Blog three! – Grandma's Kitchen

Grandma’s kitchen is like a fine tuned machine, everything had and still has its place, tags facing outwards, things refilled before they run out. Although I no longer live with her and the kitchen is newly renovated (and the draw I used to use is no longer there) I am still able to pin point every last ingredient I may need when I go to bake, which is a regular occurrence. I am her form of a step ladder; I reach the top shelf and bring things forward so she can see them, I guess that’s part of the deal when your 6ft 1.

"...in the context of the person's occupation with the environment in order to restore balance or 'fit'. Competent performance is achieved when the working environment facilitates performance and the worker can meet the task demands" (Hagedorn, 2000)


When we get down to business and ready to bake, I have maintained the role of mixer from when I was young. She makes sure the oven is preheated, that biscuits are evenly spaced, slices are pressed and cakes are cooked right through. She has an eye for detail that could beat out anyone and I often question whether she has a spare set of eyes in the back of her head as she always knows when I pick at the mix.

During our baking sessions it is completely quiet which seems strange, I guess in that sense we both use it as a time to ourselves, I find for me this when I am able to process and plan things I usually don’t have time to think about. Once the baking is done I know take on the clean up role; the worst part of baking, however it’s usually my mess I’m cleaning up anyway. Grandma usually potters around me putting things away and this is when we have our catch ups, usually about me and what I’ve been up to. It really is the little things like this that I have started to appreciate, just spending time doing something we both enjoy.

“We turn the consumption of food, a biological necessity, into a carefully cultured phenomenon. We use eating as a medium for social relationships: satisfaction of the most individual of needs becomes the means of creating community” (Visser, 1992)


Hagedorn, R. (2000). Tool's for practice in Occupational Therapy. London: Churchill Livingston.

Visser M. (1992). The rituals of dinner. London: Viking, The Penguin Group

Blog two! – The Kitchen and Me

Everything in my mother’s kitchen has its place. I do jokingly question her sometimes around possibly having OCD when it comes to tidiness and the benches being clear. We have lived in this home now for 8 years or there abouts. Mum had an interior designer help her with the layout, colour and the practical aspects of the kitchen. It seems a little bizarre that, that much effort went into designing this one part of the home, however thinking about it, it is the central hub of our home. With a large breakfast bar, used as a working space whether it be cooking, serving a buffet style dinner, or the place in which many conversations accompanied by coffee and sweet treats are had and large by folding windows above the sink that open onto the deck, used to pass meat and veggies through to the BBQ or as a means to monitor outdoor cricket games spotting the sixes or wide’s.

When I am baking I have an automatic tendency to just get what I need. Half the time I don’t even realise that I do it. Everything is in arms reach of the large working space just to the right of the oven. Measuring cups and whisks are kept in the same draw which is just to my left, mixing bowls are under the sink to the right of me and though I could never understand why, the glass bowls I use for the microwave are in the same draw as the plastic containers under the whisks and measuring cups. Even though to me this is an odd place for them, this is where they have remained and if they are not there when I go to use them; it can send me in to a flurry of panic. It is human nature to develop habits and ways of doing things, even if we may not agree.

“And immediately we start to cloak the proceedings with a system of rules. We insist on special place and times for eating, on specific equipment, on stylized decoration, on predictable sequence among the foods eaten, on limitation of movement, and on body propriety”

VisserM. (1992). The rituals of dinner. London: Viking, The Penguin Group