Well I can help you with a few answers that work for me. I lived alone for
about 14 years as an adult and survived.
If you go to any of the online stores like Maxi Aids or Independent Living,
they have oven mitts. There aren't the little ones, but will come up your
forearm about 15 to 17 inches. These fit me and I can palm a basketball.
you're a better man than I to mix a cake with a whisk. I use a beater on
low speed. The higher the speed the more air you will add to anything you
are beating.
Browning meat will tend to change sounds as it gets closer to done. Keep
the heat down so it has a chance to cook some instead of burning quickly.
I'll let some of the better cooks on here go into more detail, and cover
questions I missed or left out.
If you Google a dish, most websites are accessible when they list a recipe.
And I know you from other lists and you'll be able to make the computer work
on most any website.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Alex Hall" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 24, 2010 8:17 PM
Subject: [CnD] intro and a few questions
Hi all,
I am Alex. I am a senior in college for computer science. My family
loves to cook, so I have never really had to learn. Growing up with
cooks, though, has provided me with many hints and ideas, though I
have never applied any of this "absorbed" knowledge to any cooking
projects of my own. I know I will have to learn to cook sometime,
though, and now that my sister is temporarily unable to cook (she is
the primary cook in the house) I figure that now is as good a time as
any.
I have a small amount of vision. I can see a bowl on the counter, for
example, but cannot see that I missed some sugar while mixing; I can
see where the stove (one of those annoying cooktop ones) is in the
kitchen, but I cannot see enough detail to see the sides of the oven
or where the "burners" are on the flat top of the stove. With that in
mind, here are the questions I have come up with, after today's
adventure of making a cake:
1. For those of you with cooktops (where there are no physical burners
but rather just one flat surface), how do you position pots or pans in
the right place?
2. Perhaps this will come with practice, but one of my biggest fears
while cooking with an oven is that I will hit the sides of the oven
with my wrists or forearms while putting something into or removing
something from the oven. How do you avoid this, as potholders or even
oven mits only cover the hands, not the arms, and the arms are much
closer to the sides than the hands?
3. How, when you are mixing something, do you tell if you have mixed
thoroughly enough? While mixing the wet ingredients for the cake
today, I was told that I had missed a few pockets of sugar, but I
could not have felt this through the wisk.
4. How do you pour liquids into measuring spoons? I can manage cups
well enough, though pouring oil is difficult as it is hard to feel,
but I cannot figure out a good way of pouring into spoons? I
considered putting things like oil or vanilla into larger containers
so I could just take a spoonful, but is there a better way that would
not require such large containers?
5. Tomorrow's experiment may be spaghetti (our family does not believe
in canned sauce, so it will be from scratch). How will I tell when the
ground beef is browned? Similarly, how would I tell if a hamburger or
steak was done? What about other types of meat being prepared on a
stove (as opposed to in an oven where a thermometer could provide a
good indication)?
6. Has anyone come up with a way to figure out where the teaspoon
markings are on a stick of butter? I had to have someone score the
butter at the teaspoon line so I could cut off the right amount. In
fact, before that, I had no idea that such marks were even on sticks
of butter; I always thought you just had to soften the butter and take
a teaspoon to it somehow.
7. Are there any good websites for recipes? By good I mean both
accessible with a screen reader and containing good-tasting dishes.
TIA for any help. I may not stay on this list long as school starts
next week and so I will not have much opportunity to cook anything,
but I hope to figure a few things out for this week and then try again
next time I am home on break.
--
Have a great day,
Alex (msg sent from GMail website)
[email protected]; http://www.facebook.com/mehgcap
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