Here we go... again! Participation in Occupation 2

Week 35

So to my surprise we have to do another one of these... just as i thought i wouldn’t have to bother with this faulty technology for a very long time, boom they drop us another one... fantastic!

Well this course is called Participation In Occupation 2!! During this course we are to pick an occupation familiar to us and participate in that activity two hours a week consciously and really get to understand and unpick that occupation and see what it means and how this connects and leads to other things. After a lot of mucking about with different occupations i have finally came to the decision of doing cooking!

Cooking is an occupation that must be done in order to live. Cooking of food must be done every day, day after day and again and again. It is something we consume in order to carry on. Green descirbes this idea of cooking very nicely, here is a quote that sums up the importance and meaning of this activity.

“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).

Cooking is defined by the Oxford English dictionary as “preparing food or a meal by heating the ingredients, it is heated in order to become edible” (Simpson and Weiner, 1989).

I feel this definition is missing a lot of the important information around cooking and it only gives a very brief overview of what it is. Over the weeks of the course i am going to work on finding out what is really means to cook and help you viewers of my blog understand why cooking is such an important occupation to participate in. (giving the oxford dictionary a good run for their money).

Importance and meaning of cooking to me

Personally i am not that big of a fan of cooking. I feel it takes up a lot of time, its hard and rather boring! In class we were asked to come up with a few words that described the cooking for me. Mine consisted of... stressful, yummy, time wasting, hard, achieving, following recipes, tasty and not experienced.  As you can see by the words I am not the greatest fan of the occupation cooking. To me it is just something that just HAS to be done.

However if i put on my occupational therapy ‘cap’ i do easily understand how this form of occupation can be very meaningful for some individuals and how it makes for a great intervention technique.  Cooking can provide clients with yummy food to eat, engagement in meaningful activity, provide clients with sense of achievement, enables roles, gives independence, installs confidence, can work on life skills and fine motor skills, builds rapport and can create social interaction.

Practical Considerations

When deciding on the topic i was going to participate in during this course practical considerations was a biggy in me deciding cooking. The major issue of this was i had to perform this activity 2hours a week. I have a pretty busy schedule as it is and by having to fit another activity in there for 2hours i was much stumped as to what i could do. So cooking it turned out to be as i had to participate in this occupation during the week when cooking dinner for the flat and lunch making. So the major practical consideration of cooking for me is budget. As i live in a flat we have a specific budget we are to spend for food each week. This therefore puts pressure and does not allow that much freedom when cooking as the ingredients need to be all under the budget. Another practical consideration when im cooking is that i have to use whatever is in the fridge, freezer and cupboard. If someone has already used the meat this week then i will have to create another idea of what could be made. I have plenty of space and equipment in my flat kitchen which is fantastic and decreases pressure when i am cooking.

Here’s hoping that you all come back next week and have a good old read or laugh at my blog where  il be probably whinging about burning potatoes or something along those lines.

Happy cooking !

References

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

Simpson, J. & Weiner, E. (1989). The oxford English dictionary (2^nd ed). United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.