Upbeat instrumental plays, fades. DJ Ability: Welcome to Ability Anwyare Radio. This is a disability advocacy podcast. Today's show is #SoundBites, a segment all about food accessibility for persons with disabilities. We are thrilled to have guests from Dayle McIntosh Center today. Brittany: Hi, this is Brittany with the Program Manager of Core Services at the Dayle McIntosh Center. Marisol: Hi, this is Marisol. I'm the Independent Living Skills Instructor Harmony: Hi, I'm Harmony, the Youth Leader, volunteer, and participant. DMC is a CIL that is by and for PWD. We serve Orange County in Southern CA. We are not residential. Overall goal is to partner with people with disabilities in their goals of increasing self-sufficiency and independence through self-advocacy teaching skills, obtaining needed tools. equipment, accessing community resources. We are peer-based. Majority of staff and board are PWDs. Marisol: I feel that there are multiple challenges that people with disabilities face in regards to cooking. One is that they feel like they can't do it. Mainly because somebody has always done it for them, for example, their parents. So they feel that my parents never believed that I could do it. So I am not capable. That couldn't be furthest from the truth. Also, it has a lot to do with not knowing resources, or not even knowing that there are actually adaptive devices that you can make or you can use to help you to cook. Another barrier is transportation. Not being able to buy the groceries at the store. The good thing is that nowadays there's a lot of stores that actually deliver food to them at their homes. So, it's more of not knowing what to do or how to start it. So that's when we come in where we teach them. Hey you're able to cook, no matter what disability you have. DJ Ability: I understand we have a participants in one of the cooking classes.
Harmony: Hello DJ Ability Hi, so can you tell us what you like aout he cooking class?
Harmony; Yeah, I like the cooking class because it actually teaches you to cook in like the different methods of putting stuff together in a pretty easy way. DJ Ability: And what did you learn how to cook in the cooking class or prepare? Harmony: The latest we learned that's my favorite was the cake, the chocolate cake. And we also learned how to measure, which is one of my weaknesses. I did mess up a little bit in the last measuring thing. I did 2 tablespoons of white vinegar instead of teaspoons...Because I read it wrong. DJ Ability: How did it taste? Did it still taste good? Harmony: So when I first noticed that, I tasted it. The batter tasted salty. So what I did is I put in extra sugar. And that balanced it out. DJ Ability: Oh ok, good technique, ok. Well that's great that you learned how to measure. Measuring is important. Harmony: Yeah, you don't want a salty cake. DJ Ability: No you don't (laughter). Brittany: At each session we do provide an informational handout along with the recipe that we worked on that day. So participants will go home and then practice those skills, along with practicing the recipe. I did want to share that we actually have 2 different groups that cook. Harmony is a leader and participant in our youth cooking class, which is called the Independent Kitchen. class. And if I could share a little about the history and how we set up that class? DJ Ability: Yes, that would be great. Brittany: The reason why it started, as Harmony kind of shared. Cooking is such a huge part of life. We all need to eat and being able to prepare your own food is strongly tied to independence and self-sufficiency. So about 4 years ago, we launched our youth program at the Dayle McIntosh Center. And we did this through a week long summer academy where the youth learned how to cook. They did it in a cooking team. For example if we prepare a pasta dish, one person would layer pasta, one person would layer sauce, another person would layer cheese, and so forth. And what we realized was that if we truly wanted to teach young people with disabilities how to cook and how to cook independently, they really needed to have hands-on experience cooking an entire recipe. So last year we officially launched our class, the Independent Kitchen. What we do is, our youth work at cooking stations, where they each have their own recipe. We provide recipes in large print, also in Braille, depending on what their accommodation needs are. And then they have cooking tools and ingredients. We typically spend a little bit of time on a short lesson in the beginning.Harmony shared that we learned about measuring. Some other things we learned are: How you read a recipe? How do you look for a hidden ingredient? How do you modify a recipe to meet your needs? We talk about cooking safety, kitchen safety. We've also practiced pouring. And this next month we are going to focus on best techniques for mixing. What we do is a hands-on approach. So in the measuring and pouring lesson, we use dry beans and rice. And we also use water. That way we practice didn't necessarily need for our recipe. But they learn how to use it with the different tools. So, what's the difference between a measuring spoon and a measuring cup? How do you measure and pour dry versus wet ingredients? Once that's all said and done, we follow our recipe as a group. So we start by reading our ingredients, making sure that everyone the tools that we need. And we go Step by step. Starting with step one. Once step one is completed, I actually walk around.
So, it's very much set up like a cooking show. Where everything is explained. Everything is demonstrated. I walk around between each step. Once the first step is completed, I take bowl and show the youth: This is what it should look like. If the person needs to touch it, this is what it should feel like. That way they have something to compare it to.
Our ultimate goal is that learning these things hands-on, taking home the skills, taking home the recipes, these young persons with disabilities will then go home and practice. And a lot of times what we see is that parents aren't confident in their young person not being able to cook. But through the cooking class and them knowing that they've had tis experience and training, they are
more likely to let them branch out and start cooking at home.
DJ Ability: So it sounds as far as dietary restrictions, maybe a person needs to limit their sugar intake, that you make the modifications in the recipe and explain the importance of this during the course of the cooking class. It's individualized for each participant. Great!
Brittany: Definitely, some participants who can't have dairy or have other dietary needs. We talk about how you could you supplement this. What you could do instead. Definitely, we have some participants who can't have dairy. So we talk about how you can supplement this. So we also have an adaptive cooking class, across disabilities. They are older than 25 years old. And for this one, I actually started doing the workshops once a month, last year in 2018. I realized that for people, for adults, it's a little bit complicated for them to attend cooking workshops every month. Therefore, I want them to get all the information they need. So they could actually start cooking on their own. So we actually extended the cooking workshop for 7 classes, spanning 2 months. In those 7 classes, they learn some recipes. The learn lessons. So they are able to pick out whatever recipes they want. And they are able do it on their own. The great thing about this workshop, or our workshops in general, is that the consumers, no matter what disability, learn advice that can help them cook and will help them cook. A lot of them are things that are so simple, but they don't know about it. They are like, "Oh my God, I never thought about that!". To me it makes me really happy. I get really excited when consumers say I bought everything and I'm going to make Chili next week and energy that they were able to do something and it tastes good too. They get really happy about that. Especially with chicken fajitas, hey love chicken fajitas. Now through the classes they are able to do things on their own. And what a lot of people don't realize is that cooking at home saves you a lot of money. especially for people who only get SSI or SSDI. Cooking at home not only saves them money, but also enables them to adapt their recipes to the diet that their doctor wants them to have. DJ Ability: If somebody wanted to make a donation, or find our more about the program, how could they contact you? Brittany: We can be found at www.Daylemc.org. That's the website for our center. There is a donation in the top right hand corner of the screen. And if somebody wanted some more information about our services and what we do, they can also click on the link that says "Contact us." Youth Program, DMC Youth Independent AF, and AF stands for "and fun".
We are also Facebook & Instagram, @DMC Youth Independent AF, also onTwitter @DayleMcIntosh. DJ Ability: It sounds like there would be a great cook book or recipe book (laughter) that could come from this. Do you think this is something that might maybe happen in the future, maybe, perhaps? Brittany: That's definitely a future goal of ours, as well as being to teach other groups and organizations with disabilities how to cook. We don't want to be the best kept secret. We want to share and make sure that other people have access to those skills and techniques.
DJ Ability: That's great! Well, thank for sharing how you increase food accessibility for persons with disabilities through your wonderful program. We look forward to connecting with you again soon! Thank you everyone. Take care. Bye. Brittany, Harmony, Marisol: Bye
Marisol: Thank you for having us.