We have now reached the end of another journey through the blogging world, I truely hope you have enjoyed reading my stories and thoughts about cooking. Thanks for reading and happy cooking!
Links to the blogs I commented on:
Gracie Prisk
Leigh Millward
Lucy Anderson
Jasmine Moot
Tuesday, 25 October 2011
Reference List
De Lore, C., & Brooke-White, J. (2000) Every kitchen tells a story. HarperCollins Publisher: New Zealand.
Ephron, N. (Producer/Director). (2009). Julie and Julia [Motion picture]. America: Columbia Pictures.
Ergonomics. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary. Retrieved September 24, 2011, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ergonomics
Green, T. (1968). Work, Leisure, and the American Schools. New York:, Random House.
Klein, N. (2000) No logo.Knopf: Canada.
Lawson, N. (2004). Feast: food that celebrates life. Random house: London
Mahy, M. (1988). Work of art. The door in the air and other stories. London: JM Dent & Sons Ltd.
Visser, M. (1992). The rituals of dinner. London: Viking, The Penguin Group.
Monday, 24 October 2011
The need for cooking in my life + what it has meant to me over the past 2 months
My need for cooking came from my inability to satisfy my hunger and love for tasty food. I really needed to start learning and challenging my cooking abilities. This year is the first time I have been living away from home and having to cook for myself, being the youngest in my family I was never pressured to cook for the family so this year I was starting from scratch. Getting sick of having the same “chicken tonight” jar each week I needed to start cooking bigger and better things to please my love for food. Over the past 2 months my thoughts about cooking have changed dramatically, I am a lot more confident and try more challenging meals.
I never thought that cooking would be something I enjoyed even though I love the final outcome, now the search for new recipes, the preparation, and especially the sharing of food with my friends and flatmates all excite me. I never knew that cooking would lead to so many other important occupations in life and has given me a stronger connection with those around me and whom I get to share my food with. The topic of cooking allows a common ground and affiliation with others as it is a shared love amongst cultures. While my need was to learn to cook and gain confidence in the kitchen, I have also realised that it has filled a void which I didn’t know I had before I started seriously cooking. I’m confident in the knowledge that my cooking and love of it will not finish when this class draws to a close; I have been opened up to lifelong learning about cooking and will be ever evolving as a cook.
Sunday, 23 October 2011
A hearty homely feed!
Week 5: September 26th - October 2nd
Freezing cold weather and pouring rain really influenced the need of a warm hearty home cooked meal, so what better to cook than a casserole. I thought a phone call to mum for some basic instructions would make the first attempt not so risky, even though I end up adapting it anyway. Low and slow were the instructions my mother told me so at 2:30 I started preparing the meat. This is where I have showed the most improvement; a year ago I wouldn’t go near raw chicken or blood oozing red meat now I just bite the bullet. Once the meat was in small chunks I started chopping the onions which was quite dangerous considering I could hardly see through my tears. I took a flighty approach to making the gravy by shoving anything and everything that we had in our fridge and pantry in with the meat and onions. 150 degrees calculus and 3 hours later the room truly smelt like home and my casserole was being severed with mashed spuds and veggies to all my flatmates.
Freezing cold weather and pouring rain really influenced the need of a warm hearty home cooked meal, so what better to cook than a casserole. I thought a phone call to mum for some basic instructions would make the first attempt not so risky, even though I end up adapting it anyway. Low and slow were the instructions my mother told me so at 2:30 I started preparing the meat. This is where I have showed the most improvement; a year ago I wouldn’t go near raw chicken or blood oozing red meat now I just bite the bullet. Once the meat was in small chunks I started chopping the onions which was quite dangerous considering I could hardly see through my tears. I took a flighty approach to making the gravy by shoving anything and everything that we had in our fridge and pantry in with the meat and onions. 150 degrees calculus and 3 hours later the room truly smelt like home and my casserole was being severed with mashed spuds and veggies to all my flatmates.
Ambiance – The essence of cooking
Consumption is the essence of cooking, we cook to eat and we eat to survive therefore it is very much a necessity for humanity. Cooking is considered to be a laborious chore, in the words of T. F Green (1968) labour “seeks not to add to life, but merely to sustain it.” Cooking may not be seeking to add to life but the never ending task does add to the life of the cooker even if it is unintentional. In the movie Julie and Julia (2009), cooking acts as an escape from the real world she explains “it is a way to get away from what I do all day” instead of viewing it as a must do, it is meaningful perhaps even therapeutic. Cooking and sharing food can help build an atmosphere, welcoming, sharing, talkative or even silence. This week my cooking lead to a homely feel in our home away from home (the flat), and a warming inside and out from sharing my first ever casserole. The room is always full of noise but the atmosphere can change into a comfortable silence when everyone is tucking into their meal. The essence is first and foremost an act of labour for consumption; however this is not the way cooking is viewed by all, sure it sustains life but it also it creates atmosphere, memories and provides people with so much more than just food.
References
Green, T. (1968). Work, Leisure, and the American Schools. New York:, Random House.
Ephron, N. (Producer/Director). (2009). Julie and Julia [Motion picture]. America: Columbia Pictures.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Cooking with NO POWER!
September 19th-25th
My cooking this week was a little different to what I am used to, I’d put it as old school. My friends and I braved a couple of nights at my bach in the whop-whops at Lake Alexandrina, no cell phone reception, no internet and NO POWER. I had better paint you a quick picture of the testing environment I was cooking in all weekend. We have a fridge that runs on gas which is started with a jump from the car battery; also running on gas is our tiny blue and cream oven which strongly resembles a child’s play oven fit with two gas hobs on top. The huge old coal range is always lit to heat the two rooms that make up the bach, but the only cooking duty it performs is melting our marshmallows and burning our toast in the mornings. All drinking water is gathered from a natural spring at the lakeside, and large tanks collect the rain water for washing hands and dishes. When the weather is fine we would usually stand round the bbq cooking dinner then sit around the picnic table all night until the sun was completely down. Unfortunately mother earth wasn’t on our side Saturday night so the sausages and kebabs had to be cooked in the toy oven. A trip to the lakeside for fresh mint added the final touch to the bubbling spuds and all left to do was prepare a quick salad for our daily dose of greens. Desert involved opening up the element on the coal range and melting marshmallows on green sticks (green sticks don’t burn), once they were melted to satisfaction we smooshed them between chocolate thins and indulged.
Affordances: Outcomes from cooking
Aesthetics
Cooking brings about a huge range of feelings of pleasure, cooking and eating a meal satisfies all of the human senses. Cooking in the bach you cannot escape the aromas and the sounds. The smell of the meat in the oven and the gas from the hob, the pleasing sounds of the spuds bubbling and the coal range cracking; all of these are part of the bliss of cooking. Care is always taken when presenting a cooked meal. Margret Mahy’s short story Work of Art, illustrates the point that the food is in fact an art form. However no matter how pleasing a dish is on the eyes it never looks “too good to eat” which at the end of the day is its built purpose. Cooking is forever provoking emotion weather through the frustration of messing up, the longing for a taste and finally the joy of the yummy first bite. There is also a beauty in the strong connection between cooking and memories, the drawing on previous experiences and creating new memories too.
Spirituality
Spiritually up lifting is how I would describe my cooking experiences, I get a fabulous feeling from creating something out of nothing, it is the place I can be my erratic self and do my own thing. Looking specifically at my cooking with no power I was able to make a historical connection with the old days of cooking without the luxury of an electric oven and running water. At the bach I get to share my childhood camping persona with my friends however at the flat I have a completely different approach to cooking. Living in a flat we all bring new foods, different techniques, values and rituals from our own homes and cultures. Margret Visser believes that with these rituals and expectations around food it’s turned “the consumption of food, a biological necessity, into a carefully cultured phenomenon (Visser, 1992).” The flat has created our very own culture around our cooking and eating, at least once a week each flatmate cooks a meal, it is then eaten around the table and we each share two positives and one negative from our day. Even if we are all busy throughout the day at dinner time we spend time catching up. At home our passion for food is evident through the family grace. Starting with my grandma slapping her hands on the table, the kids are banging the cutlery too and we sing the family grace at the top of our lungs showing our gratitude for our food and everyone who helped cook it.
Health:
Cooking can have an effect on an individual’s physical and mental health. The types if food and ingredients used have the most dramatic influence on physical health, cooking healthy nutritious meals can be hard on a small student budget. All individuals have different food preferences for health reasons; this ranges from high carbohydrate meals to ensure energy and endurance during the day to healthy eating diets for weight loss. Food allergies or intolerance can be a high health risk when cooking for others. There are of course positive aspects on health from cooking, the food produced is necessary for survival and gives humans energy to get through their daily occupations. Many conditions or symptoms can be minimised and treated with a change of diet or additions to it.
References:
Mahy, M. (1988). Work of art. The door in the air and other stories. London: JM Dent & Sons Ltd.
Visser, M. (1992). The rituals of dinner. London: Viking, The Penguin Group
Wednesday, 5 October 2011
Dinner Party and Affordances
Week 3 , 12th-18th of September
Affordances:
Connections - How one activity leads to another.
Who knew one night of cooking could lead to so many other activities. A trip to the supermarket was essential to gather my ingredients, because of my lack of transport I had to walk through the gardens to get there; this is even before I have begun to cook. Looking specifically at cooking itself, it lead to reflecting on my past experience of cooking this same dinner with mum at home I was not only drawing on memories but building new ones by cooking for my friends. Of course cooking always leads to the sharing and eating of food this sharing doesn’t stop there, if the food is a success and the chief is generous, the recipe may also be shared. The last and my most dreaded activity that cooking affords is washing and drying the dishes luckily teamwork or a dishwasher makes it effortless.
Moral properties: The good and bad aspects of cooking.
Cooking to me is a very emotion provoking activity; it is very personal to an individual. Where I see a peaceful, beautiful past time, others may view cooking as only a necessity to survive; not a labour of love but a burden. Klein (2000) explains that labour is like a never ending cycle when the tasks have to be done over and over again. I can understand how people view cooking in this way, three times a day everyday of our human lives. Once a meal has been cooked and eaten there is nothing more to show of it other than the eater’s satisfaction and full tummies, to the naked eye the cooking never happened. So how does one get passed this way of thinking about cooking, I think of the food as the reward after cooking it makes all the work worthwhile indulging in what I have cooked with others. Nigella Lawson once said “how we eat and what we eat lies at the heart of who we are as individuals, families, communities (2004).” This so true in my cooking, I love being able to show off my cooking that I have learnt through my family and am able to give others taster of my culture through the food I cook. Another positive aspect to cooking is that it is life-long learning and every improving, one can never run out of things to cook and there will forever be a need for food.
De Lore, C., & Brooke-White, J. (2000) Every kitchen tells a story. HarperCollins Publisher: New Zealand.
Klein, N. (2000) No logo.Knopf: Canada.
Lawson, N. (2004). Feast: food that celebrates life. Random house: London
In participation class this week my friends and I planned a class themed night this meant we would all do our activities together. We planned to go out for coffee, play board games and I would of course cook dinner. I cooked dukkah crumbed chicken with homemade wedges coleslaw and rice salad. Cooking in my friend’s house I felt lost, new environment and foreign instruments to use. I had made the salads previously so I wasn’t wasting good board gaming time. The process of making dinner went like this. I rolled and covered the chicken in dukkah, placed onto an oven try and covered with tin foil (so won’t burn). I then peeled the potatoes and chop into wedges (making sure I didn’t chop my fingers off with the very effective knife). My normal seasoning was nowhere to be seen so I adapted and shoved a few shakes of this and that on the wedges. I shoved both the chicken and the wedges in the oven at the same time as they take approximately the same amount of time to cook. Once all finished I plated up everything to look presentable and enjoyed the meal with my friends. They both loved being cooked for and kept raving about my food so thought I had better pass on the recipe.
Affordances:
Communication
De Lore stated “Conversations, gossip humour and ideas flow freely in the relaxed atmosphere of the kitchen (2000).” I whole heartedly agree with this statement, which sums up nicely my experience cooking for my friends. Conversations about our classes, placement and our participation activities dominated the kitchen as well as other goings on in our lives. Jokes and banter about cooking disasters started up while my friends watched my fumble around the unknown of their kitchen. We all shared advice; I shared my recipe while my friends advised me where to find things in the kitchen. All the activities we did that day, going out for coffee, board gaming and cooking all lead to more communication in comparison to our usual quite movie and popcorn nights. Connections - How one activity leads to another.
Who knew one night of cooking could lead to so many other activities. A trip to the supermarket was essential to gather my ingredients, because of my lack of transport I had to walk through the gardens to get there; this is even before I have begun to cook. Looking specifically at cooking itself, it lead to reflecting on my past experience of cooking this same dinner with mum at home I was not only drawing on memories but building new ones by cooking for my friends. Of course cooking always leads to the sharing and eating of food this sharing doesn’t stop there, if the food is a success and the chief is generous, the recipe may also be shared. The last and my most dreaded activity that cooking affords is washing and drying the dishes luckily teamwork or a dishwasher makes it effortless.
Moral properties: The good and bad aspects of cooking.
Cooking to me is a very emotion provoking activity; it is very personal to an individual. Where I see a peaceful, beautiful past time, others may view cooking as only a necessity to survive; not a labour of love but a burden. Klein (2000) explains that labour is like a never ending cycle when the tasks have to be done over and over again. I can understand how people view cooking in this way, three times a day everyday of our human lives. Once a meal has been cooked and eaten there is nothing more to show of it other than the eater’s satisfaction and full tummies, to the naked eye the cooking never happened. So how does one get passed this way of thinking about cooking, I think of the food as the reward after cooking it makes all the work worthwhile indulging in what I have cooked with others. Nigella Lawson once said “how we eat and what we eat lies at the heart of who we are as individuals, families, communities (2004).” This so true in my cooking, I love being able to show off my cooking that I have learnt through my family and am able to give others taster of my culture through the food I cook. Another positive aspect to cooking is that it is life-long learning and every improving, one can never run out of things to cook and there will forever be a need for food.
References
De Lore, C., & Brooke-White, J. (2000) Every kitchen tells a story. HarperCollins Publisher: New Zealand.
Klein, N. (2000) No logo.Knopf: Canada.
Lawson, N. (2004). Feast: food that celebrates life. Random house: London
Sunday, 25 September 2011
Experience + Ergonomics
Week 2 - September 5-11
A trip home to Timaru was where the majority of my cooking took place this week. The occasion was my grandmothers 90th birthday and friends and family were willing to travel from all around New Zealand to celebrate it. My mum, brother’s partner and I all worked as the weekend caterers and waiters cooking, preparing and serving food for all of guest in our home. Our plan was to all work together in order to put on enough food for approximately 50 people over two days, the food had to keep and be easily prepared while entertaining visitors. The decided menu was: One very large cranberry glazed ham, roast chickens, roast vegetables, and 5 different types of salads.
A trip home to Timaru was where the majority of my cooking took place this week. The occasion was my grandmothers 90th birthday and friends and family were willing to travel from all around New Zealand to celebrate it. My mum, brother’s partner and I all worked as the weekend caterers and waiters cooking, preparing and serving food for all of guest in our home. Our plan was to all work together in order to put on enough food for approximately 50 people over two days, the food had to keep and be easily prepared while entertaining visitors. The decided menu was: One very large cranberry glazed ham, roast chickens, roast vegetables, and 5 different types of salads.
Now you have an overview on my weekly experience let’s look at ergonomics.
Ergonomics an applied science concerned with the characteristics of people that need to be considered in designing things that they use in order that people and things will interact most effectively and safely (Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary). This basically means how the person fits with the activity and visa-versa, and how the activity fits with the environment and visa-versa. To reflect on the ergonomics in this week’s kitchen adventure I will split into three headings: Person, Activity and Environment. Person - Me myself and my cooking.
I’m not usually one to lack confidence in general or the kitchen however knowing family members and friends would be eating food I cooked did make it a bit more daunting. My confidence kept rising with the encouragement from my mum. With that I started to be more competent not needing to question with every move and knew to trust my own judgment. Although I hate to admit it, I am still young and stupid when it comes to cooking. Over the weekend we had three different life stages in the kitchen, this was great to learn differences within different generations. I felt huge responsibility in not only my cooking for guests but keeping up with the other chefs as to not let the team down. Activity - The cooking itself.
Usually in my kitchen I stray from recipes don’t take care with quantities and taste test to ensure it is good enough. It was a whole new ball game when it involved satisfying 50 people so I had to change into a more controlled way of cooking. The only adaptations made to the recipes were multiplying to guarantee everyone would be fed. With the activity of cooking thinking about seasonal vegetables and what is best at the time is very important for both taste and cost. Sharing lunch meant that we didn’t have the whole day to prepare, so we had a short time frame to get organised. Cooking for visitors also incorporated a large cleaning up task before anyone arrived. Environment – Kitchen context.
It was lovely being back in my kitchen at home where everything works unlike at the flat where oven door handles fall off and none of the cupboards close. The equipment available was in high supply after gaining dishes and cutlery from my grandma’s house. We needed oven trays, dishes for serving, bowls for preparing and enough plates and cutlery for a small army. The culture in my household is that my mum is the head chef and my dad carves the meat and cleans up the mess. When I am home I slot into either assistant chef or dish hand.You can see how there were many characteristic with the activity, environment and myself that need to be considered while cooking. Having a close link between all three enabled a delicious meal to be prepared that meaningful in both the cooking of the food and sharing.
References
Ergonomics. (n.d.). Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary. Retrieved September 24, 2011, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ergonomics
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