2009-11-09 Talking Turkey
Seminars@Hadley
Talking Turkey: Blind and Low Vision Cooks Share Tips,
Techniques and Accessible Resources
Presented by
Dawn Turco
Linn Sorge
Patti Jacobson
Moderated by
Dawn Turco
November 15, 2006
Dawn Turco
There are three of us presenting today and we are all staff at the Hadley School for the Blind and all people who love to cook. And we will start off today giving you a brief introduction to ourselves. We’ll move on to talking about kitchen organization and safety. We are going to talk turkey a little bit which will have a bit of a focus on the U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving coming up next week and we will share with you some of the tools and gadgets and resources that we use in the kitchen to help us along as we plan our daily meals and work safely in a kitchen.
Beginning with myself, I can tell you that I’ve been cooking for a very long time. I am the low-vision representative on the panel today and I am so fortunate to have had a mother who allowed me in the kitchen. I’ve known many who did not out of fear of injury or just kind of being territorial. If there are any parents listening in today, I would so recommend that you get your children – boys and girls – out in the kitchen to share that experience with you from a very early age.
I progressed to a point where I cut a deal with my mother who actually did not enjoy cooking so much and throughout my high school and college years, when I was home during the summer or for holidays, I was the one who did the cooking; she was the one who did the clean-up. So it was a perfect plan for the two of us and one that I actually carried through to my marriage and now my husband cleans up after me. So again, welcome and Linn, I’ll ask you to go next and just keep in mind too, presenters, that the three of us are in different locations. So we’re going to be calling on each other to kind of keep some organization here. Linn, go ahead.
Linn Sorge
Good morning everyone. I first need to apologize because I am recovering from laryngitis of some sort, so hopefully you’ll be able to understand me just fine. I am an instructor at the Hadley School and I teach word processing and social skills courses to parents and teachers and some internet courses.
But I also do a lot of cooking. I have done so pretty much since I got out on my own. I did not have the luxury Dawn did of a mom who was supportive, so I am very much with her in urging any of you working with blind youngsters or who are parents, get them in the kitchen and teach them what to do and have good expectations for them. I did learn things by not being able to do that – just different techniques from observing and hearing in the kitchen, but I am totally blind – have always been – and tend to do cooking for one or two and entertain now and then.
Patti Jacobson
I also am on the faculty at Hadley School for the Blind and I teach the Food series of courses, All About Food, so if you decide you like Talking Turkey, you might be interested in taking the Foods courses. And I also teach Independent Living which covers cooking skills and adaptations that blind and visually-impaired person can make in cooking.
I too have been cooking for a long time. When I was little – about five or six – my mom used to let me sprinkle the sugar and put the butter and the cinnamon and the nuts on the cinnamon rolls and she used to let me roll cookies in powdered sugar and I knew that I liked good food and I wanted to know how to fix it and so my mom was just great as far as helping me to have an opportunity in the kitchen to learn how to do things.
And my first meal that I made was chicken potpie; fruit cocktail from a can and spinach from a can. And I was the most proud person that you ever heard of at that time for making that meal. Dawn?
Dawn Turco
Thank you, Linn and Patti. We will be taking questions along the way as well. But let’s get rolling a little bit with some ideas regarding kitchen organization and safety. And I’ll start off – and I’ll have to say and I suspect it’s true of all three of us – organization in the kitchen is critical for a variety of reasons.
First off, I personally don’t like to look for things, so I have a place for everything and everything goes back in its place. The trick of course is teaching family members that same rule and there’s time to time after the dishwasher’s been emptied that I have difficulty finding things my husband put away, but a little searching does it. But organization – having things where they belong.
Secondly, as a person who does not drive, knowing your kitchen, knowing your menus, knowing what the week is going to bring I think is all the more important because you don’t have the opportunity to jump in the car and run out and get a dozen eggs because you ran out, or pick up the sugar. And you know, asking neighbors is going to get old very quickly. So my tips are plan ahead, get organized, put things where they belong. Linn, Patti.
Patti Jacobson
This is Patti and I think that it’s important to keep clutter to a minimum. It’s so hard when you’ve got all kind of things on the counter to be working. And when you’re preparing a recipe, I like to get all the ingredients out for the recipe and then put them in back of the mixing bowl. Some people say put them to the side of the mixing bowl and then when you’re done using them put them to the other side of the mixing bowl.
I like to put them to the back of the mixing bowl – that way I’m not knocking them over. And then once I have used it, I put it away and I kind of clean as I go and it just makes it so much easier.
Linn Sorge
I’m very much exactly where both of these other people are. I also am everything has to have its place because I don’t want to waste the time of looking for things if somebody, trying to be helpful, puts it in the wrong place. I will, if I’m working with a youngster, I often suggest using a cafeteria-type tray so that if there’s a chance of spilling and they’re practicing things like that, or even just a beginning cook, if it spills, you simply need to clean up the tray, not the entire counter.
I, just like Patti, get everything out that I’m going to need and put it behind the mixing bowl. I also tend to keep a wet dishrag in the corner of the counter somewhere so that if my fingers get sticky, I can quickly wipe them off and not have everything I touch get sticky at the same time.
Patti Jacobson
One think that people recommend – or I’ve heard people recommend – is that you put newspapers down on the counter. There’s pros and cons about that. Newspaper do – oh, what would be the – the ink rubs off and if you’ve got white counters, they can get a little inky if they get wet. So I would use parchment paper or waxed paper or butcher paper or a cookie sheet or something like that to work on.
Dawn Turco
We talk about safety too and this is so critical. In the United States, people generally have a mix of either gas stoves or electric. I happen to be a fan of gas because I can control the heat so much more efficiently for myself when I’m cooking. Secondly, knives – and as the three presenters visited the other day in planning our session today – we all agreed that knives can be a major hazard and the general rule prevails that knives – when they’re dirty – do not go into the sink and be left there. And anybody in our kitchens gets lectured to this extent because it’s far too dangerous to reach into the sink and not know that a sharp knife is there. So one of the safety rules is - no sharp knives in the sink. Wash them and put them away.
Patti Jacobson
Another safety rule is never put knives in the dishwasher point up and I learned that from bad experience. One time I tripped over my dishwasher and I landed with my hand on a knife and anyway, it was kind of nasty. I was going to say, too, about safety – this just almost goes without saying but - you need to mark your stove and oven and microwave with raised markers of some kind or Braille or notching them so that you can be turning the burners on, you know when the burners are on. And if you don’t know about markers, one course that you might be interested in taking is Using Raised Markers through Hadley.
And another thing I was going to say about safety – sometimes people are kind of afraid of working around the stove and you can use a spatula in your hand like a cane. Use it as a feeler to feel where the pans are, trace it around the edge of the pan till you find the pan handle and that way you’re a little bit further away from the heat.
Linn Sorge
Some safety things that I do – I always turn the pan handles in toward the middle of the stove. And about knives in my house, if they can’t get washed right away, they always go behind the faucets so that they are out of the way. I have very long hair and so I have a rule that if I’m working in an area where there’s a gas stove, I always tie my hair back. You never can tell when it might fall or get in the way.
I also have a tea kettle because I have an electric stove where I am right now and it does not cool down quickly. So if I take a pan off a burner, I just grab my tea kettle and place it on that hot burner because it just takes the risk down of someone accidently hitting the burner or bumping it.
Patti Jacobson
Another thing about gas stoves and electric too, I guess, and Dawn, you can comment about this – if you have low vision, don’t get down close to the stove to see what’s happening. This is one time when you want to depend on your tactile sense.
Dawn Turco
Yes, Patti, you know, for so many years I lived in rental apartments or homes and you really had no control over what the kitchen make-up or appliances were about - you had what you had. In my current home, I was able to work with my husband in getting a kitchen that is truly set to my own needs. And one of the beautiful things that’s out there now when you go to buy appliances is you typically have a choice of the knobs and control panels of a stove being either in the back or in the front.
And I have selected one that works well for me where all my selection and knobs are in the very front so it minimizes having to lean over and do anything outside of what I want to be doing over those pots and pans, and so that has worked out very nicely for me.
I’ll start off for those handful of people who are outside of the United States. Next week we celebrate our national holiday of Thanksgiving and it wasn’t always a national holiday. Historically the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth Rock on December 11, 1620. It was a very harsh winter after they landed and a good many of those original people who landed didn’t make it through the winter.
But those who did survived with the help of the Native American Indians and there was a wonderful harvest the following fall, so this would be 1621. It was at that time that the Pilgrims and the Native American Indians feasted together in what we think of as our first Thanksgiving, but it was very much a typical European harvest festival. We’re not even sure they had turkey, which is so much the center of the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States today. But we’re told that the Pilgrims of that time called basically any wild fowl turkey, so perhaps they had it. But we know for a fact that they had venison.
Another stable of our holiday meal in the United States is pumpkin pie. They were all out of flour; there were no pastries, but they did cook pumpkin. So the evolution of the meal to what we’ll be talking a little bit about today and the traditions of our Thanksgiving are very much family-oriented.
Let me just let you know that it was – I did a little research here – it was actually in 1941 that the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States was designated a legal holiday and put on the fourth Thursday in November. So it was some years that we had celebrations off and on and presidents who tried to make it a holiday, but it wasn’t until 1941 that it became a holiday.
The traditional meal is one that got staples from coast-to-coast and what’s wonderful about our Thanksgiving holiday is the fact that really everyone in the country, regardless of origin or religion, everyone enjoys the holiday and time with family. So we’re going to talk a little bit about how our traditions have evolved, perhaps in our own families, and we’ll invite you to maybe share a tradition with us as well. But planning for a big holiday feast takes a lot of planning and shopping. Patti and Linn, talk to us a little bit about how you go about doing that.
Linn Sorge
When I shop, I type out a list ahead of time, right on this computer that I’m using right now and I try to group it in a way that will be efficient when I go to the store. So that I put my milk, my butter, my eggs in one area of the list; my vegetables in another; my fresh things – instead of writing milk and then paper towels and fruit cocktail and then eggs. Then when I go to the store, I try to go at the time when it isn’t very busy. It’s not a necessity; it’s just helpful for me and the people at the store.
I go to the service desk with my typed list and ask for someone to go around – and usually it’s somebody who usually does stocking or bagging – stocking of shelves or bagging of groceries – and they take my list; I always suggest that they get in front of the cart and I go behind the cart. That way, we don’t nick things along the way. If they’re trying to go beside me, they’re always worried about running into everything, and they’re not as comfortable as sighted guides so they go in front and I go behind the cart.
I also have a rule that they must show me whatever they put in the cart and this came about one time because I asked for a quart of strawberries and when I got to the check-out counter, the check-out woman – who I knew quite well – said, “My goodness, you’re going to be very busy making pies!” And I said, “No, not really.” And she said, “Well, you certainly will make a lot of strawberry pies.”
Well, come to find out they had given me an entire flat of strawberries. So henceforth, from that time on, if it is something questionable, it goes into my hands and then into the cart. And if you can go with a friend, that’s great too. But it’s still considerate to give them a list so that they kind of know what to expect that you will need. Your go, Patti.
Patti Jacobson
One thing I do too while I’m going shopping is – I live alone and so when I get my groceries home, I don’t have anybody home here with me to help me sort things out, so canned goods are a problem. I like to label canned goods with magnetic Dymo tape. You can write on it with a Braille label maker or a slate and stylus and then you can stick it right onto the can when you select it off the shelf and that way your cans are labeled when you get them home and then when you are ready to open your can and you take the label off, then just stick it to the side of the refrigerator. That’s something that’s helped me.
I also really appreciate stores that have a delivery option. It does cost a little bit more but it’s so convenient and you can just either send in your order online or call in your order and they will deliver it, either the same day or the next day. And that’s been something that’s been very helpful for me, especially when I’m getting a lot of stuff.
Dawn Turco
I know that there are those who do use the online shopping option and if anybody would like to add a comment about that, you are definitely welcome to do so. I guess not. If you want to later, you’re more than welcome.
One of my tips for planning for a family feast or a group of friends coming over – and this is so true with our Thanksgiving meals because there are so many large dishes – is I start early cleaning out the refrigerator. We kind of eat leftovers – we eat as much as we can out of the refrigerator, but room needs to be made and the turkey is – right there, there’s a problem.