References

Here is a list in full of references used throughout this blog.
References are also posted individually under the appropriate posting in which they are used.

About.com (2011). Ergonomics. Retrieved September 13, 2011, fromhttp://www.about.com/ergonomics

Ephron, N. (2009). Julie and Julia. USA: Columbia Pictures.
Harris, D. (2009). Engineering psychology and cognitive ergonomics. New York: Springer.
Pearsall, J. (1999). Concise oxford dictionary. Tenth edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

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

Just an added thought....

So throughout these postings I have been having a good think about what cooking / baking really means to me. The most obvious reason I cook is to eat, which is rather essential for life. However, I do not just cook for myself. When I cook I am also providing my family with food, so I am also looking after them. This feels rewarding for me as it means I am able to contribute to the household, and provide for those who have had a busy day. It is especially helpful for Mum, as she finishes work a little later and when she gets home she is completely exhausted, so its a comfort for her knowing she doesn't need to get food on the table when she eventually gets home.
I also find being in the kitchen rather relaxing. If I am feeling stressed or have had a bad day, I find it comforting to bake something yummy - my specialty is a lemon syrup loaf which all the family love. It fills the house with the delicious smell of home-baking which immediately puts me in a better mood. I love this quote from the movie Julie and Julia, as I feel I can relate to what she is saying about how being in the kitchen makes her feel. "Chocolate cream pie! You know what I love about cooking? I love that after a day when nothing is sure and when I say nothing, I mean nothing. You can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. That's such a comfort." (Julie Powell, 2009).
If I am feeling particularly creative, baking or cooking gives me an opportunity to play around a little. Decorating cookies or cupcakes is always fun. I love making different coloured sugar to top belgium biscuits with, a bit of a change from the original pink colour. Chopping and changing recipes is a habit of mine, if I don't like something that is included in the recipe, I will try to substitute it with something I would prefer, or if we don't have the required ingredients, I'll hunt down something to fill it's place. Sometimes these changed recipes work out a treat, other times, not so much.
So besides cooking to eat and therefore survive, I enjoy being in the kitchen to provide for others, to de-stress, to feel a sense of belonging and achievement, and to release my creativity. Wow, who would have thought I would get this much out of cooking a simple meal!

Ephron, N. (2009). Julie and Julia. USA: Columbia Pictures.

Practical Considerations

In order to be able to cook for at least two hours each week there are some obvious practical considerations that needed to be taken into account: money and resources.
I am rather lucky because as a condition of living at home rent-free, my sister and I help out with the cooking and housework, therefore I have everything I need at home, so these considerations were not such a big deal for me. However, last year, I was living in a flat with an awful kitchen so these considerations were constantly at the back of my mind, therefore I will use my experience from the flat last year as my focus for this post.
Like most student flats in Dunedin, our kitchen was tiny, our cupboards didn't close properly and there wasn't adequate storage space, not that we really needed though, as we had very few utensils to store. This lack of equipment was a huge hassle for me. Everytime I felt like doing a spot of cooking or baking I would have to compensate for lack of basic utensils (eg, a decent wooden spoon for mixing). This was a bit strange for me, as we have always had whatever I've needed at home. I suppose I could have gone out and bought these basic utensils for the flat, but lets face it, they would have ended up lost or broken so I didn't feel the need to waste my money. I was always stuck when looking for decent dishes or trays to cook things in/or, and if i did eventually find one, I would then have to spend the next 5 minutes cleaning the damn thing.
My other issue in the flat was my lack of funds to buy ingredients. As a flat, we all put in money and bought the basics together each week (bread, milk, chocolate - the necessities), however, anything we wanted other than this we bought ourselves. After a few weeks of the same bland noodles and pasta, I really felt like making something a bit more exciting. However, whenever I bought extra food with my own money, it would mysteriously disappear before I even got the chance to use it. As my frustration grew with others using food I had paid for on my own, I eventually gave up and went back to the boring old pasta and noodles I had been eating previously.
Throughout the course of that year, I grew to hate cooking meals. I avoided it as much as possible, opting for cheap fast dishes, or sneaking up to mum and dads for a roast. The thought of using that kitchen, and the resources inside it, always managed to get me mad or frustrated.
Moving home again, to a clean and tidy, well stocked kitchen was such a treat for me! I had thought that I wouldn't want to get back into being in the kitchen again, after such an awful year of food, yet once home, I found myself rearing to go. It made me realise how important the environment is when doing tasks, as it was the environment that had changed my love of being in the kitchen to dread of having to step foot in there.

Food for Survival

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 (Visser, 1986, p.12).
Obviously we have to eat daily to live. However, as said in the above quote, this is not the only reason we eat.
My Grandparents have a huge, beautiful, garden. And a large part of this garden is a vegie garden. They have a huge variety of vegies, silverbeet, carrots, potatoes, peas, brocolli, the list goes on, and this has always been a delight for my older sister and myself growing up. Grandie would always let us help him in the garden (although our idea of helping probably wasn't necessarily that helpful), and we would have great fun watering the gardens and digging up the vegetables. We would then take the vegies into the kitchen to Grandma, and continue to help her to prepare and cook them. Although these were simple tasks we were doing, they provided my sister and I with a great opportunity to learn some basic life skills. We were able to name a numerous amount of vegetables that some classmates had probably never heard of, and whats more, we new how to cook them! Helping get dinner on the table was always a great feeling, it was good to be given a sense of responsibility and we always felt proud that we were able to help. Looking back on our adventures in the garden, I believe it really did shape the way I feel about cooking now, trying to use fresh ingredients where possible, and enjoying the feeling of using things from your own garden.

I find that now, in tertiary education, I never have as much time to see friends as much as I would have done when we were all at school. Therefore, the time we all have to meet up is greatly reduced. As a way of staying in touch, me and a few of my closest friends make a point of catching up for a night during the first week of each month. During these monthly meetings, whenever we meet there is food involved. Either we all meet at a cafe, for coffee and cake, or we go to one another's houses, where they have usually gone to the effort of putting out a spread of fresh baking or cheese and crackers. The food brings us all together, and allows us to connect with one another.

Although food is essential for survival, I have identified two large aspects of my life that revolve around food being used for purposes other than survival. These have both shaped how I feel about cooking at present.


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

Ambience

Ambience is defined by the Oxford Dictionary (1999) as being the character and atmosphere of a place.

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)
This quote reminds me of christmas day in my household. Every year on christmas day, our grandparents, cousins, aunties and uncles come to our home to enjoy a traditional christmas dinner. Turkey and veges for lunch, pavlova and trifle for desert, then ham and leftovers for dinner (although at this point in the day, after grazing all day on nuts, pretzels & chocolates, nobody really feels like eating). This is usually the one day out of the year that the whole family sits to eat a meal together, so it is a rather special occasion. On this day, you will find the females of the house in the kitchen, sipping on wine, tending to pots and ovens, and having a good ol' gossip. The males can usually be found in the lounge watching tele, or out in the sun, slurping beer and talking man talk. When everyone comes together at the table to eat, there is a feel of excitement in the air. Everyone cracks christmas crackers with the person sitting next to them, puts on their hat and reads out their joke that they found in their cracker (lame laughs all round). Glasses are topped up, someone says Grace, and then the feast begins. After everyone has eaten far too much, and pants are feeling too tight, we all move into the lounge to chat over coffee. It is then a relaxing afternoon until dinner rolls around, however with the amount everyone has already eaten, dinner is usually over pretty quickly.
There is always a certain feel to our house on this day. It probably feels different for everyone. But it is without doubt a feeling I look forward to each year. Having all of the family together, enjoying great food, and  giving gifts to those closest to me, never fails to make for a great day, year after year.


Pearsall, J. (1999). Concise oxford dictionary. Tenth edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Affordances

The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill (Harris, 2009). In other words, affordances can be considered to be what you get out of doing a certain activity. Aesthetics plays a large part when discussing cooking. Aesthetics is defined by the Oxford Dictionary (1999) to be artistically beautiful, or of pleasing appearance. Cooking can be pleasing for all of five senses, some more than others, obviously.
Lets begin with smell. Smell can be a huge factor when eating, especially if you are trying something new. If the food presented to you doesn't smell good, then you will probably be a bit apprehensive about eating it. On the other hand, if you smell good food, you can be immediately excited about what you are about to eat. Some foods have very comforting smells, such as freshly baked bread or fresh cakes or cookies. If I walk into my house and smell home-made bread being made before I even see it, I instantly feel happy and excited to eat it. Same goes with baking, I love walking into a home which has just taken some cookies out of the oven, the sweet scent can fill an entire room, making it feel cosy and comfortable.
Moving on to sight. Similarly to smell, sight can have a big impact on how you feel about what you are eating. Some foods just look absolutely delicious, just a wee glimpse can make the mouth water and the stomach grumble. However, some foods don't rank quite as highly in appearance. Foods we may not be used to, such as foreign food, may look a little daunting to us. I remember being in an Asian restaurant with some friends, the majority of whom were Chinese, with a large variety of traditional Chinese foods placed in front of me. They found it rather entertaining watching me try to figure out what these foods were, and could tell I was a little (if not, alot) wary of trying the different sorts of foods. After trying a few dishes, I discovered they actually were delicious and tried to look past the strange appearance of them.
Feel, or texture in the context of cooking, may not be a big thing for some people, but it is huge for me. There are some things that I just cannot, and will not, eat due to the texture. It is mainly meat that I am fussy about here. I don't like meat that is too chewy, therefore I need to chop any scrap of fat, or rind, off my meat before I eat it (which then occasionally gets passed down to my food-loving dog, who is always grateful for a wee feast). I remember eating jellyfish when I was visiting Japan which I had  not previously tried before. I remember it tasting quite nice, but the unusual texture, which was slightly crunchy as well as slimy, meant that I could not bring myself to eat more, despite it having a pleasant taste.
Hearing is not such a huge aspect when it comes to cooking, however it still has it's place. Hearing food sizzling in a pan, or boiling in a pot can make you start thinking about the final product that you will have when the food is cooked. Hearing does however, seem to be a huge aspect of food when I think of my animals. They can be sound asleep in the next room, not a care in the world, but as soon as they hear someone rustling wrappers, or opening the fridge / pantry in the kitchen, they are immediately at your feet, hoping to get just the smallest crumb or treat they can find.
The final sense, and the one I consider most important with food, is taste. If the food doesn't taste good, then no matter how good it smells or looks, you are probably not going to eat it. It amazes me how much taste differs from person to person. I may eat something that I find absolutely amazing but then my friend sitting next to me feels nauseous just looking at it. In the movie Julie and Julia (2009), Julie Powell feels very strongly about the taste of butter. "Is there anything better than butter? Think it over, any time you taste something that's delicious beyond imagining and you say 'what's in this?' the answer is always going to be butter. The day there is a meteorite rushing toward Earth and we have thirty days to live, I am going to spend it eating butter. Here is my final word on the subject, you can never have too much butter."

Ephron, N. (2009). Julie and Julia. USA: Columbia Pictures.
Harris, D. (2009). Engineering psychology and cognitive ergonomics. New York: Springer.
Pearsall, J. (1999). Concise oxford dictionary. Tenth edition. New York: Oxford University Press.

Links to other Blogs:

As a note to the lecturer, you will find links to all blogs I post on here :)

http://participationcharlotte.blogspot.com/2011/09/affordances.html?showComment=1318804100829#c2197979233433888826

http://shilmonipo1.blogspot.com/2011/10/affordances-spiritualiity-aesthetics.html?showComment=1318803918092#c5648227269680200070

http://mattgeeetar.blogspot.com/2011/10/blog-four-another-jam-session.html?showComment=1318804298951#c4904910003192436993

http://janinesparticipationinoccupationblog.blogspot.com/2011/10/comments-on-other-blogs.html?showComment=1318803777544#c5280992329699579628