Morning all. I hope your morning went swimmingly. Mine wasn’t so bad. I took the last of my post surgery antibiotics and have healed enough that there is no pain. Woo Hoo for me! Heading back into normality! For today we are going to jump back into normality with our morning writing prompt. Timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go!
I like the set up. A competition for a group so they all do something they need to do but a section of the group taking it too far. So many things to play with. I would have to work out some details about the group, but I think this is not the start of the story. I think the start is when someone proposes the competition. I might play around with this one at lunch.
Tuesday, November 3rd: The oven timer dinged.
The oven timer dinged. Carly walked quickly towards the kitchen. She knew that it would not burn in the five seconds it took her to get to the oven timer but growing up when the timer went off it was immediately answered. If the timer went off a second time, it was called unnecessary noise and disturbing to the rest of the household.
Even though she now lived alone, racing to turn it off was automatic. She reached the kitchen, turned off the timer before it could beep again and slipped on the oven mitts. For most things she just used a towel wrapped around her hand, to extract it from the oven. However, this was a full tray of lasagna and was quite heavy. She needed both hands and knew that as she lifted, there was the possibility she might automatically move her hands around and wanted to resist burning.
As all the cooking shows she watched scoffed at old-fashioned oven mitts, claiming that as towels were used in professional kitchens, Carly felt a little silly using them.
She reminded herself that she was not a professional chef, had no desire to be one and used the mitts to take out the heavy dish. When was using a glass Pyrex that was nearly two inches deep and filled to the brim.
‘Heavy,’ she told herself, setting it down on the potholder she placed down on top of the stove to serve as a landing pad for the lasagna. She placed it down, shoved the rack back into the oven and closed the door. She then slipped off the oven mitts and turned off the oven. The mitts were returned to the drawer where they lived and Carly inhaled deeply of the rich and cheesy scent.
She knew a lot of people made meat sauce with their lasagna but she never did. She enjoyed the cheesy and tomato-y lasagna without the presence of meat. She added extra fresh herbs and liked it better. She had nothing against meat, it had just never been a part of her lasagna.
As tempting as the scent was, Carly forced herself to walk away. The lasagna needed to cool and set a bit before it could be eaten. The setting would keep it from being a sloppy mess on the plate, but the cooling time would keep the cheese from being molten lava in her mouth. She learned the hard way that lasagna tasted better when it hadn’t burned off her tastebuds.
Still the scent was glorious. She inhaled as she left the kitchen, and temptation behind. While she would have lasagna tonight, she would then carve up the rest of the tray into individual portions. She only really cooked once a week these days. She would make something large enough to feed a very hungry family of about six, then divide it up into meals. The extra portions would then be frozen. She had several meals in her freezer now and could alternate, eating something different every night.
Getting the system started required a few weeks of making more than one meal, but now she had enough that once a week cooking was all she needed to do to maintain the weekly variety.
She went back into her home office and looked at the spread sheet she pulled up. The meal plan, along with several other changs she made were helping her finances. She knew she needed to save money and cut expenses. Everyone in her circle of friends did. It was something they all moaned about.
Then someone, she thought it was Kevin, decided to make it a competition. They would all compete to see how much money they could save over the next six months. They each tossed five dollars into the prize pot and whoever saved the most would take home the prize. There were rules and a sliding scale of percentages given the differences in their salaries, but in the end the rules seemed fair.
Carly was looking at is as an opportunity to revive some of the systems she grew up with. Some of them were proving fun as well as effective. She knew not everyone in the group was having as much fun with it and several had let their competitive streak get the better of them. They were two months in and she felt like she was just hitting her stride.
‘Even if I am not the most competitive in the group.’ She chewed her lip. The competitive nature of some of her friends had her a bit worried.
