair Haven is trashed, Janeway is seen staring morosely into her lap, ignoring her PADDs and her coffee, when Paris comes to tell her that parts of the holoprogram can be saved... and to ask her if she has any preferences in that line.

Blink Of An Eye

• A worshipper brings a basket of fruit and vegetables to add to the offerings to Tahal. When Voyager's arrival disrupts the subspace particle field between his planet's core, causing the first of many earthquakes, the fire fruit he has just placed upon the altar is shaken loose and falls to the ground. It is concluded that the new arrival wants the fire fruit for itself, and a second altar is set up for the Ground Shaker.
• Kelemane offers his cleric a fire fruit, in demonstration that even though he and his people are learning to think that leaving offerings in worship of the Ground Shaker is no more than superstition, some ancient beliefs are hard to dismiss entirely. Fearing bad fortune, neither of them eats the fruit, although Kelemane himself does toss it to the ground.
• Due to the temporal differential, when the two astronauts from the planet first arrive on Voyager's bridge they see Neelix engaged in the act of pouring a cup of coffee for his captain, frozen in mid-pour. As they themselves observed, the crew do indeed look as if they've been frozen in the act of going about their everyday business! In an act of captainly dedication, Janeway puts down her coffee mug the instant she discovers that they have intruders aboard.
• Janeway entertains the surviving astronaut, Gotana Retz, in her Ready Room. She pours him a cup of something from her silver teapot. It could be tea, but then again, she's been known to serve coffee from that pot on more than one occasion too.

Ashes To Ashes

• Neelix asks Seven if she'd like a cup of tea along with him, while the Borg children play kadis-kot with Naomi. Seven declines, because apparently fun needs a lot of supervisory attention and she appears not to be able to drink and supervise at the same time.
• Neelix makes a Jibalian berry salad for Lyndsay Ballard. Eating one was number six on the list of things she wanted to do if she ever got back to Voyager again. Sadly, it doesn't live up to expectations for her. The cosmetic changes being made to her appearance so she can appear human do not extend to her taste buds, which remain Kobali and perceive the salad as faintly metallic tasting.
• Lyndsay Ballard tells Neelix and Harry that there's not much variety to the Kobali diet. According to her, they ate the same grey paste for three years.
• Seven's activities schedule for the Borg children has them absorbing nutrients at 0700 and 1300.
• Janeway invites Lyndsay to dinner. Unfortunately, her replicator incinerates the pot roast, so they have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches instead. Lyndsay claims to have lived on them at the Academy. She also suggests that the pot roast might make a fine addition to Tuvok's 37 strategies for repelling a Kobali attack. Or then again, maybe she just meant the replicator.
• It seems that Lyndsay has acquired a taste for that grey paste. After the confrontation with her Kobali father, Harry Kim comes upon her having a midnight snack, tucking in to a bowl of it.
• After Lyndsey leaves the ship, Harry sits in the Mess Hall with a mug of coffee at his elbow while staring at her discarded hairbrush.