Category: Daily Living
hi there, i wanted to come on here and post this so i could get a few ideas. i have difficulty when it comes to serving food and what kind of tools to use. for example, getting chips off of a baking tray and serving them equally between 2 people. as i only usually cook for 2 anyways, i thought we could start with this one. i usually get the food off with my fingers, but it usually hurts as it's too hot. i remove the oven glove as i can't feel properly where i am with it on. any tips, suggestions would be very much appreciated.
You could (with one oven mit) kind of cover half the fries, pour about the other half onto one plate, then the remaining fries (that you were holding back) onto the other plate... Though I can say from experience, pouring from a pan onto your average sized plate can be tricky. There are heat resistant gloves out there though, rather then mits, so you have your fingers seperate to feel things with -- I've heard that blind folks have had a lot of success using these for cooking in general, since it doesn't interfere with feeling things out nearly as much as the oven mits do... I'm saving up for some. Also what you can do is lay out some paper towel, and pour the fries from the pan onto the paper towels... They are much easier to seperate once they're off that hot pan.
*tries to think of more foods that would need to be divvied up* Most other foods I can think of that would need to be split up are easier, like rice and vegetables can all just be scooped onto plates evenly.. Hmm...
I don't make my own food much at the minute, but will do in a couple of years when I leave home. I usually wear the oven gloves with the indivual fingers, but it can be a bit hard to feel things, but not as hard as the normal ones. I sometimes put too much milk on my cereals and have some trouble buttering toast. Can anyone butter toast or a piece of bread without touching it, because I am blind and I've got this thing about touching everything?
I think the touching everything as one eats is normal for blind folks. I know I do it fairly often. Buttering toast, though, can be simple if one uses a spoon instead of a knife. Dip butter or jam out with one side, spread with the other.
I also use a spoon instead of a knife for spreading, but if there's an opportunity, i.e. sighted person nearby, I'll ask really nicely if they can and weezle my way out of it... I'm getting better at it still though.
The whole touching thing is a habit for me as well... I sneak in touches to get a better idea of what I'm doing when I think nobody's looking. Haha
As far as baking things on a tray is concerned, I find it useful to bake on tin foil. That way, when the food's ready, I can pick up the foil with my oven gloves and set it on the cooker with the food still inside. Foil doesn't stay hot for very long, and, because you can shape it, it's easy to pour from, or scoop hot things off. You can hold either side of the roil in one hand, so that your chips all fall to the bottom, then pour onto the plate that way. Foil's the best invention in the universe!
As for buttering, I touch the bread as well, but, so long as you've got clean hands, who cares!
I tried the spoon with the butter spreading thing this morning and ended up with loads of butter on my toast and by the time iI'd finished, the toast was nearly cold. Oh well... Never mind.
Hmmm! You could do either covering half the food, say, chips, pizzas, pies Etc, with the oven glove or deviding them in to tin foil. The tricky bit, especially for me, is serving wet, sloppy, runny foods, for example, soup, Shepherds Pie, baked beans, spaghetti, scrambled egg, lesagne Etc. I remember dishing up Shepherds pie for me and Kay (Narcissa Malfoy) once when she came to mine for my Birthday. Aw'w'w god, what a shambles and what a mess. I eventually got more or less equal measures of the pie on to two dinner plates with a serving spoon, but me and the microwave were covered in mashed potato, so how do we get round serving messy foods like that for two plus people?
Jen.
Has anyone got any tips for pouring milk onto breakfast cereals? Sometimes I put too much ion and it goes eveywhere and sometimes I don't put enough on. If I don't put enough on, it isn't really a problem because I can just put me on, but I can't really ut too much on.
Stick a finger in the cereal as you pour so that you can feel how much is going on there.
FM
Someone told me use a liquid level indicator on the side of the bowl, but that won't really work, because our owls aren't shaped like that, so fingers sound like a good idea.
Milk, and fingers.
Yes - I use fingers for cereal myself. I also do a spirally pattern with the milk over the top of the bowl so I know I've covered everything, then once I've verified mostly all my cereal is covered, I smash the cereal down with a spoon
Also, most people don't have liquid level indicatable bowls, but if they did, it'd taste disgusting, be a hell of a waste of milk which is so expensive anyway and would mean you would be hunting for the cereal in amongst all the milk for an hour and a half.
With hot stuff I've got fireproof fingers, and I'm lazy, which means even if the stuff is still too hot I just do it anyway and bummers to the consequences.
sometimes I wish someone would invent square saucepans, as i know you can get these as casserole dishes - maybe try those for microwaving food like shepherds' pie etc. also, if you're using a micro or a hob with a round receptical try this: steralise something long - like a 30 centimetre ruler, and put it about half way between the edges of the saucepan/dish. then scoop the stuff out of either half of it holding the ruler in the other hand.
Try investing in those little round pie trays - the tiny ones - and use about two trays per person: measure the correct chip portions into those before cooking, then just oven mit them out onto a plate.
I guess you could put the pie trays onto a bigger /normal sized tray to make sure they don't go for a ride, smile.
A note of warning here by the way folks too. if you live in a house/flat full of people, make sure there is nothing on top of the cooker or on the side near the micro: I had some misfortune of this type the other day when I had to force things asside to create space. I burned my stomach would you believe on my hot baking tray, and lost a vegetable finger.
My only other thing I can suggest is try going for the smallest things possible - small saucepans, small dishes for the microwave etc. It will mean you may get big portions but actually it's better than wearing your mash.
I've tried the finger in the bowl of cereals thing oce or twice and thought it worked quite well. I'll probably have to try it a bit more now. Yes, as to liquid level indicators, I find the noise of them very annoying and haven't bothered to buy one. I used to have one when I was younger, but didn't like it. I do use a boil alert disk to tell me when water has boiled in a pan, though. Apparently it doesn't work if you are boiling milk, because the milk is thicker than water.
haven't you heard of cooling... Yeah, great idea, no? Let the stuff cool, then serve. And with the liquid just stick a finger in there, you can always wash that stuff off. What's the big deal, now?
Well I've been known to use a pasta server to grab fries from a tray before; just sort of rake them into a heap towards the middle then scoop.
As to the butter thing I bet it just wasn't soft enough. My daughter can see and she was having trouble with some new health-nut fake butter dunno what they got, but anyway, I just stuck it in the microwave for 15 seconds then put it on for her. Never tried using a spoon, but have resorted to a small spatula before when making something for someone else that required spreading but with a knife or whatever you'll gcover more surface area if you don't only use straight lines, but go diagonal.more