Late to the Party, Tip #1: Bread

Okay, so I have made a few recent “discoveries” lately, for lack of a better word. I’m sure that most of you have these figured out by now, so I feel a little silly sharing them here, but my goal in sharing these is to help other people who are late to the party, so to speak. Even if it makes me look a little dull, lol.

Tip #1. Knead your bread for the recommended time.

I always thought, “10 minutes? No, that can’t be right! Who would stand there and knead for 10 minutes?!?” So, I never did.

My bread-baking always failed, and I never could figure out why. Was my yeast bad, was the water temperature wrong, was the air temp too high or low for rising dough, did I cook it too long or not long enough? Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. I just needed to knead. I can’t believe I’m admitting this to you.

The first time I tried it the right way (last week), I succeeded! And I was back in the kitchen 2 days later doing it again, so I must not have minded the kneading process all that much. As a matter of fact, it worked muscles in my arms and abs that I could feel the next day, and that made me pretty happy with myself. If it weren’t for the calories involved, I think I would be baking some once a week! (But if I have bread in the house, I can’t NOT eat it… But wait – does kneading it negate some of those calories???)

ANYWAY, to get through the boredom of such a repetitive action for minutes on end, I borrowed my husband’s headphones and listened to a Matt D’Avella podcast. And guess what? I didn’t get bored after all! Magic!

Instead of uploading a beautiful stock image with you all, I am uploading the actual product of my kneading activities.

Okay, that’s all my pride will allow me to share for one day. But I’ve got more, and some are quite recent! I’ll humiliate myself again some other time. Hope to see you then. I guess…

My Best Tip for Writing Research Papers

This tip is for the actual writing process, which can sometimes be the most overwhelming part. I mean, you’ve checked out all your books, you’ve printed online articles, you’ve taken notes, and you’ve arranged everything into chronological order. You’ve discovered a ton of new things, and it was almost even fun. But now, the dreaded day has arrived. You must actually put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and write the darn thing!

How to begin?

Here’s an activity that will warm you up and teach you how to write your paper without stress. I have all of my research paper students do this in our very first class together. I’ve named it Memory Writing, and I hope you find it useful!

Read a fairly-short, informative article at least three times over the course of one or two days. You can choose an article from a book, a magazine, or the internet. Later, put the article completely away and write about the topic in your own words, based on memory.

If there is a name, date, or some other detail that you can’t remember while writing, just leave a blank space. After you are finished, you can go back and insert facts like names and dates.

Write without stopping and without fretting too much over grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc. These things can be corrected once you have something written. Sometimes, just getting started is the hard part, and that’s what this exercise will help you conquer.

Now take your research and apply this technique to it. You’ll find that writing from your head is much easier than writing from notes! You won’t have to worry about the drudgery of changing each note card into your own sentence or rearranging someone else’s words into your own. Just write down what you know, and fill in the blanks later. Happy writing!