Turaeza Lopez 

The Baker’s Path 

BY SCOTT ANDERSON

Baking is many things to Turaeza Lopez. Baking is a science. “Baking takes components to make it arise to what it’s supposed to be. If it lacks one of those components, it won’t be the product you wanted. But it’s a fun science, and it’s not complex.”

Baking is art. “I like to compare it to being a painter,” she said. “I am not a painter. But they can visualize something, and they can paint it. I can paint a taste in a product without knowing if it’s going to taste good or not. It’s kind of like when you paint a picture. You just know.”

“Baking is a lot different than cooking,” she said. “I am a great chef, but my passion is in baking.”

Lopez fondly recalls baking oatmeal cookies as a girl growing up in California. But she wasn’t so sure the kitchen was where she wanted to be when she chose the United States Air Force as part of her life’s path.

“When I joined the military and I found out I was going to be a chef, I put my head down on the desk and I cried,” she said. “I didn’t join the military to work at Denny’s. In the end, God showed me where I was supposed to be.” She served more than 20 years in the military.

While overseas, Lopez discovered another pursuit outside the kitchen. “I was stationed in Germany and was going through a personal trauma,” she said. “I wanted something to focus on. One of my old friends was in the fitness industry. She had started competing. She said, ‘Tess, you should really do this.’ So Tess began to compete. It was during that part of her journey she learned something more about herself.

“I like goals. If I want something, I want it. But at the end of it, once I accomplish it, I don’t carry on with it. If I put a goal out there, the goal was the great thing about it for me.” She stopped competing, but she discovered a new passion — creating a cupcake that was balanced for carbs, fats and proteins but still tasted like a cupcake.

“I was literally at the gym pushing cupcakes in people’s faces and saying, ‘Try this. Does this taste like a cupcake?’ I was trying to create something that tasted like the traditional thing,” she said. But when that path proved rocky, a revelation led her to a new fork in her road.

“In trying to sell to the body-building community, even though I knew and trusted my product, I wasn’t able to sell the trust,” she said. “I sat there and said, ‘Why am I selling to less than 1 percent of this nation when I should be selling to the 99.9 percent of this nation that just wants to have a healthy dessert that tastes like the real thing?’” She launched Prep Cakes to serve those who were struggling to meet their health and weight-loss goals.

“People rely a lot on diets,” Lopez said. “I can support that. Some people need that strict thing to follow. The problem is it’s not a lifestyle. Prep Cakes is a lifestyle. It allows you to have your cake and eat it too. You can pick and choose.”

The concept took off. So much so that many of the people who enjoyed her healthy take on traditional sweet treats encouraged her to take another big step in 2018. “I had a lot of customers who said I should audition for ‘Shark Tank,’ she said. “Because my customers wanted me to, I did.” She traveled to Dallas for the audition. It was a long, arduous nine-hour day, she recalled. About 48 hours later, she came upon another fork in her road when she got an email saying she had been accepted to go on the show. “I thought and prayed about it, and I knew in my heart the time wasn’t right,” she said. “That wasn’t where I was supposed to be. So, I declined the offer.”

She knew she had more to learn. “People jump into business without understanding business,” she said. “Because you have a great idea and concept, or even a skill, doesn’t mean you know you can run a business. God will put you in positions to lead, to understand the financials, to build your team.” One of those positions Lopez was put in was director of the incubator kitchen at Cohab in downtown Shreveport. She also launched the MS Kick kitchen with Southern University. She spent about three years with those two projects, helping others launch their food businesses.

“The time in Cohab definitely helped,” she said. “Going in there and turning that back into an incubator kitchen.” That’s also when she met Jim Malsch, who became a mentor to her in her business. “Usually when you meet people who are coming with a business idea, you can tell pretty quick if they’ve got it or not,” Malsch said. “Tess definitely had the attitude and passion. She has incredible drive. She just needed a little guidance and the confidence.”

In both cases she knew it was time for her path to veer again. “I had to leave Cohab because at that point I was consuming space when I was beyond it. That wasn’t fair for new entrepreneurs. I left MS Kick because I realized I was focusing on so many other people’s businesses and not my own. I felt in my heart that God kept my business afloat even though I wasn’t in it. When I came back, it flourished. That was a sign to me. I put my heart and soul into my business, and it’s been great.”

While the business has flourished, Lopez refuses to rest on her laurels. She is putting her marketing background to work on rebranding her “guiltless desserts.” “I don’t like the word ‘guiltless.’ Just because you have diabetes doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you,” she said. “Guiltless is a negative. I don’t like that. It’s ‘food that fits your lifestyle.’

“Ultimately, I want to be a household name for ‘you can have your cake and eat it too.’ It doesn’t have to be bad. I have wholesalers ask, ‘Do you make guilty cakes?’ Why do I need to? If my stuff tastes like the real thing, why do you need the sugar in it. It’s a rewiring of the brain that desserts don’t have to be a bad thing.”

When Lopez retired from the military at Barksdale Air Force base, she didn’t just make Shreveport and Bossier City her customer base. She made it her home, where she has raised her two children. “I am a realist,” she said. “Money comes and money goes. I don’t worry about that stuff. My greatest success is my children—them finding their success would be my greatest success.”

She is also a proud Shreveport resident who actively campaigns against things like blight in the Highland neighborhood. “I believe in this community,” she said. “I am not going to sit by and watch our community in turmoil.”

Lopez has found community, even among the city’s bakeries, and she knows she isn’t walking this journey alone. “Our bakery community is family-centric,” Lopez said. “There is no competing. I love that. I can go to Lilah’s, and they give me boxes. The Lowders brought me flowers when I opened. Julie Anne’s recommends people to my bakery when they have an allergy. That’s how close we all are.”

Scott Anderson is a freelance writer with more than 20 years’ experience in journalism. He enjoys discovering and sharing people’s stories.

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RULES TO GROW BY ! 

BY MARK WILSON

Springtime brings about the start of a new year in the plant world, with plants coming out of dormancy and budding out. The question always is “When is spring really here?”

There are many ways to say when the spring season has started, from Punxsutawney Phil seeing or not seeing his shadow, to the Spring Equinox, to the Farmer’s Almanac, or when the pecan trees break their dormancy. All could be used, but for north Louisiana we can safely assume April 15th or Tax Day. By then, it is safe to say that the chances of a freeze are low enough to start planting and fertilizing.

This brings us to three rules to keep in mind when getting your garden ready:

RULE ONE

Gardening comes back to three things: Fertility, Light, and Water.

So where to start? The most logical answer is to start from the ground up, in this case with the soil.

RULE TWO

Never guess, get a soil test.

To grow the best plants possible, a soil test should be run. Soil sample kits can be picked up at the Master Gardener office at the Red River Research Station at 262 Research Station Road in Bossier or at many of the local plant nurseries. These boxes have step-bystep instructions on how to take and submit samples for analysis. Results will be sent back with a tailor-made work up of what the sampled areas need to grow the best plants possible. Most of the landscape plants and vegetables are looking for a fertile soil with a pH of 5.5-6.5. If soil pH changes need to be made, the soil test results will state how much sulfur (to lower pH) or lime (to raise pH) needs to be added to get the desired pH.

Once the pH is at the optimum level, the soil’s fertility comes next. While plants may make their own food, they get their water and nutrients from the soil. The soil sample results will tell what is needed and in what amounts. Sometimes a simple balanced fertilizer is needed such as an 8-8-8 or 13-13-13. More often than not, soils will not need all three macro-nutrients: Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium (N-P-K ). So fertilizers such as Urea (40-0-0), Triple superphosphate (0-46-0) or Potash (0-0-60) will be called for. These fertilizers will allow for the application of what is needed without adding what is not needed. If done in containers, a sample slow-release balanced fertilizer is ideal.

Now that fertility needs have been determined, it’s time to place it out for the plants to use. For lawns, April 15th is a great day to fertilize. This is late enough that the grass should be fully out of dormancy and actively growing.

An important fact is that a healthy lawn has less weeds. If a lawn is healthy and mowed at the correct height, there will be less weeds. Follow these guidelines for the best mowing heights:

¾” to 1.5” for Bermuda grass; 1” to 2” for Zoysia grass; 1” to 2” for Centipede grass; and 2” to 3” for St. Augustine grass. For more information on the best way to fertilize and take care of lawns, see “Louisiana Lawns Best Management Practices” Pub. 2940 at lsuagcenter.com.

RULE THREE

Right plant, right place, right time.

For those who are more interested in the landscape rather than the lawn, this is the time to look at what plant materials are still alive and coming back and what needs to be replaced.

Season selections should be made based on what will grow this season and what is growing now. Avoid planting full grown plants that will not make it much further into the season.

Choosing plants with similar needs, such as water requirements or light requirements, will make things easier overall. A way to remember this is plant ‘Like with Like.’ Plants should also be planted to avoid “instant” landscape caused by planting too many plants in a small area. Instead, space plants based on mature height and spread.

For more information on planting annual or perineal color see “Bedding Plants for Louisiana Landscapes” Pub. 2747 at lsuagcenter.com or call the Ag Center office at 318.408.0984.

Mark Wilson is the Master Gardener Coordinator for Northwest Louisiana.

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EAT, STAY AND PLAY

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2022 TRENDS IN DENTISTRY  

Trends in dentistry have rapidly changed just within the last few years. With technological advancements and the new “norms” of personal health due to the Coronavirus pandemic of 2020, the medical and dental fields have had to adapt and change accordingly. A couple of the technological advancements that we currently use in our practices, treatment specific, are that of laser dentistry and digital impressions with, in office CAD/CAM milling of crowns, bridges, splints, etc. Lasers can accomplish a wide variety of tasks in surgical dentistry. Personally, I use a laser almost daily in my practice to gather precision accuracy via impression of crown and bridge margins by troughing small amounts of gum tissue around the preparations so that the impression material can flow “under” the margin and show the lab perfect location of where the new crown or bridge will meet the tooth.

Less routine procedures I may perform are excisions of pathologies, such as, tumors on the tongue, gum tissues, or cheeks; releasing a tethered tongue or lip to promote proper speech as well as many other reasons, also known as, tongue and lip ties; and finally desensitizing a tooth where a patient may have “gum line sensitivity” due to recession of the gum tissue, exposing the more porous and sensitive portion of the whole tooth, the roots. Lasers come in a very large variety of shapes, sizes, and method of function; however, if you were to see one in a dental practice it will most likely be a diode laser, although the other varieties can serve the same purpose, do more (e.g., tattoo removal, etc.), and do it a lot faster than a diode.

Another, more recent addition to the practice is the iTero scanner, which is a digital impressing “wand” that can remodel your mouth three-dimensionally on a computer. Their uses serve a multitude of purposes and offer incredible convenience. Digital technology is instantaneous data transmission wherever we want to send it, and for whatever purpose that may be, whether it’s to send to our in-office milling unit for design and construction of a crown, bridge, splint, mouthguard, models, etc. made right before your eyes, or sent to a lab for similar purposes but providing different aspects of dental treatments, one of the most well know being Invisalign orthodontic treatment.

Convenience is what everyone craves when they see a healthcare provider, and some of these technological advancements in patient care and treatment planning can drastically change a person’s perception and mindset of “going to the dentist.”

So, come on in and experience the new standards of dental care!

Be safe and God Bless,

— MAJ Christopher G. Hooper, DDS

1613 Jimmie Davis Hwy Suite 1, Bossier City • 318.752.3939

www.hooperfamilydentistry.com

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