Holiday Baking
Seminars@Hadley
Holiday Baking: Stirring It Up in the Kitchen
Presented by
Linn Sorge
Patti Jacobson
Dawn Turco
Moderated by
Karen Woodfork
December 6, 2008
Linn Sorge
First thing we’d like to do is join Karen in welcoming all of you. We realize it’s a Saturday morning in December and there is much to do, getting ready for all of the holidays. And so we are very glad to have each and every one of you with us today.
I’m Linn and I teach a variety of things—word processing, internet basics and social skills series to help parents and teachers and teachers’ aides and grandmas to work with their youngster who are visually impaired. I have been teaching at Hadley since the fall of 2000. I’m the youngest Hadley member of our group. I’ve been baking since I was a little girl. Part of what I want to encourage all the way through this seminar is if you’re a grandma, grandpa, mom, dad, aunt, uncle, get your little guys involved. Get the little girls in the kitchen and let them—it will be a little messy but that’s okay. Messy makes memories.
So, welcome and I will turn it now over to Patty.
Patty Jacobson
Good morning, everyone. My name is Patty Jacobson and I have been teaching with Hadley since 1994. I teach independent living, guide dogs, and the food series, which I’d like to put a plug in for. We actually have a course called “Grain and Sweets” and it talks all about baking. Plus there are four other courses within the food series. So if you haven’t already taken it you might think about taking the food series.
I was born three months prematurely and I’m totally blind due to too much oxygen in the incubator. I started baking, or helping back I should say, when I was about five years old. My mom would roll out pie dough, I’m dating myself. This was in the days when they used lard in pie dough. I would sprinkle it with cinnamon and sugar and nuts and little dollops of butter, and roll it up. Then she would make little indentations where I was supposed to slice so I would slice evenly. And we would make little cinnamon rolls. I used to help make cookies and dip things in powdered sugar. There is just lots of stuff little kids can do.
Dawn, how about you?
Dawn Turco
Good morning all and welcome as well. My day for the last 15 plus years I’ve been working out of Hadley Central. But in the evening and on weekends I am the chief or executive chef at our house. I’m the product of a mother who knew how to cook but didn’t care to and of a husband now who doesn’t know how to cook, and happens to think anything I produce is just wonderful. That actually has nothing to do with my low vision; he just thinks the cooking that comes out of our kitchen is great. One of the things I do love to do is bake. As we chatted before we started today, today is one of those days that you just feel like turning the oven on and getting something of a good smell going.
So perhaps for the participants this morning, by the time you leave this seminar you will be checking out your own pantries to see what you can pull out and start putting together or maybe go off to the store to buy something so that you can follow up on the enthusiasm that we have today, that we’ve seen through the chat and text messaging already.
We do have a full seminar today so I won’t say much more by way of introduction but I will get us started. One of the ways we thought we might get ourselves going today is to take a look at some tips from the experts. There is a website called Baking911.com and they offered up ten tips for baking. We thought by going through those you can do what we did which was kind of do a mental check off of the practices that you currently have or the things that, perhaps like me, sometimes I kind of forget to do. So these are good reminders. After we do that we’re going to start moving into what we three as individuals do, which I think in some cases is reinforcing to the tips but we have obviously a special kind of angle that we’re looking at today with being visually impaired.
Anyway, Baking911 offers the following tips; Tip number one, they say read through the recipe and gather the ingredients and make sure all of your pans and equipment are clean and dry and ready to go. Of course they emphasize washing the hands before starting, how important that is. Let’s say it again, wash hands before getting going. Tip number 2, premeasured the flour and other ingredients. Use the best and freshest you can find and prepare any of those in advance if necessary. I have tacked on a little addition there to use the proper measuring cups, liquid or dry. We’ll talk about that later.
Tip number three, use the appropriate sized baking pans and properly prepare them. Tip number four, adjust oven shelves and preheat the oven. Use an oven thermometer. I’ll be honest, I don’t use a thermometer and it’s one of those, sometimes I get that oven preheated before I have adjusted the shelves and I just kick myself for it anytime I do that. So, adjust oven shelves and preheat the oven. Tip number five, carefully follow each mixing step in the recipe and do not over or under mix. Tip number six, don’t crowd the oven and avoid opening the oven door during baking. How tempting is that to do? With certain recipes you may have to rotate the pan so you have to pay attention to that as well.
Number seven; pay special attention to baking times. While they say let your eyes and nose as well as other indicators be your guide, I’ll tell you I do let my nose and the timer help me along. Tip number eight, cool baking goods thoroughly before serving or storing. Be sure you have that counter space and cooling rack out and ready to go. And make sure you have a clear traffic path when you’re baking. You don’t want to have to step around things when you have a hot tray of cookies in your hands. Tip number nine, finishing touches, consider how you might finish off or decorate your creations. And finally, tip number ten. Store baked goods properly. Clean containers or new plastic bag. Storing is very important.
Those are the ten tips from the experts, now we’re going to start in on some of our own and in response to some questions from students we thought we’d talk about preparing for baking. I’m going to hand off to Patty and we’re going to talk a little bit about how we shop, how we organize a kitchen, how we organize the recipe and handle recipes. This is kind of the prebaking stuff. Let me release the microphone and hand it back to you Patty.
Patty Jacobson
Thank you, Dawn. In thinking about shopping, that’s something I hate to do but it’s necessary. It’s really important to keep your kitchen organized. That way you can independently go through and see what you have, see what you need. It really helps me to sit down and go through a recipe, read through it, make sure I understand it, and then make a list of what I need. I usually make my list on my Braille Sense, which is a note taker. It’s kind of like a Braille note. Other people make their lists just on regular Braille paper or in large print or make a master list on a computer and then go through and pick out what you want.
I like to get rid of clutter in the kitchen. When I go shopping, excuse me. I sort of lost my train of thought here. When I go shopping I’m lucky I have a phone number that I can call and order my groceries and the groceries are delivered. It’s very convenient. It’s a little bit more expensive but I justify that in thinking that I would be paying for cab fare to go to and from the grocery store. So I don’t mind paying the delivery charge. Other people go to the store and do their own shopping maybe with a helper from the grocery store or those of you hi-tech people that are good at ordering online, that’s another shopping option.
I’m going to turn it over to Linn; Linn, if you have more information about shopping or if you would like to talk about kitchen organization.
Linn Sorge
I live in a littler community where we do not have anymore that we can call and have items delivered not even using online from a grocery store. So I have to bop off to the store. I go either with a friend or I go to the service desk and they will provide somebody to go around with me. I prepare a printed list for them if I’m going like that and I take a pencil so that as they get things they can mark them off.
A suggestion, if you’re totally blind as I have always been, I like to everything that goes into my cart go through my hands first. This avoids what happened to me that taught me this. I got up to the checkout counter one day and the lady said “You must be doing a lot of baking today.” I said “No, not really. I’m just having friends over and having strawberry shortcake and all of that.” She said “It must be a big group of friends.” Well, come to find out when I had asked for a quart of strawberries my helper was a young person who wasn’t really good with fractions and he had provided me with a flat, which was eight quarts of strawberries. Since then my rule is it comes to my hands and then goes into the cart.
I too clear my decks. When I am going to bake in the kitchen I want clear surfaces. I want everything organized beforehand. I get my oven adjusted. It’s sort of like getting all of your ducks in a row before you really begin. And that makes the beginning a whole lot more enjoyable. Dawn, how about you?
Dawn Turco
Well, shopping as a non-driver, prior to being married I would kind of barter with friends. Every couple of weeks I would go for what we call “the major shop” and in exchange for that trip to the grocery store, which the friend was really doing any way and was happy to provide. I always think it’s nice to do a turn around so we go to breakfast first and I would treat. That got me out there to get those big heavy items that I couldn’t necessarily get and carry on my own at a neighborhood store.
Shopping is not a big problem and thanks to markers and keeping lists I seldom forget something. That becomes very important because you just can’t jump in the car and run and get something that you totally forgot. You find yourself making lists more, I think. As far as the others; cleaning the deck is so important. When I have not done that in the past, on occasion there is that accident where you think you’ve got the pan ready to go in the oven and you turn around and there is something on the counter you forgot to put in and it was a function of too much clutter and not double checking that recipe you went through it. I’ve tried to fleece myself and develop better practices as the years go on.
In terms of managing recipes, as I said my husband thinks I’m just wonderful and when he loves a recipe I’ve tried he marches up to the computer and puts the recipe on the computer, blows the print up to a size he knows I appreciate. And then he puts it in a special file. So that as I go along baking, it has happened on occasion a recipe sheet that is just sitting on the counter that I am holding with my hands and leaving nearby, it can get pretty mucked up with dribbled egg or melted chocolate or whatever. It’s not a problem because we just go up and print a fresh one if that’s what we need.
That’s pretty much how I handle the recipes. As he goes to put those on he also even puts in my adaptations because I bet a great many of us participating today, we kind of like to add to or adjust a recipe as we go along. For example, one of the things I do is whatever amount of cinnamon a recipe calls for I double it. Because we just happen to love cinnamon.
Those are my tips and that’s my practices. Linda or Patty, anything you wanted to add?
Patty Jacobson
I wanted to add, it’s not only the blind person that has a hard time not getting all of the ingredients in a recipe. I have a lady that used to be my secretary when I used to work someplace else. She was making cinnamon rolls and the recipe said “two teaspoons cinnamon set aside.” So she did, she set it aside and never did put it in the cinnamon rolls.
I wanted to talk a little bit about preparing for your recipe. I think it’s important to get all of the ingredients out for the recipe and put them on one side of your work area. I put them away after I add them to the recipe. I like to keep a sink of hot soapy water so I can get rid of measuring cups and measuring spoons as I use them. My rule for myself when I’m handling a recipe in the kitchen, I don’t’ allow any hi-tech equipment in the kitchen. I don’t take my Braille Sense in the kitchen. I don’t think it’s a good idea to have a computer in the kitchen. You just never know when something is going to spill or your hands are going to be gooey or whatever.
One thing that you can get is plastic Braille paper. I think that’s on one of our resources, American Thermal form. Linn, you might talk about that a little bit more because I think you know about that. I put my recipes on tape. I do have a tape recorder in the kitchen; I keep it over on the kitchen table away from where I’m working. That way I can just read from my Braille Sense onto tap what my recipes is and I don’t have to worry about spilling on it. Linn, how about you?
Linn Sorge
I, like Patty, keep nothing hi-tech in my kitchen. But besides the sink of soapy water I get a dish rag and I get it wet, not drippy just wet and I keep it in a certain place on the counter, like at the front right corner of the workspace. So that if I’m going to grab a bottle with a spice or something I make sure my hands are clean so I don’t have to wash all of the bottles afterward. You can even get those button towels that if you have an apron, you sew a little button on or a place where a towel can go. Then you can always dry your hands if you want to do something like that.
I use thermal form paper from the American Thermal Form Corporation sometimes. I also tend to emboss a recipe and use it like Dawn does until it sort of gets gunked up and then I throw it away and get another one. On our resource list is a group called “Volunteer Braillists and Tapeist.” They’re out of Madison, Wisconsin and many of their books are computer carried. So they’re not plastic but lots of their cookbooks are still on thermal form paper. That’s wonderful because you can take a wet rag, if you gunk up that recipe and wipe it off and everything is back to normal.
It’s a good resource. You can borrow cookbooks from them which I like. And then you can buy them. So before I purchase anything from them, I borrow first and then I look at the ones I want. If it’s just a few recipes out of a book I just copy them for myself. Another thing that I know some of my friends do is that if they’re visually impaired there are often fan hoods over stoves. They get good, powerful magnets and blow up their recipes the way that Dawn was talking about. To the level that they want and then hold them up there with magnets, so they’re off the counter. They’re at about face level and they can see them. That’s another tip if you’re visually impaired. Dawn?
Dawn Turco
I just want to add this text message Grace had when we were talking about shopping. She said don’t forget about other shoppers. When her husband gets lost in another aisle from the store and she needs help she just asks for help from another shopper. Grace, unlike you I ask my husband to wait in the car for 15 minutes because he just bugs me. He’s like “What are you looking for? What are you looking for?” And I just tell him “I’m just looking. It’s not that I’m going directly to the shelf and grabbing exactly what I want. I like to see what’s on the shelves.” So, he’s quite happy to wait in the car and come in in 15 minutes and say “Okay, what do you want me to go get?” And then I send him on his way.
Karen, I don’t know if there have been other text messages or if we can take a pause and a breath at the moment and see if anybody else has a comment about their kitchen organization or shopping or recipes before we get talking about our specific baking tips and we move on. Questions?
Linn Sorge
I want to add one thing before we turn it over to Karen. For all of you who are out there in seminar listening land, you should know that Dawn makes some of the best brownies those of us who work in Hadley have ever had. We can all testify to it because we request them frequently. Also, I wanted to reiterate I, like Dawn, do a turnaround. If I’m going to go on a big shopping trip with a friend I encourage going out to lunch or breakfast. It makes a nice day of it, makes it a little more friendly and it’s a little giving back. Sorry, Karen.