Working in a Test Kitchen

Daily writing prompt

What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?

In my undergraduate years, my major was Foods in Business, a major designed to position people into the food industry. This was not what I ultimately did with my life, having discovered Family and Consumption Economics, and my life’s work, my junior year. But as an undergraduate, I wanted to work in a consumer affairs position, or even better, in a test kitchen.

I took a class my senior year called Food Science, where we spent the first half of the semester learning the chemical and physical properties of food, and the second half of the semester testing hypotheses about food. Mine was testing for substitutes for butter in baking poundcakes — margarine, butter flavored shortening, and regular shortening with butter buds flavoring. (Note: people preferred shortening over everything, including butter.) I fell in love with test kitchen work and, if it weren’t for the fact that I loved the thought of graduate school more, I might have gone into test kitchen work.

So, if I had a choice of any job to step into for a day, I would walk into a test kitchen. I think I remember the basics 40 years later — standardized recipes where one weighs all the ingredients on a scale (including a very sensitive one for small amounts like baking soda and seasoning), tasting rooms with good ventilation, white walls, and neutral lighting, testing of texture, crumb, and viscosity using simple and complicated testing. I think I can do it for a day with very little coaching.

Just Keep Writing

I wrote 1200 words yesterday on the latest novel, which is more than I had been writing for a while. I still don’t know what I think of this novel — it seems like a lot of conversations right now. I don’t know if it has enough action yet. The good news is that the story is setting up future situations and complications as it should. I have to remind myself to just keep writing — I can edit later.

I have this theory that I write better when writing is distracting me from other things I need to do. Right now I have papers to grade, but suddenly I have this hankering to write. I’ve scheduled part of today to write and part to rest. Tomorrow I have a concert to go to in the afternoon; I may grade during the morning. Or Monday; Monday will be soon enough.

I will get through this semester. I will write this book.

My Friend Les

Daily writing prompt

List the people you admire and look to for advice…

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The person I most admired has been dead for a number of years. He was my friend, surrogate father, and confessor. He got me through some of the most difficult years of my life. He was also the most interesting person I’ve ever met.

Les had a series of experiences that I could only dream of, and he would let them slip in conversation. “When I was in the Navy,” or “When I was in graduate school in Scotland,” or “When I was a pilot” … there were quite a few of these over the years. He was a combustion expert, and one of his sidelines was building controlled explosions in coal mines to burn off dangerous gases. He also studied religion on the side, and held a concert of his original compositions at age 80.

Les gave me a lot of advice over the years. Everything from grad school advice to life advice. I was going through considerable trauma and bad breakups in the time I knew him, so I know I did a certain amount of crying over the phone. Never did Les judge me.

He always held that, if I found the right person to have a relationship with, I would heal. It was scary, but he was correct. He knew I would marry Richard when I had barely met him, and he was (as always) right. I never got him that bottle of Talisker (Scotch) I owed him for that bet.

He died at 95, which is fitting for someone whose life was that full. His memorial service was filled with all the people whose lives he’d touched over the years. We had lost touch with each other, but we reunited for him. It was a fitting send-off.

The School Year is Almost Over

This school year (do you call it that when it’s teaching college?) went by very fast. There’s a pile of grading standing between me and the end of the year. Some of it I will get done this weekend; the rest during the week while I am giving final exams. I will get through grading, and then on to the summer.

I think I will have 10 interns this summer. That’s not a lot of interns, but it will keep me busy. I will have time to rest and write in between internship supervision. I already have prepped my classes for fall while bored in my office, so I’m ahead of the game.

I need this break. It has been an intense school year.

Direction

Daily writing prompt

What gives you direction in life?

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What gives me direction in life? This is a harder question than it seems, because there isn’t one succinct answer.

On work issues, what gives me direction is what needs to be done. There is a cycle of grading, classes to be taught, topics to cover, research to be done, etc. That determines the direction of my work.

With leisure time, several things influence the sense of direction. One big thing is goals. I have small goals and Big Audacious Goals. I have not had a Big Audacious Goal in a while, which is part of why writing has been so hard. Another is my energy level — if I have little energy, my sense of direction points toward rest above anything. Finally, there’s a tug between established routine and emergent wants — do I go to Starbucks to write or start working in the garden?

I wish I could say some divine force gives me direction. I don’t know if I believe in God, although lately I have been praying. I pray that I get done the things I need to get done. But it still doesn’t help me get to the garden tasks.

Summer Vacation is So Close

If I get through the next two weeks, I tell myself, I’ll be scot-free.

It’s that time of the semester. The last week before finals, and I have two major assignments coming in on Friday. And two essay exams the week after. And then summer and internships.

Summer and internships are a lot easier, because my time is more my own. I have paperwork, grading, and internship visits, but I have more freedom to schedule them. And I have time on my own.

Maybe I’ll get something written.

My First Time Camping

Daily writing prompt

Have you ever been camping?

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My first time camping was in college. I had gone with a friend of mine to Illinois Yearly Meeting (an annual meeting of Friends, or Quakers). Lodging at the Meetinghouse was primitive, rustic two-person dorm rooms. My friend Joan and I decided we would camp in the camping space across the road from the Meetinghouse.

Joan and I put up the tent (not a fancy one like we have nowadays) and we spent the day in activities. The tent was still standing by bedtime, which was a good sign. When we settled in, with our belongings tucked around us, it was a crowded time in the tent and we were tired. Not too tired to notice that my head lay on a tree root.

It stormed all night. Illinois thunderstorms are particularly resonant, so I couldn’t sleep very well. I finally fell asleep after the storm quit. Scant hours later, I woke at dawn, and noticed my air mattress was … floating.

“Joan?”

“Mrrph.” Joan was not a morning person.

“Joan? I think the tent flooded.”

Joan jumped up, and we assessed the state of the tent. Yes, it had flooded at one end, as had the entire campground. We were surrounded by dismayed people noticing that they, too, had taken water in their tents.

Joan and I did the only thing we could — we busted up laughing. We sorted out our clothing (mostly dry) and hung our tent and sleeping bags in the tree to dry. Needless to say, we slept in the dorms that night.

That was my first time camping. The fact that I’ve camped more than once is a testimony to my perseverence. Or my short memory. One of those two.

A Morning Person

Daily writing prompt

When do you feel most productive?

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I feel most productive in the mornings. I wake up at 5 in the morning, sit in bed reading for 20 minutes, then get up for the day. Then I eat breakfast, write this blog during coffee, and by seven-thirty am ready for the workday.

My mind is at its sharpest from seven till about 2 PM. By then, I’m not what I’d call productive. I get most of my work done in the morning, and teach classes in the early afternoon. By three PM I’m ready to take a nap, although I’m not done until 5. My productivity is just not very productive in the late afternoon.

In the evening, I rest. I go to bed by eight, because I’m a morning person.

Publishing — A Risk I Don’t Regret

Daily writing prompt

Describe a risk you took that you do not regret.

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Indie-publishing a novel was a risk. Writing it was a Big Audacious Goal, but I could have left the book in a file folder forever. Letting it out there for people to read was a big risk.

What is the risk of putting my work out there for others to read? There’s a risk of being ridiculed, of being ignored, of losing one’s confidence in oneself. These bring up a lot of fear, like standing in front of a door, not knowing what is on the other side.

I took the risk by walking through that door. My first book published was a Christmas romance, The Kringle Conspiracy. It was a project whose seeds were planted in a high school short story I’d written. To publish, I had to edit the document, run it across some beta readers, and then the hard part: uploading it onto KDP (Kindle’s publishing arm) and hitting the button to publish.

I could have walked it back. I could have unpublished it before the wheels of KDP released it to the public, but I did not. I took the risk.

My results have been mixed. On one hand, I have not had a lot of readers (except for the 3300 who read it for free in exchange for getting put on my newsletter list.) On the other, the few people who have reviewed it have given it 4.5 stars out of five. It’s a modest success, but that’s not the reason I took the risk. I took it because it was another Big Audacious Goal, one that I could only accomplish through stepping through the door.