AMBIENCE

Ambience is the atmosphere of a place and the surrounding environment. It is what the activity means to me, how it makes me feel and what it reminds me of. The ambience of cooking can change a lot depending on where you are and what you're cooking for. If there are a lot of people in the kitchen, there can be a large, loud ambience with laughter, gossip, memories and fun. However, if you are cooking for yourself or without anyone around, then there can be a more chilled, relaxed and quiet ambience around the kitchen.

When I was little we would gather for big occasions, such as birthdays, anniversaries and Christmas. Our family is very close and these times were celebrated altogether with our extended family and food. Each time we got together it would be at a different persons’ house. For example, for Christmas each year it would move around each of the Aunties houses, so every third year it would be at our house. This was always exciting as it meant going somewhere different and the atmosphere would be always be loud and exciting, but just changing up the environment would make it that little bit different and unique each year. I always love the ambience at these types of celebrations with my family, because when we all sit down to eat all the delicious food that everyone has prepared together, you look down the table and see everyone chatting away and laughing - Granddad sitting at the head of the table, with Nanny to his right, then all the other parents at one end of the table, and the younger ones at the other end. These celebrations are always something to look forward to and they are something that we will all remember and hopefully a tradition to carry out when we all have kids.

When I am cooking by myself, I find it is a time for me to feel relaxed and do whatever I want in the kitchen. It allows me to get away from the world and anything that I am thinking about – which is a lot different to the ambience of the celebrations I explained above. However, different situations, different environments and different people create a different ambience. 

Bacon and Egg Pie

Last night we needed a quick and simple meal to eat before we headed out to watch the World Cup Rugby Final. In the freezer I found some pastry that we had slightly forgotten about, some bacon and as always we had plenty of eggs in the fridge. Perfect time for a good old bacon and egg pie! I never actually used to like bacon and egg pie – even though my Mum apparently used to make the most amazing one  - until last year when  was in Salmond College and pretty much had to eat everything and anything that I was given if I wanted to survive. Now I find it is a very easy meal to make and also a great one to indulge in.

So basically, bacon and egg is very simple. You just lay out the pastry in the tin, lay out half of the bacon on top of the pastry, crack the eggs into the tin, season with salt and pepper, lay out the rest of the bacon on top and then put the lid of pastry on. Then if I’m feeling creative I sometimes decorate the lid of the pastry with little designs (but I didn’t have time for this last night) and then egg glaze the top then chuck it in the oven for 45 minutes. It is a very very simple meal and it could nicely cook away as we got ready to go out.

45 minutes later, we are all dressed in our black and white – face paint and all – and ready for something to get in our stomachs. As we were getting ready we could smell the pie cooking and definitely felt like some food by now. I got the perfectly golden brown pie out of the oven and within about five minutes it was completely demolished. Now that’s a success if you ask me!

THE NEED FOR COOKING

“Food is ‘everyday’‐it has to be, or we would not survive for long.  But food is never just something to eat.  It is something to find or hunt or cultivate first of all; for most of human history we have spent a much longer portion of our lives worrying about food, and plotting, working, and fighting to obtain it, than we have in any other pursuit. As soon as we can count on a food supply (and so take food for granted), and not a moment sooner, we start to civilise ourselves.  Civilisation entails shaping, regulating, constraining and dramatising ourselves; we echo the preferences and the principles of our culture in the way we treat our food.”

- Visser, 1986, p.12

The need for cooking is seen as an occupation of labour. The need for cooking is essential in ones’ everyday life. Food and the cooking of it, is needed in order to survive. Without cooking we would not have the energy in order to carry out other activities throughout the day. Without cooking we would not give our body the nutrients that it needs in order to function and stay alive.

Cooking is also seen as labour when some uses it as a need for survival in the sense of making a living. People who make money from their cooking use this in order to survive and to be able to stay financially stable. Now, these people are much better cooks than I, as I don’t think anyone would really pay to eat my cooking, therefore I do not use it to make a living; but do use it to survive!

There is also the need for cooking to get away from everything. To have time to myself and take my mind off everything. I find I need cooking as it is a time where I can get away from everyone and be in my own little world, able to think about whatever I want and not have to talk to anyone else if I don’t want to. It is a good time to clear my head and think things through if I need to.

But finally, the need to have something warm and delicious in your stomach is a definite need in life. To taste something amazing and to be able to enjoy someone else’s cooking is always needed for satisfaction and enjoyment.

Visser M. (1986). Much depends on dinner. New York: Grove Press

Chicken and Mushroom Risotto Recipe

This was the chicken and mushroom risotto recipe that I cooked up this week for dinner...

Ingredients:

2 tablespoons butter

·         2 1/2 cups fresh mushrooms sliced

·         1 -2 piece skinless chicken breast (cut into 1/2 inch pieces, if you have a large piece, then 1 piece will be sufficient)

·         5 1/2 cups chicken stock (heated)

·         1 1/2 cups arborio rice

·         1/2 cup dry white wine

·         1 large chopped onion

·         4 garlic cloves, crushed

·         1 cup of grated parmesan cheese

·         1/4 cup cream (optional)

·         2 tablespoons of chopped fresh parsley

·         oil

·         salt & pepper

Directions:

1. In a large pot heat oil and add mushrooms and chicken and cook through until cooked. Remove from pot.

2. Using the same pot, add butter and saute onions and garlic in butter and leftover oil mixture until translucent. Add the rice and stir until the rice turns opaque - about two minutes.

3. Add the wine, salt and pepper to the rice and stir frequently until the wine has been absorbed into the rice.

4. Add 1/2 cup of the heated chicken stock and stir frequently until absorbed. The rice and broth should bubble gently.

5. Continue to cook the rice, adding chicken stock 1/2 cup at a time and allowing the rice to absorb it before adding the next 1/2 cup.

6. Cook rice this way until tender which should take about 25-30 minutes.

7. Just before the last batch of stock has been absorbed into the rice, add the chicken and mushroom mixture back into the pot. Stir through.

8. Add 1/2 cup of grated parmesan cheese, the parsley and the cream and stir through.

9. Remove from heat when all the remaining stock has been absorbed and the risotto mix is a thick creamy consistency.

10. Serve immediately. The remaining parmesan can be added to each serve if requested.

Read more: http://www.food.com/recipe/chicken-mushroom-risotto-192083#ixzz1bNM2DApA

AFFORDANCES CONTINUED...

This week on the menu: Lasagne! Probably one of my favourite meals in the world would have to be Mum’s lasagne. This is a must-have whenever I go home for the holidays, and so I couldn't do this blog without including a meal with lasagne. Mother kindly donated her lasagne recipe to me – along with many others - when I moved down to Dunedin. So all the ingredients were brought at the supermarket on Monday, ready for me to make the lasagne last night (Wednesday). Our kitchen is attached to our lounge, therefore when we are cooking, it is quite good as we can watch TV and talk as well. So as I started preparing the lasagne, home and away starts on TV – perfect; my favourite show. I get started on mum’s recipe – mixing and cooking the mince, which already starts to smell amazing and make me hungry. Then come the tomato and the cheese sauces, the lasagne sheets and the layering of these three ingredients. After about five minutes in the oven it already smells amazing, making us all ten times hungrier as we try to sit and watch the news, waiting desperately for some food.

“We turn the consumption of food, a biological necessity, into a carefully cultured phenomenon.   We use eating as a medium for social relationships:  satisfaction of the most individual of needs becomes the means of creating community.”

- Visser, 1992, p. ix

Aesthetics: Cooking can be seen as an art, as it is combining ingredients and processing these in order to make a final product. Although, it is not the same as other arts such as dancing and painting, it is something that is made and many people see the beauty in it. The alluring smells that come from cooking is aesthetic in itself, and then the presentation on the plate (not generally in my cooking) can also create a masterpiece. The beauty of eating the meal is real winner in the end though!

Spirituality: Food is something that always brings our family together. Cooking for us is a time to gossip, socialise, have fun and catch up. Cooking for some people can be a very spiritual thing, like a traditional meal, such as a Hangi for the Maori. Birthdays, anniversaries and any event – good or bad – are celebrated with food somehow. For example, when it is my birthday, I get to chose exactly what I want from the beginning of the meal to the desert. It is a way food is used to commemorate a special day.

History: The history of cooking goes a long, long, long way back. Obviously I’ve been surrounded by cooking since I was born, as everyone needs food to survive. My mother was the main cook in my household since I can remember and then we children and Dad did the washing up. Mum learnt most of her cooking off her mother, and she learnt off her mother and so on. Everyone loves Nanny’s cooking, it just always tastes so much better than if anyone else tries to make the same meal; and the same goes with mum’s cooking too. The recipes get passed down throughout the family and everyone puts their own twist on their cooking. No-one else can ever do someone else’s recipe as well as the original cook though.

Visser M. (1992). The rituals of dinner. London: Viking, The Penguin Group

AFFORDANCES

My  time came around again last night for cooking dinner, so we decided to have home-made hamburgers and wedges since it was such lovely sunny weather outside. We had mince in the freezer, so earlier that day I had got this out and it was all ready and defrosted by the time I got home. I took out the recipe book and made the meat-patty recipe that mum had sent me down to Dunedin with. After getting all messy and having sticky hands from the patty-making, these went in the oven to cook. After peeling many potatoes, these got cut into wedges and tossed around with some oil, flour, chicken salt and several other seasonings. In the oven they go. Next came the easy part, slicing the cheese, cutting the tomatoes, washing the lettuce, grating the carrot, cutting up the capsicum and getting the buns ready. These are all put into their separate bowls ready for everyone to make their own burgers. After half an hour or so, everything is cooked, put on plates and ready to go. “Dinners ready” – and the flat mates come running into the kitchen, make their burgers and head back outside to enjoy the last minutes of the warm night.

“Cooking has many functions, and only one of them is about feeding people.  When we go into a kitchen, indeed when we even just think about going into a kitchen, we are both creating and responding to an idea we hold about ourselves, about what kind of person we are or wish to be. How we eat and what we eat lies at the heart of who we are – as

individuals, families, communities.”

- Nigella Lawson, (2004). P.vi

Communication properties: there are many different aspects of communication surrounding the activity of cooking. There is the communication when learning to cook, such as a friend or family member telling you how to do something; as well as written communication such as writing out and reading recipes. With many meals in our flat, we also have to communicate to figure out what people want and what people don’t like, in order to try and suit everyone. Cooking also encourages communication when sitting around to eat, and like at our flat, we sit down to eat dinner and talk about what we have done that day.

Moral properties: the good and the bad aspects of cooking. Firstly, a positive moral aspect is that cooking brings people together and generally encourages teamwork and socialising. Cooking is great as it provides energy to do many other things within the day and also just makes me very happy to have something yummy in my stomach. A bad aspect of cooking is that it can sometimes lead to fights in our flat as to what people want for dinner and what they like. It can also take a lot of time and if you cook and eat too much, it can end very badly!

Action properties: Cooking provides a connection with many other activities. Before the cooking begins, there is the supermarket shopping – which we do as a flat, and quite often this provides us some entertainment around the supermarket. Then there is the consumption of the food which has just been cooked which sometimes includes the odd beverage and some social times. However, there is also the washing up to do once all the fun parts are finished.

Lawson, N. (2004). Feast:Food that celebrates life. London: Chatto & Windus.(this quote was also presented in BT127001 lecture notes)

ERGONOMICS

This week in class we have been speaking about Ergonomics. Ergonomics is taking into account the environment, person and occupation and how each of these aspects interlink and work together in order for the activity to be successful.  As an Occupational Therapist it is our job to “constantly make slight invisible adjustments to an activity to adapt to the needs of those taking part and ensure that it continues to work for its intended purpose” (Caulton and Dickson 2007).

Last night it was my turn to make dinner in the flat, so I decided to make a beef noodle stir-fry. The person aspect surrounding ergonomics involves factors such as the cultural and spiritual and many more. I am 20 years old and have been watching my mother cook for many years. One of my favourite meals is a yummy simple stir-fry. Therefore when I was old enough/becoming independent/moving out this would be one of my favourite and easiest meals to prepare. I have made this meal many times now, but feel that I become more competent each time, trying something a little bit different and new.

The occupational aspect of ergonomics includes anything to do with the activity; factors such as adaption of the activity, pacing, costs, etc. When looking at making a stir-fry, it can be made several slightly different ways; such as some preferring to make it in pans over the stove, or in an electric wok; mixing the vegetables and meat altogether or having them separate. Since moving into the flat, we adapt the ways in which we make meals in order to suit everyone in the flat. Stir-fry’s are generally a reasonably cheap meal as all you need is meat, vegetables, noodles and a few sauces. It is a good meal for poor flatting students! A beef noodle stir-fry does not take long to prepare or cook, generally it only takes me about 30mins to cut everything up and cook them.

 Factors such as accessibility and political issues are included in the environmental aspect of ergonomics. Since moving into a flat, it means the kitchen is a lot different to my kitchen at home. This means that I had to get used to new equipment and a new layout of the environment. Mum’s kitchen was always perfectly tidy and everything was always in the same place. Whereas with the flat kitchen, since all five of us cook each week, things get moved around and it tends to get messy quite easily. However, since I have now been in this flat for eight months, I have definitely got used to it and am comfortable working in the environment.

"In any home, the kitchen is often the place where friends and family congregate.  Sure, it’s where the food and the drink are, but kitchens are seldom just refuelling stations. Conversations, gossip humour and ideas flow freely in the relaxed atmosphere of the kitchen."

- de Lore, 2000

Caulton, R., & Dickson, R. (2007). What's going on? Finding an explanation for what we do. In J. Creek, & A. Lawson-Porter, Contemporary issues in occupational therapy. (pp. 87-114). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

James Sunderland, Occupational Therapy lecture notes, de Lore 2000. Received 20th September 2011