"Alright, tests one, two, three and four," I said, writing down the four tests into my notebook.

I handed my pen to Rex for him to take notes as I spoke.

"In test one, we'll use sweet apples and test two will have tart apples. In the third pot, we'll use both apples along with unpeeled oranges, and the fourth pot will have both apples with peeled oranges. All of those will have cinnamon and cloves."

"Do we have enough pots of the same size?" Rex asked after finishing his writing.

"Yeah, I'm pretty sure we do," I said, opening the cabinets. I found four copper pots and filled them each about halfway with water.

Rex lifted up a basket, saying, "Let's go get the fruits then."

In the garden, I pointed out the trees to get fruit from and let Rex do that for me.

"Try to get the sizes as similar as possible," I suggested.

Meanwhile, I went back in the kitchen and found the containers of dried cinnamon sticks and cloves, broke the sticks of cinnamon in half, and tossed one half into each pot along with one full dried clove.

Rex came back in with his basket completely filled with fruits.

"How'd you pick all those so fast!?"

He shrugged, "Using magic?"

"Ohh right. Well, we definitely don't need that many fruits right now."

I pulled out a kitchen knife, and Rex stopped me.

"I'll cut the fruits. I don't want you to cut yourself."

"Alright, fine," I sighed and stepped back. "I'll peel some of the oranges then. Just cut the fruits into 4 evenly sized pieces, and keep the different fruits apart from each other. Wash the knife before you start cutting the different types though. We don't want to cross-contaminate some of the flavors."

I carefully peeled the oranges, making sure they stayed full and didn't leak any of their juices. Rex had replaced the knife I chose and instead used a cleaver to chop the fruits into quarters, pulling out stems and any seeds that he came across.