The Final Post

Well finally I have come to my last post. I hope you have all enjoyed reading my blog ... if anyone is out there reading it! I hope I have allowed you all to understand the importance of cooking to me. Within this blogged I have looked at the practical considerations, affordances, ergonomics, ambiance and the need of cooking for me! During this course I have discovered and realised that actually I am starting to enjoy cooking. I have realised that there is a need in my life to gain excitement, satisfaction and enjoyment out of this activity. Cooking provides me with independence and challenges which I enjoy solving.

Here is a list of 6 references and quotes I used...

1). “The gathering of nourishment, however, is not only necessary; it is also endless. Once done, it must be done again. Answering as it does to the requirements of life itself, it can end only with the end of life. The purpose of this activity is to provide for the seeds of consumption: food is taken from the earth, after all, in order to be consumed” (Green, 1968).

Green, T.F. (1968). Work, leisure and the American schools. New York: Random House.

2). "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 & Brooke-White, 2000).

de Lore, C., & Brooke-White, J. (2000). Every kitchen tells a story. New Zealand: Harper Collins Publishers Limited.  

3). "Cooking has many functions, and only one of them is about feeding people. When we go into a kitchen, indeed when we even just think about going into a kitchen, we are both creating and responding to an idea we hold about ourselves, about what kind of person we are or wish to be. How we eat and what we eat lies at the heart of who we are as – Individuals, families, communities". (Lawson, 2004. p.7).

Lawson, N. (2004). Feast: Food to celebrate life. England: Hyperion.

4). Mahy (1988) writes “when I saw it, I said that’s art! I said, that’s what art is about. It’s a cake – yes – but not just a cake. It’s a statement in its own right. My dear, it’s got such passionate equilibrium.”

Mahy, M. (1988). The door in the air and other stories. London: JM Dent & Sons Ltd.

5). Visser (1986) states “Food is ‘everyday’-it has to be, or we would not survive for long”.

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

6). Quote from the film Julie and Julia.

“I didn't understand for a long time, but what attracted me to MtAoFC [Mastering the Art of French Cooking] was the deeply buried aroma of hope and discovery of fulfilment in it. I thought I was using the Book to learn to cook French food, but really I was learning to sniff out the secret doors of possibility.” (Ephron, 2009).

Ephron, N. (Director), (2009). Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen [Motion picture]. North America: Sony Pictures Entertainment.

Here is the link to comments that I made on other peoples blogs.

Pip
Awesome story pip! I loved how by baking this cake, it lead and connected you to a whole lot of other things! The way you wrote the story showed how it’s not all about baking and had lots of examples of affordances within it. It would be good if you were able to unpick the examples of affordances out of the story so it would become clearer to the reader.


Rachael
WOW Rachael!! Your photos are AMAZING! You have a wonderful talent!! Great work! I really enjoyed this post on your blog. You really went deep into yourself and your feelings to bring out how photography affords itself to you. I love how you have analysed your activity very carefully and are posting such enriched information for us to read. It would be awesome if you were able to put in a quote or definition to explain and back up your ideas about affordance at the beginning?
Keep up the wonderful snapping :)


Matt
Hey Matt. I am loving your blog! It’s full of sooo much meaning and passion! You seem to have an awesome grasp on the ideas of communication, connection and the aspects on your activity. The information provided is really enriched and you can tell you have obviously put a lot of thought into it, which is awesome. To help this post make a bit more sense to the readers (people outside of our course) it may help to explain and give a few definitions about affordance as communication, connection and aspects are all a part of it. Keep up the good work J


Breanna
Hey Bean! Awesome job on your blog so far! I love how much quality information you have in this post around how cooking brings communication into your flat. Love how your flat has created a 'homely' feel! That must be such a nice environment and atmosphere to be a part of! Fantastic that you have gone out and found the reference about the movie chocolat. It could be helpful to you if you explain what affordance is and also talk about the other aspects of affordance- Connection and moral properties, good/bad aspects.
Keep up the good work :)

The Whitebait story

During the holidays by father gave me a pound and a half of whitebait to bring back to the flat in Dunedin. I was STOAKED! I mean whitebait is expensive... I could sell that off for $30, which I really did consider, however I thought that my flat would enjoy it. My bringing whitebait back to the flat, it allowed me to provide for the flat and give my share by contributing. My flatmates come from farms so they are constantly providing meat for us. I was so excited to be able to finally give something. Especially whitebait... I have full respect for the bag full dad had given me. Do you know how hard those little white slimy creatures are to catch! Whenever I have tried to catch them they NEVER swim into my net! So trying to get the whitebait back to Dunedin was a little bit of an issue. As it is a nine hour drive back I had to make sure I could keep the whitebait as frozen as possible. That involved wrapping it in newspaper with MANY layers!! And sourcing a little chilly bin! Luckily when I arrived in Dunedin it was still cold and well... half frozen! I was very excited to cook the whitebait for the flat, especially because I had never cooked it before. It was always mum or grandma who cooked it. A couple of my flatmates had never had whitebait before. It is very much a west coast speciality so I was very proud to be cooking them something that came from my home and a thing that had caused such a culture to arise in my area. Before I began to cook I had to ring up grandma just to check how I was to do it. Once I had sorted out the recipe... to my surprise I had never actually realised just how easy it was to make a patty! So I began cooking. I experimented with the size of the patties, how much whitebait I should put in and learning when the best time was to flip them. As much as I tried I could NOT at all get them to look as perfect as grandmas do! I tried and tried but my patties were certainly not circles. O well it’s the taste that counts. I decided that I would cook mash potato and minted peas to go with the patties as that’s what Grandma always does. I went outside and picked a lemon from the neighbour’s tree, you can’t have a whitebait patty without lemon. As I was doing that I suddenly thought to myself that we definitely need bread. Thankfully there was a fresh loaf there and it was WHITE! My mother says that you ALWAYS must have white bread with your patties. Once I had finished cooking I served it up to my flatmates. Some of them were eager to try and a few were a bit unsure about the eyes and fins looking up at them from their plate. Over all I think the whitebait was a success. Only one of my flatmates didn’t like it, which didn’t worry me as it gave me a whitebait sammie for the next day!! I was very glad it had gone well and very happy that I could contribute to the flat, bringing a speciality from home.

Affordances part 2!!

There are three more aspects of affordances that were not mentioned below. These are aesthetics, spirituality and health. These are three pretty important aspects for us to grasp to fully understand the affordances of cooking. So here’s hoping I can explain to you and help myself understand these important concepts.

Aesthetics- I was struggling to comprehend what this word really meant. Good old un-trusty Wikipedia helped me out by explaining that it refers to...

“A branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty.^[1] It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste.^[2] More broadly, scholars in the field define aesthetics as "critical reflection on art, culture and nature" (2011).

When looking at the aesthetics of cooking we refer to things like- the presentation of the food, how it looks, how it tastes, the smell, the color of the food, its invitingness, how the food is culturally fitting.

You can look at aspects of cooking like the appreciation from others, the satisfaction in communication, the noisy and clattering of someone banging away in the kitchen, the beauty of fulfilling hunger, feeling just right, and even to that state of frustrated perfectionism.

Through cooking you can create absolute beauty, a wonderful work of art, which can be admired for a minute before satisfying our need to eat. Mahy describes how cooking can be and is art through the story ‘A work of art’. Mahy (1988) writes “when I saw it, I said that’s art! I said, that’s what art is about. It’s a cake – yes – but not just a cake. It’s a statement in its own right. My dear, it’s got such passionate equilibrium.”

Spirituality- This is a very difficult concept to explain. Spirituality can be defined and mean a whole lot of different things. In relation to affordances I found a definition off Wikipedia that states that spirituality is “an inner path. It refers to a person's efforts to discover the essence of his/her being or nature; or to the deepest values and meanings by which people live. Spirituality is often experienced as a source of inspiration or orientation in life”.  So in a sum up sentence spirituality is about looking at what is the potential for feeling connected with the universe through an activity, mine being cooking.

This could be things like...

·         Cooking providing a sense of meaning.

·         It provides an opportunity to serve others

·         Gratitude in giving/receiving and making for others.

·         It has sacred meaning

·         It can make people be at peace

·         Can provide connections to the land, through using and cooking food grown in the earth.

·         Celebration

·         Connection to ancestors through recipes and the passing on of knowledge

·         Belonging

·         Being connected to cyclical time – different foods are cooked at different times of the year, also different foods are grown.

·         Values/ethics of the activity/values eg- underpinning endurance and waiting for a meal

·         Grace before meals – part of gratitude

Health- In cooking, health is a major aspect and is constantly drained into society. The idea of healthy eating is pushed into our society, yet so many people out there do not do it. Food can provide energy, it gives vitamin and iron to the body, has antibiotic properties, can make you fat if you choose to eat the wrong foods, it can control conditions, and also can cause you to become sick. Cooking can be used in the way of health as a relaxing/de-stressing tool, can be therapeutic to an individual but this can also be in reverse for some people eg- increase stress etc. There are also other aspects like hygiene eg- washing hands before cooking and the prevention of catching bugs eg- keeping meat refrigerated and making sure it is well cooked so people to not catch things like salmonella and food poisoning. Food must be consumed in order for a person to live. Visser (1986) states “Food is ‘everyday’-it has to be, or we would not survive for long”.  For people to carry on living we must put this fuel, being food into our body in order to keep kicking.

References-

Mahy, M. (1988). The door in the air and other stories. London: JM Dent & Sons Ltd.

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

Wikipedia. (2011). Aesthetics. Retrieved form http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics

Wikipedia. (2011). Spirituality. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality

The need and importance of cooking to me during this course!

The importance of cooking to me is a very difficult statement for me to comprehend. I automatically think... cooking pfft, I really do not like it! It’s long, boring and tiring! But when I truly start to think about cooking, my experiences and my skills I have around this activity I’ve realised that this automatic negative thought I get is really not that true. By participating in the activity of cooking for this class I have had to be mindful, conscious and aware of what I was doing, trying to really unpick the activity of cooking. Reflecting on my experience of cooking so far in this course I have discovered that my need during the weeks has changed. When I first began cooking for this course my need was to please my flatmates as peer pressure influenced this, and the need to be accepted. I disliked cooking and saw it as a chore that must be done, always looking for the easiest and quickest meal to cook so my job was over and done with. Now coming towards the end of this course and in the stage of reflecting back on my experience and really trying to draw out the meaning and importance of cooking, I have discovered that my views and needs at the start compared to now have changed immensely. I didn’t think that I would ever look forward to cooking dinner ever... but now I am constantly finding myself looking forward to and excited to cook. My need has changed from needing to cook because it’s something that must be done, which pleases my flatmates, into an activity that brings me excitement, gives me independence and a sense of defining me as an adult, it brings fun, lots of challenges to overcome and full fills a  need of enjoyment and satisfaction. Maybe there has always been a need for cooking to give me enjoyment and excitement in my life but I was not consciously aware of this. By engaging mindfully in this activity it has opened me up allowing me to feel these emotions and express this within the activity of cooking. Although my need is still to please my flatmates and provide them with yummy food and continue to belong within the flat, I think I have discovered that there is a deeper need within me that I am also trying to please.

This is a quote from the film Julie and Julia explaining the idea that cooking can be  more than just the doing. It statisfies needs of fulfilment and excitement.

“I didn't understand for a long time, but what attracted me to MtAoFC [Mastering the Art of French Cooking] was the deeply buried aroma of hope and discovery of fulfilment in it. I thought I was using the Book to learn to cook French food, but really I was learning to sniff out the secret doors of possibility.” (Ephron, 2009).

References

Ephron, N. (Director), (2009). Julie and Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, 1 tiny apartment kitchen [Motion picture]. North America: Sony Pictures Entertainment.