In relation to Occupational Therapy

Occupational Therapists are interested in getting people to do things, or being occupied. While mindfully participating in cooking over the last nine weeks I have also thought about the relevance it has on occupational therapy. Cooking is a good activity to get people involved in, as it can be done one on one or in a group. It is a life skill which needs to be learnt, and for the client, they get an end product - food! For them what could possibly be better?

It can be used by an occupational therapist in nearly any setting, as education, intervention and an assessment. By watching someone cook you are able to assess their motor and process skills, and also how safe they will be doing this independently in their own home. From here you can make recommendations on the equipment or adaptive methods they could use while cooking - an example of using cooking as an in intervention.  By cooking with someone you can simply to get them involved and interacting with you or a group. Cooking as education can again be done it a variety of settings, for example in a youth setting cooking may be taught when preparing people to be independent in a life skills sessions that are run in this setting.

Cooking is a great activity, and having thought about it in more depth over the last 9 weeks, there is not much chance it is an activity I will be giving up in the near future.

In relation to ambience, cooking comes under the umbrella of labour, as it is necessary for survival, and needs to continually be completed.

So turns out I missed this post - Affordances II

But is a continuation of the original post of affordances, but this post takes a slightly different slant on affordances. The following post will no longer look at communication, connections and moral asepcts, but aesthetics, spirituality and health. To break these down, the English oxford dictionary (2011) defines aesthetics as “The branch of philosophy which deals with questions of beauty and artistic taste”, so aesthetics is the feeling of something through your senses, whether it be the smells, tastes, how it feels, sounds, or looks. Looking at spirituality many people think of religion and beliefs, in this sense, it refers to how you connect more deeply with this activity. And health is pretty self explanatory, especially when related to food, as there are clear foods and way foods are eaten that are good, and not so good for your health.

Here is another quick story about my cooking which relates quite well to ergonomics, Saturday night and I had decided to go home for the weekend to the farm, Mum had asked me to get her some groceries and it was decided we would have burgers for dinner, and there would be about 6-9 people at home for dinner. After spending far too long deciding how many burger buns to buy it was time to cook. Burgers are one of my favourite things to cook at home, because both Mum and Dad help, and they are easy and everyone likes them. So really with Mum and Dad both in the kitchen, I didn’t really end up doing mum cooking at all. However the biggest part of cooking burgers is putting them together.

In many ways, burgers are aesthetically pleasing; the smell of bacon on onion cooking is mouth-watering, as these burgers were so full with fillings the look of them alone was mouth watering, however visually some of the burgers failed a bit as they didn't stay together too well. That sounds somewhat contradictive, but I guess what I am trying to say is although visually some were a bit of a mess, they still looked as though they would taste good. And of course they did taste good. The feel and sound of burgers is not so obvious, sound wise, there is the sound of the bacon cooking in the pan, and the sound of people eating (not so nice), but also the conversation and laughter that comes with having a gathering of people round for dinner. Feel is very much up to the person, whether or not they like the feel of the burgers when they eat them. While cooking there is the feel of the raw bacon and the onion on your eyes which is not so pleasing.

Spirituality, this here was harder for me to relate to my cooking, however when Mum invites my brothers and staff around for dinner, she often does cook burgers, as you can add in and leave out food to peoples likings. There was no vegertians and we had grown all the meat used on the farm. Having a family dinner shows a sense of caring and connection between the family.

Health – cooking for my family is easy as nobody has any health issues which are effected by diet or on any weight loss programmes, however food quite directly relates to energy levels, my brothers have very hard manual jobs and eat very big meals, where as mum and I don’t eat as much, and don’t need to. There are health factors when cooking e.g. 5+ a day, and I think burgers aren’t too bad in this respect with a decent serving of onions, mushrooms, beetroot, pineapple, lettuce. Then there is all the vitamins and minerals, which all effect health in different ways, I currently don’t know much about this at all, but so far I have been mostly healthy, simply by following my mothers instructions “everything in moderation”.

It’s amazing what you can get from a family feed of homemade burgers when you pull it apart.

Posted 10/10/11

English oxford dictionary. (2011). Retrieved September 29, 2011 from http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/aesthetics

Class members blogs,

As part of our assignment we are to post comments on other class members blogs, below are the links to comments on other peoples blogs, alternatively these links will also show you some similar blogs, content discussed should be very similar but they may have taken a different slant on it - feel free to also read the some of my friends blogs!

http://pipsotblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/ramble-ramble-ramble.html#comments

http://participationnicole.blogspot.com/2011/09/tutorial-2.html?showComment=1317950892602#c5258920393404952313

http://alicesotblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/aesthetics-spirituality-and-health.html?showComment=1318805352304#c2484563360207328439

http://janinesparticipationinoccupationblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/needs-and-labour.html?showComment=1318805985996#c4623425388436451524

http://gracefairhall.blogspot.com/2011/10/burgers-yummm.html?showComment=1318806783551#c8346895933129018202

Food for Survival

This week’s topic is what is the need for our chosen activity in my life? When that question was asked I thought it was quite obvious, if you don't eat you don’t function well then die, therefore cooking in necessary for survival. As Baines (2006) state “Humans need fuel to live, it provides energy the body needs to grow, stay warm and think” (p.7), but I thought considering we are having a whole class there must be more behind it, turns out I was right.

This is where I tell you another story of when I last cooked, then go through and analysis it.

It was Wednesday afternoon and mince was the only meat left in the fridge. I was a bit disappointed because I am not a huge fan if mince, when I was younger it was always the last meat left in the freezer meaning we would have nothing other than mince for a month sometimes. Then I moved to a boarding school, I think it was decided mince was cheap and they really knew how to make it taste bad!! But back to my cooking, I decided I would make Tacos with it, when I got to the supermarket that changed to wraps, but close enough.

I’m a bit of a fan of making wraps, mainly because they are quick easy and normally they taste yum. Today really was no different. Chopped up an onion and cooked that with the mince, then spent the next 5 minutes trying to make all the lumps in the mince go away, added the packet of seasoning (yes I cheated) and let it simmer, just long enough to cut tomato, cheese and lettuce, and wash the very few dishes I had used, then it was time to call the rest of the flat for dinner, and leave the rest of dinner up to the individual.

Many years ago there was an expectation that if you were a woman you did all the cooking, and although woman still do 75% of the cooking (Price, 2007), these statistics are changing, so why do I choose to cook.

The need for cooking - I cooked because I was hungry, so there is the basic need of survival, but when you put more thought into it there really is more you can get out of it, it was not only tending to the needs of myself, but also my flatmates, I was feeding them too. Our flat meals which are supposed to happen 4 times a week most often lead to everyone in the flat sitting round in the lounge talking for longer than we should, dinner tonight lead to everyone talking, but only for the time it took to eat dinner – so cooking brings people together. Mince was the meat that had been bought as we are living within a budget, which is not very big, and thankfully nobody in my flat needs to be or is by choice on any special diet. More personally to me, cooking gives me a sense of achievement and reinforces that I am now independent. I am living independently and am required to cook for myself.

On special occasions food can be celebratory, and then often it is also cultural, tacos come from Mexico, so for me not a cultural food, but for others it could well be. Food giving a cultural identity, can be both good as it offers a sense of your upbringing and identity however as illustrated by Schlosser (2001), this is not always the case. Much of the American culture is based around food and this is killing the American people. Cooking also gives one something enjoyable to do.


References

Baines, J. (2006). Food for life. London: White Thompson.

Price, A. (2007). Woman still do most cooking and shopping. Retreived from September 30, 2011, from http://www.anythingbutwork.com/society/women-shopping.htm

Schlosser, E. (2001). The fast food nation; The dark side of the all American meal. New York, NY: Library of congress, Cataloguing in publication data.  

Posted 30/09/2011

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

Ergonomics

Three words the continually seem to pop in class, person, occupation and environment, and participation in occupation II is no different.

It relates to ergonomics, in Greek, ergon - work and nomics - law.

Dul and Weerdmeester 2008 state ergonomics “aims to design appliances, technical systems and tasks, in such a way to improve human safety, comfort and performance” (pg 1). Performance will be optimum when there is a good fit between these 3 aspects.

This is what it looks like in relation to my activity - cooking

Person – that's me

Although I am not the best cook out, I am more than capable of doing the cooking, my main issues is that I am a little lazy and occasionally pushed for time, so more often than not the meals I put out are fast cheap, and mainly easy. When I have the means and the time to cook the meals I cook are quite good, and as I am young these things will most defiantly change over time, as will my cooking skills.

Occupation

Cooking - the process of adding ingredients together, often adding heat forming a chemical change, to make an outcome – dinner.

Cooking is an activity that can be adapted a great deal in order to suit the person who is engaging, the difficulty, the intensity, the time and the skills required can all easily be adapted by changing what you cook, this is turn also adapts the outcome, alternatively there is a lot of adaptive equipment which can be used to alter the skills required and difficulty of cooking.

Environment

This is a student flat, and although for me this has its advantages, in that other students there aren't picky eaters, it also has its disadvantages; the budget is tight this often limits what can be cooked, and means as a flat we tend to stick to what we know. The kitchen in the flat itself is small, more than often very messy and well under equipment, with only the necessary items making baking a struggle. But the atmosphere in the kitchen is nice, it is open to the lounge allowing you to chat with people in the lounge while cooking, or watch TV, being mindful this can also be a distraction.

Reference

Dul, J. & Weerdmeester, B. (2008). Ergonomics for beginners: A quick reference guide. (3^rd ed.). Boca Raton, Florida: Taylor & Francis

Cooking!!

My chosen activity to discuss is cooking, as it is something which I do regularly, and normally I enjoy cooking.
In class we were asked to write for a couple of minutes about our experience or thoughts on our chosen activity, this is what I had;
I participate in cooking dinner most nights at the moment, however I enjoy baking more than cooking, but I don't do baking as much, because I have limited time, and it is not as much of a necessity.
I consider the meal planning and the clean up required all part of the cooking, and cooking to me is preparing or making anything that can be consumed, therefore baking is a form of cooking.
I began cooking when I was young and used to cook most of the family dinners when I was about 11, however I feel as though I was a more competent cook then, than as I am now as I never cooked throughout high school because I was not required too. My favorite things to cook are foods that I enjoy eating, and are quite fast to make, like burgers or wraps.


Now I must participate in cooking for at least 2 hours each week, this has some practical considerations which must be taken into account. 
 - Firstly time, two hours a week would be considered a long time for some occupations, but cooking is something which is done daily, and over a week it will easily add up to 2 hours. 
 - The second consideration is the budget. As I am being more mindful when I am planning and cooking my meals I may feel like cooking different things which will increase my budget. I will need to need to be mindful of costs when planning meals, and only have expensive meals on special occasions to keep to my budget. Generally food that costs the least to cook, isn't as good for you, and it is the same with time, often it takes longer, and more energy, and creates more dishes to cook meals that are better for you. 
 - The resources, as we have a small kitchen will hardly any storage space, we do not have much of a range of equipment, this will limit some of the baking that can be done in the kitchen, as I am not going to make a pavlova with a whisk. We also have a shortage of oven trays and dishes which needs to be taken into account when planning a dinner. 


Posted 06/08/2011