Affordances,

It is quite common that the kitchen in any home often transforms to being the living room (Gdula, 2008). This relates to affordances. The kitchen provides so much more than just a place to create food (Gdula, 2008). When cooking there is the chance for teaching and learning skills, gossiping, humour, talking and so much more. This post will give an example of the last time I cooked, and throughout there are examples of affordances relating communication, connections and moral aspects.

Relating aspects of affordances to my chosen activity of cooking, I found it easier to look at the last time I cooked as that was the freshest in my mind. I was in a different environment, I was cooking at my friends place instead of my own, however there they have a communal kitchen, and they don’t know the other people that use that same kitchen well. I was cooking marinated chicken kebabs and rice. My friend was busy at the time so I cooking dinner, I didn’t mind as she had bought the food. When I was cooking I met one of her flatmates, I found out he was from Thailand, and as I have previously lived in Thailand we shared stories of places we had both been to and places which we would like to experience both in NZ and Thailand. My friend’s kitchen supplies were also low, and as I thought the chicken would be a lot nicer if it was marinated, I began to make some marinate, the flatmate lent me some sauce he often used when cooking, and I mixed that with some other sauces that I found in the kitchen, a good blend of borrowing and stealing. When the chicken was cooked and ready to serve the rice should have been too, but it wasn’t it was this way that I learnt that brown rice takes longer to cook than white rice.

I said goodbye to my friends’ flatmate and went to see my friend with the cold kebabs and the freshly cooked brown rice. Although the meal could have been timed a bit better so the chicken was warm the chicken had a great flavour to it. I had a good catch up with my friend over dinner, we both moaned about how much work we had to do. Although the plan had be to cook dinner together, have a chat and head off, things didn't go to plan this night, they never seem to with this friend, she was sick of doing work for the day, and dinner wasn’t as filling as she had planned it to be, so we began the 20min walk to Rob Roy for dessert. The night really wasn’t as early as I had planned it to be, it was on those nights that conversations of primary school teachers came up as did other students, which lead to the classic task of facebook stalking. Before the dinner date finally came to an end.

So you might be thinking that is a lovely story but what does it all mean?

Well my point I am trying to make from all that is although when we think of cooking as a means to eating, there is nearly always more to cooking. From that one night alone I made a new friend, stole and borrowed some sauce, caught up on gossip, moaned about workloads, chatted and supported each other, laughed and reminisced on past events and even attempted to see what old friends are up to these days and went for a walk to Dunedin’s favourite ice creamier, this all emerged from the necessity which is cooking.

Gdula, S. (2007). The warmest room in the house. NY: Bloomsbury

Posted 21/09/2011