Dough Duels

She spit out a powdery gob of dough and coughed.

“Those are the worst dumplings I’ve ever had.”

And she’d had a lot of dumplings. As founding judge of the hit reality TV show “Dumpling Duels” 

Lucinda Flower had been sampling the tiny boiled buns of others for years. She had started as a chef for a large soup manufacturer. When she tweaked a dumpling recipe by adding a pinch of sea salt, her career swelled and suddenly she was in demand for her dumpling dexterity.

She had spent countless solitary hours at the seashore as a child splashing in the windswept surf, playing with plankton in the tidal pools and licking the salt from her chapped little lips. She’d carried her love of that oceananic element through the dogma of college dietetics courses and into her chosen career: cooking.

Now she stood in the set kitchen, a capacity crowd filling the audience seats, stage lights blazing and cameras covering every angle. The cook who had created the doughy monstrosity she’d just ejected from her mouth stood trembling before her, tears threatening to overflow. Lucinda had a reputation as a harsh critic, but she was tired of living up to the reality show persona.

“But don’t worry hon. I’ll show you how to do them right. Heck, we’d all like to land a million dollar contract with the Chinese, ‘cause you know how they like their dumplings, and when we’re done with you, they are going to love yours too.”