"The simplest solution usually seems to be the best. If you want the food to be cooked, cook it. There's less potential for things to go wrong. That is, unless you let Julian near a stove. The man could burn water, Martin tells me."

Martin, you see, has more patience for Julian than Random does, and thus spends some time with him.

"I think initially it had something to do with dad's paranoia about poisons, actually, though I could be wrong, but nowadays it's tradition. It's not common, I take it?"