This week, we invite you to share your process of making food.
The truth is, at times cooking can also be a stressful experience.
There’s a lot of pressure to be a good cook from society and family, and it takes a lot creativity and time to organise, plan and prepare daily meals.
But one of the biggest challenge is to please all family members.
Because cooking is challenging it requires an incredible set of skills. Too often these skills are overlooked by ourselves and sometimes by the people we feed.
That’s why it’s important to celebrate your achievements.
The aim of this assignment is to share your work in progress, your skills, time management and the steps involved.
And documentary photography is perfect for that.
Documentary Photography
Documentary photography is a style of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects, and events, and is often used in news.
Because documentary photography is about reality it’s ok to show the messiness of everyday life.
On a practical level, you could ask someone to take a picture of you in action. But if it’s not possible you could set a timer on your smartphone.
The third option could be taking a picture of a work in progress, e.g mixing spices to make a chai, and write the different steps involved.
Celebrate Your Skills
Each time you chop vegetables, make a sandwich, go to the grocery store you are using a complex set of skills.
Because you are doing it automatically you don’t think about it.
For this week assignment you could share skills you use regularly that you are proud of.
It could be:
- A complicated technique like kneading special breads or mixing ground spices.
- Or it might be knowing how to cook creatively on a budget.
- Or the processes and practices of taking leftovers and making them into something edible and palatable.
Time Managing Techniques
During lockdown this family was overwhelmed with managing work, the children’s home schooling and food preparation. As a consequence, the parents asked their young daughter to help in the kitchen. Not only it freed time and reduced stress but the daughter also enjoyed her new responsibilities.
As we all know cooking takes time. How do you manage your schedule ? Are you teaching you children to help ? Do you have a meal timetable ? Do you freeze food for the week ?
The Art of Multitasking
Very often cooking involves multitasking. Your attention is divided but you still have to produce something that will please everybody.
Think about :
- How to you cook several dishes at once or perhaps different meals at the same time as one of the family has allergies or different preferences.
- How do you know when something is cooked properly when at the same time you have to help with homework ?
- Or knowing how to cook when you’re tired.
Celebrate Your Skills Assignment
This week share 3 pictures of your work in progress. Think about your skills, time management, and your creative ways to organise yourself.
By sharing your ‘work in progress’ there will be some ‘mess’ – flour everywhere, or containers open, or plastic on the side like tupperware and this is all good. Someone has described the mess as ‘throwntogetherness’.
Have fun !
Pierre