[nabs-l] cooking questions

[Amy Sabo]

hello carrie and all,

wow! what a huge thread this to have on this list for this topic. to answer one of your questions i learned how to cook by my mom and also before i lost a lot of my vision i was in culinary arts for a living which was a long time ago. in not letting you cook in your own place isn't being independent imo! what i have done is label my toasteroven with puffy paint and my oven and stove are labeled with bump dots and my microwave is in braille with braille labels on it.

you have a right to label them since they are your appliances in your own aopartment so you can live independtally. as to asking the shopper helper what's on the package i do this so, i know what's in them and also what's on sale. most shopper helpers don't mind it but, some do.

i don't have the shopper helper read me the sales ads because this takes up too much time... as for reading the pacckage driections at home i use a reader for it or i use my cctv to read them.

i hope these ideas and suggestions will helpp you out. take care and, i will talk to you soon.


hugs,
from amy

----- Original Message -----
From: Kerri Kosten 
To: National Association of Blind Students mailing list 
Sent: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 05:28:19 +0000 (UTC)
Subject: [nabs-l] cooking questions

Hi All!!

I hope these questions are not off-topic for this list. I understand
there is  a blind cooks list, but since I am a 22-year-old college
student I wanted to get some answers from other students.

I know very little about cooking. My parents refuse to teach me how to
do anything with the stove (I'm talking about the stove, not oven) and
think I should make everything in either the microwave, or George
Foreman grill.

I live in an area where the closest NFB chapter is an hour away so I
don't really have any other blind people that can come over to help
me.

I can make a few things, mainly chicken (just put a boneless chicken
breast on the George Foreman grill), tacos (I cook the hamburger in
the Microwave, make the taco sauce in the microwave, and use hard taco
shells), sloppy joes (same thing, cook the hamburger in the microwave
and add the sloppy joe sauce), and steaks (George Foreman grill.)

I can also use the toaster for fixing waffles, and strudles.

I can fix hotdogs and pancakes in the microwave.

As you can see, this is very limiting and gets old after a while. I
would like to learn how to fix other things but don't know how without
a blind person teaching me.

Two things I'd like to do in particular are learning how to brown
hamburger properly on the stove, and fixing eggs but I am afraid to
just begin messing with the stove because without it being labeled
properly and not knowing what I'm doing I could easily start a fire.

For the oven, I use one of those small small toaster ovens. It has a
dial and I put dots beside the knob to tell the temperature but since
the dots are just dots I often can't tell which temperature I am
actually setting the oven to. I have my own apartment and it has one
of those huge ovens but my parents won't allow me to label it. It's
electric, not gas so there are no flames but I can't get them to see
it my way. They refuse to teach me how to fix even the simplest things
on the stove because they do not want to be responsible for me burning
my fingers or having grease splatter on me.

Do any of you have any suggestions?

What things can I buy that you can fix in the oven? I've been told
things like chicken nuggets, tator tots...

Where can I find good recipes to begin trying to cook other things?

Can many of you cook well or is this the level you are on?

Is there any way to learn to fix eggs or brown hamburger without
having another blind person teach me?

How do you have your ovens/stoves labeled?

How do you find out directions on packages? I've tried looking up the
directions for things like hamburger helper on the internet but I get
results such as "how to make home made hamburger helper," and all I
want is the oven time/temperature on the package.

Can I fix hamburger helper by cooking the hamburger meat in the
microwave, then fixing the noodles/sauce in the microwave and mixing
it all together?

When I go grocery shopping, is it appropriate to ask the shopping
assistant to read me the package directions (at least the cooking time
and oven temperature) and jot it down?

When grocery shopping, how do you make sure to get the best prices on
your items? Is it appropriate to ask the shopping assistant to look in
one of those sales papers to see any of the items on the list is on
sale? If so, are they usually willing to do these extra things?


I am going to training eventually, but in the mean time it frustrates
me not being able to fix hardly anything!

When I stay at my parents house (they live really really close so I
can come to their house often) they fix real dinners that taste so
good and it makes me not want to go back to my apartment because I
hate my cooking because I don't really fix things properly. My parents
are not that good at cooking themselves, but they fry their food and
it's cooked right so it tastes good whereas I'm trying to brown
hamburger in the microwave for example which isn't really how your
supposed to do it.

Thanks so much for any help!

Kerri

_______________________________________________
nabs-l mailing list
nabs-l at nfbnet.org
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/listinfo/nabs-l_nfbnet.org
To unsubscribe, change your list options or get your account info for nabs-l:
http://www.nfbnet.org/mailman/options/nabs-l_nfbnet.org/amylsabo%40comcast.net