Christmas Countdown 2023 Day 7
It all began with Russ bringing home a flier from Archer Daniels Midland, the company where he had worked since he graduated from college, we said our vows and loaded up our beat up Chevy sedan to head to this place we have called home for over four decades.
If you are unfamiliar with ADM, they are known as the supermarket to the world and have been a giant in the food industry for quite a long time. They had opened a new Research Center in a recently purchased and renovated facility off site of the corporate office where Russ worked.
New ideas and concepts were flowing and they had hired a powerhouse of a young woman from General Mills. She had worked on the sensory panel at GM for years and wanted to bring together a first rate team that would be trained in flavor, and eventually, quality testing. The hope was to use this team to enhance customer service to existing business partners and draw new clients to using products being developed by the research teams.
The schedule was perfect for our life, two mornings a week for two to four hours. The description of the kind of people they were looking for – basically “foodies” – also fit in my wheelhouse. So I found myself, along with a large number of other mostly ADM wives and retirees, attending the first round of what would be several levels of interviews.
After turning in my application and receiving my appointed time to audition for the team, I found myself in a large room with quite a few other applicants. It was an unusual process, but definitely more fun than a face to face interview We rotated through a series of tests that would weed out those who would not qualify for the tasks we would be required to do.
The tests included smelling and identifying a variety of scented cotton balls. Don’t worry – we all had our own samples! Another set was to taste some items blindfolded and name them. There was a written portion where we were asked a variety of sensory type questions including one portion I loved. It involved suggesting appropriate flavor substitutions for seasonings. For example, if you are making spaghetti and realize you are out of Italian seasoning mix, what spices would you substitute.
All the questions and tests seemed extremely easy to me and I wondered how they were going to proceed with getting this large collection of applicants down to the number needed for this team. This is where I learned that what comes easily and naturally to me regarding identifying flavors is actually a rare gift or skill. Only 25% of the population are able to identify flavors. More women than men can do this, although some men are very good at it.
In short order, I was called back for further testing and interviews and finally found myself on the first official Sensory Panel team for ADM. When we reported to our first day, I was happy to see several familiar faces around the table from a variety of places from our tenure in Decatur. It was fun to reconnect, but socializing was not the name of the game. Trust me, we squeezed some in, but for the most part it was definitely a professionally run environment.
Enter our dynamo leader. Kim was as petite as our middle daughter, but possessed a sense of authority that was friendly and yet definitely modeled the epitome of corporate professionalism. She began to train us on Day 1. Our first order of business was to learn to spit.
Yes, you heard me correctly. As we sat around the well appointed conference room table in our business casual attire, we were given a set of cups with lids. Along with this we had small plastic containers of assorted crackers and such that we used to practice professional spitting. It was awkward and definitely made us giggle at times, but we practiced and we learned. Spitting cleanly into a cup whilst using the lid to hide the activity from others became second nature to us.
Thus began one of the most challenging, interesting, and enjoyable jobs I held as an adult. The team Kim put together turned out to be the most delightful group of women. We worked hard and took seriously something that we all never imagined we could do.
Since being able to identify flavors came very naturally to us, we always assumed we weren’t sure we would have the same answers. Many times in evaluations we would discover surprise flavors one would not expect in a particular food or flavoring so we were constantly second guessing and then delighted when others around the table concurred on our findings.
We were first trained to identify the five basic flavors – sweet, salty, sour, bitter and umami. From there we learned the various flavors that are categorized under general terms like brown spice, green spice, citrus, vanilla/vanillin along with off flavors. On top of it all we also had to learn to rate the intensity of each flavor using the most interesting scale and method.
My mind and heart are full of stories from this season. When I run into my old teammates, we still laugh about our days on the panel. We shared a lot of life around the breaks between our work sessions and once you have chewed, evaluated flavor and spit into cups with a group of women, there is a special bond.
There are so many stories to share but I feel that is enough for today. Like a good meal, or a savory spice…we must know when to stop or we are too full. Now you need to head off and get back to holiday preparations and I need begin jotting down all the stories that writing this has brought up and figure out how to share them with you another day. <3