not teaching,
still THINKING …
Spaghetti supper one night recently turned into a lesson relearned in how we need to be “on” all the time.
The spaghetti saga starts with two cooks in the kitchen. Cook 1 boiled the water. Cook 2 added the pasta. Easy enough. But a simple meal took a nasty turn in the amount of time that it takes to cook pasta — al dente or not.
In a household where gluten-free eating is not a choice but a necessity, two cooks who were not paying attention almost ate gluten-laden thin spaghetti rather than gluten-free spaghetti.
They weren’t “on” at the stove.
- The pasta in the pot was thin spaghetti, not spaghetti. As its name suggests, thin spaghetti is thinner. Neither cook noticed.
- Thin spaghetti cooks more quickly than spaghetti. While one cook commented that the pasta was not taking as long as usual to cook, neither cook made the connection.
- Gluten-free pasta is more yellow than regular pasta when it is made with corn. So the color of the pasta in the pot was different than usual. Neither cook noticed.
- Gluten-free pasta comes in a 12-ounce box, not the usual 16-ounce box. So the pasta in the pot took up more room than usual. Neither cook noticed.
As with any type of situation where quality control is essential, these two cooks failed miserably. The only thing that saved them was luck. Once the thinner, less yellow pasta was dumped into the colander, filling it to the brim, only then did they notice all the differences. But it was close.
Close calls are common in a deadline-driven profession of gathering, producing and publishing news and information. That’s why one of our mantras has always been: You have to be “on” all the time.
We acknowledge that it is a bit embarrassing to share this personal experience. But, then again, we also recognize that we learn from one another’s mistakes.
(These two profs are no longer teaching at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School, but we are still thinking.)