In the 24th Century, Do They Know What an Omelet Is?

As opposed to the other guy.

As a professional cook, what bothered me most about that scene was the bizarrely awkward way Riker was holding the whisk while scrambling the eggs.

On board a ship or at any land base, weapons are kept under lock and key and heavily guarded. Security doesn’t depend on service personnel like pastry chefs.

Two more pieces of evidence that Riker’s just a terrible cook (I know I’m being ridiculous, I own it):

  1. When he sees everyone’s faces, he doesn’t say, “Oh no! Are they overcooked? Not enough salt? Please tell me I didn’t use rotten eggs!” Nope: he says, “A cook is only as good as his ingredients.” His first move is to spout some sophistry nonsense to protect his ego and avoid responsibility for screwing up the meal.
  2. Who serves a pile of scrambled eggs as the entire meal? There’s no fruit, no bread, no meat, no vegetable, no sides whatsoever on those plates: just blobs of unseasoned scrambled eggs.

Riker has no clue what he’s doing, and no clue that he has no clue.

And if he eats something that doesn’t agree with him, he gets atomic ache.

:rofl:

I wonder what happens at the other end? :thinking: :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

^ I don’t have a joke for this; well, I’ll bidet-mned. :crazy_face:

Your question implies that humanity will survive the next 300 years. I admire your optimism. In any case, if it does, we will definitely have omelets and soups and anything made by simply mixing things into other things.

The meals that won’t survive would be the ones that are either complex to make or the ones that require hard to get ingredients.

In theory, though, any hard-to-get ingredient could be made in the food replicator.

True, but I remember the episode where Riker (I believe) was making his own omelet and, upon being questioned about it, said something to the effect that replicated food just couldn’t match the real natural thing in terms of flavor.

Are you suggesting Chicken Paprikás and Bouillabaisse won’t be around in another 300 years? :astonished: God forbid!

I think that was Troi talking about chocolate.

Bouilla - what?! :flushed:

Riker makes an omelet.

What’s that got to do with the price of eggs? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Actually, that’s a very good question for another thread. How would the replicator affect prices? I mean, if you could replicate virtually anything, what would that do to the concept of “worth”?

In theory, the Federation has no economy. There is no material means of “worth.” In practice, many civilizations in the Alpha Quadrant trade in gold-pressed latinum, since latinum can’t be replicated.

It destroys it. Which is why there is no money in the Federation, and no one has to work. They can just do whatever they think will make their lives more fulfilling and try to improve themselves.

If you believe this and you’re not stoned, I have swampland in Florida you might be interested in. :sunglasses:

I would think that people will always value “work” and the things that have any worth at all are the things that people put effort into. While a replicated meal will be perfectly acceptable for a weeknight meal, if you were to have people over for dinner you would probably only replicate raw ingredients and then put effort into cooking and presentation. Even if the finished result happens to taste worse than what the replicator could make, I suspect the people you cooked for would value it much more.

I would expect people to devote far more time to creating art, writing, playing sports and music. I think on the Enterprise you’d probably have a bartering system of some sort to trade whatever unique items or skills are available on the ship. I think people would tend to do anything they could to gain some advantage and standing over others and have something unique that can’t be recreated in a replicator.

Bouillabaisseball - a popular sport on Gordon Shumway’s home planet of Melmac that involved throwing fish parts at each other.