Tag: Cooking

A catalouge of excitment

My appointment with the occupational therapist (OT) yesterday went well. We’ve recently had a new kitchen fitted in at home, so some of the tips and tricks I learned for managing to do a few bits and bats in the old one won’t really work anymore, which is frustrating and hard, given that it took so long to get used to them. Still, maybe the change will do me good and I’ll learn lots of new stuff that will be useful in the future.

The OT came out to the house and brought with her a couple of things that she thought might help me. These were a bread chopping board with raised edges so that things don’ t fly off and end up here, there and everywhere, like they usually do when I’m trying to butter bread. If you’re ever anywhere near me when I’m making a sandwich I suggest you stand well back because there’s a good chance you might end up covered in something, getting accidently elbowed in the ribs, or both.

The other one is a similar chopping board, with spikes on and a mini grater attached so that I could put something like a jacket potato on it while I get the cheese ready.   Usually when I do this, I have to hold the grater in my weak hand while it’s balanced on a plate, and the cheese in the other. Usually this means that the plate or bowl flies off it one direction, and the grater in the opposite. This makes a mess, and me even more frustrated when I have to try and clean it up.

These items have only been given to me on a short-term loan to see if I find them useful before I spend loads of money on things that don’t really work for me, which I think is a really good idea. The lady left me some catalogues to browse through too, which I’m really excited about, probably because it will remind me of going through the Argos at Christmas when I was a kid. I’ve had a quick flick through them and I didn’t realise just how much was out there! I’m going to sit and give them my full attention later with a cup of tea and see if anything catches my eye, or gives me an ideas of things we already have in the house that I can adapt.

We came up with a list of a few other things to try too over the next couple of weeks so we’ll see how things go. I haven’t played with these ones that she brought yesterday yet, but it’s on the to-do list for this weekend when I’ve bought some food to experiment with. I don’t watch to use the family shopping in case I butcher it beyond all recognition and it’s not edible afterwards. I know this might sound a bit dramatic but believe me when I say it’s entirely possible.

I really hope they help because it gets me down that I can’t help out with the cooking more. I’m willing to spend the cash if I think the difference will be worth it. This could be the start of something really good for me.

Cooking with CP: Things that make it easier for me

Regular readers of this blog will know that my Cerebral Palsy means that I struggle with cooking. They’ll probably also be able to tell you that this frustrates me, both for myself and because I can’t make meals for my family. But, if my three years living away at university thought me anything (my actual multimedia journalism degree aside of course) I learned a couple of handy hints about making my life in the kitchen a little bit easier. Here are a few of my personal things that I couldn’t cope without.

This is a post about how the items listed below work for me personally. I cannot offer advice on or say how well they would work or how suitable they would be for others as I’m not a medical professional.

A plastic measuring jug: I know this one sounds obvious but I use it for a whole lot more than just measuring stuff out. It was a couple of weeks into my first year that one of my housemates at the time made the shocking revelation that you could cook pasta in a microwave! This was a totally alien concept to me but it made my life so much easier over the years when I realised that I could make it in this instead of in a heavy pan that I can’t lift. After that I started making soup in one too because I found it far easier to carry than a steaming hot bowl of the stuff (and I’ve had less spillages that way too).

Colanders with long handles: It wasn’t long into my pasta-making days that I realised colanders that just had handles on the side were a big no-go because I either ended up almost burning myself or spilling half of my just cooked food down the sink. For a while I got a bit creative and used a sieve as a replacement, but then my mother bought me a huge orange one for Christmas that year and I got far more excited that one person should ever do over a kitchen utensil.

An electric tin opener: I had one of these at home anyway before I left, but silly old me forgot to pack it on the day I made the trek to start my new life 60 miles up north. I’d been far too busy trying to remember other things like my textbooks, clothes, and duvets to worry about that. It’ll be okay, I thought, I’ll just buy ring-pull tins. That was about the time that I realised I didn’t have the hand strength for those and spent the first couple of weeks asking everyone to help me open my peas. Now it’s the first thing I pack. Oh, and coat hangers, I forgot those that day too.

An apple corer: I love apples but ever since I had braces as a teenager I’ve always hated having to bite into them. And of course the time I pulled a loose tooth out on one as a kid probably doesn’t help either. I couldn’t chop them until I realised that taking out the core first meant that I could just about manage to do it as long as I wasn’t fussy about the size and shape of the pieces I cut.

 

Cooking with Cerebral Palsy

Here’s a question for you: why aren’t there more disabled chefs on Television in the UK?

These days I’m starting to feel like I can’t flip on the TV set without someone taunting me with images of delicious meals that they’ve just made themselves, quite often from scratch. I stare longingly at them all for about three seconds with mouth watering and then have to change the channel, and not just because in those few seconds I’ve become so hungry that I want to devour everything in my food cupboard. I switch over to something else because I know that there’s a good chance I won’t be able to make that meal for myself, not necessarily because I can’t cook (in truth I’m hopeless, but that’s beside the point)  I know that I can’t cook in the way that others who don’t have my physical difficulties can.

When I step into a kitchen people have to worry about more than me giving them food poisoning. I can’t lift pans full of ingredients, so cooking on a hob is a no-go, I can’t balance well enough to get heavy or big things in and out of the oven without burning myself or dropping it on my foot, and even things like chopping and peeling potatoes are a major struggle. So yes, sometimes when I see cookery programmes  where the host is casually zipping around the kitchen carrying oven trays and slicing onions at eye-watering speed (no pun intended) like it’s the most natural thing in the world, I get a little frustrated with myself.

Slowly I’ve been working out as many ways around it as a possibly I can. One of my most valuable life lessons I think I learned over my time as a student is that you can cook pasta in a microwave if you put it in a suitable container and pour boiling water from the kettle over it (in your face, saucepans!). If I’m in charge of making my own dinner I’ll use Quorn instead of meat because that too can be done in the good ol’ microwave or I eat a lot of soup because, yup, you guessed it, that goes in there too.

I know that there must be a lot of disabled chefs out there and I’d personally love it if they were given more air time so that I could learn their tips and tricks. I know that a group of disabled chefs recently made it to the final of ITV show Food, Glorious Food. While researching for the post today I came across Michael Caines, an award-winning chef who also happens to be an amputee and has featured on the Good Food Channel before. I just hope personally that one day there are a lot more cooks on our screens with difficulties simliar to mine who cook their pasta in a plastic mesuring jug and do lots of other interesting stuff I haven’t thought of yet.

If you have any hints to share that you think would come in handy, please leave them in the comments box below.