This week's Free Write still finds two of the writers in France and one in Switzerland. The blessed internet allows us to share but we are looking forward to next month when we are in the same café in Switzerland.
D-L's Free Write
"Move the cinnamon sticks. No left. A little more. Good." Jenny focused her camera. Click. Click. She moved the camera a little up, a little down. That should satisfy her client. She never thought she would end up as a food photographer.
Her first camera had been her grandfather's Brownie. Her father had helped her find film. He arranged for a friend who had a dark room tp teach her how to develop the prints.
When she was 12 he bought her a digital camera. She read about F stops.
Her job for a food service had her photographing meals and that lead to a business as free lancer with restaurants as her main client.
She'd met Rob at his photo exhibition. He freelanced too, but he went to other countries, deserts, jungles and war zones.
Now she had to decide. At 25 should she give up her tiny hometown business to travel with him and photograph important things and try and sell them to major media.
She and Rob were having a beer in a pub as she clicked through her cinnamon stick photos.
"So," Rob asked, "Are you coming?"
He already had his visas and said he would help her get hers with help from a friend at the embassy.
She thought about it. "I've taken my last cinnamon stick photo," she said.
"Unless we go where cinnamon is grown," he said.
Rick's Free Write
As we sat in bed in the gathering light, we talked about baking and cooking. I wanted to start baking cookies and cakes from scratch, I said, something I’ve never done before (only from mixes).
My late mother baked when I was growing up and could have turned it into a business, though she didn’t much care to cook.
I only took up cooking when I was between marriages and tired of restaurants. My favorite was Spanish rice, the way ‘Honey’ taught me (all her sons called her that). Beef, rice, tomato sauce, spices, no hot peppers. I added maple syrup for sweetness, and then on the second-day leftovers a generous sprinkling of French fry seasoning from Schwartz Deli in Montréal.
When I was 16, playing in a junior golf tournament near Miami, I offered to make Spanish rice for my host family.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Teddy’s mom asked.
We had rice everywhere !
I didn’t realize Honey used Minute Rice, which does not expand. When I used regular rice in Florida, it overflowed the pot, the stove top, and onto the floor.
(I did better in the golf tournament.)
Julia's Free Write
Ah, such a comforting picture…
When she saw it, she immediately thought of cold winter nights, a fire in the fireplace, preferable in some mountain chalet.
Good friends gathered around for the evening.
She could almost smell the smells, here the stove almost as she cooked up a stew for the gathering. Not that she was any kind of a cook, but hey, one can dream, right?
In this dream she also imagined a roasted turkey, perhaps some stuffed baked potatoes, hey maybe it was Thanksgiving. After all that is truly one of the best holidays, no commercialization, only friends and family gathering to enjoy each other’s company, to share stories, to spend quality – and quantity – time together.
The glass jars with stoppers reminded her of her grandparents, aunts and uncles at similar gatherings throughout her childhood. She doesn’t regret a minute of those lovely celebrations.
All that, brought on by a simple picture of cinnamon sticks, clove stars and old glad jars, bowls and the like. The mind is a very fertile territory.
About the Free Writers
Rick Adams is an aviation journalist and publisher of www.aviationvoices.com, a weekly newsletter reporting the top stories about the airline industry. He is the author of The Robot in the Simulator. AI in Aviation Training.
Visit D-L.'s website https://dlnelsonwriter.com, She is the author of 15 fiction and three non fiction books. Her 300 Unsung Women, bios of women who battled gender limitations, can be purchased at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/300-unsung-women-d-l-nelson/1147305797?ean=9798990385504
Visit Julia's blog. She has written and taken photos and loves syncing up with friends. Her blog can be found: https://viewsfromeverywhere.blogspot.com/
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