Empowering Women in Midlife: Debra’s Journey from Vision Loss to Cooking Passion and Healthy Eating Tips

What if losing your sight could lead you to discover your true passion for cooking? Join host Heather Carey in this inspiring episode of Real Food Stories as she chats with Debra Erickson, the remarkable executive chef and founder of The Blind Kitchen. Debra’s journey is a testament to resilience and empowerment, as she shares her story of overcoming vision loss due to retinitis pigmentosa, diagnosed at just 28 years old. Imagine navigating life without the ability to drive or see, yet still pursuing your dreams in the kitchen!

At the age of 59, Debra became the only blind student to graduate from culinary school, proving that age and circumstance are no barriers to achieving your goals. Her mission now is to empower others experiencing vision loss through adaptive cooking tools and strategies that make cooking accessible and enjoyable. Debra’s insights on cooking are not just about techniques; they delve into the emotional connection we have with food and the importance of nurturing our culinary journey, regardless of our skills or life challenges.

Throughout their conversation, Heather and Debra tackle fears surrounding cooking and provide practical advice for those hesitant to step into the kitchen. They discuss how to cultivate a healthy relationship with food, emphasizing mindful eating practices and the joy of cooking. This episode is filled with nutrition advice and healthy eating tips that resonate deeply, especially for women navigating midlife and the complexities of menopause health.

Listeners will discover how to embrace their personal food journeys and overcome the myths surrounding weight loss and healthy eating. Debra’s story is not just about cooking; it’s about empowering women to take control of their health and well-being through culinary nutrition and sustainable eating practices. From cooking techniques to family food traditions, this episode is a rich tapestry of insights that will inspire you to nourish your body and soul.

So, whether you’re a seasoned chef or just starting your cooking adventure, tune in for an uplifting conversation that celebrates resilience, joy, and the transformative power of food. Let Debra’s journey motivate you to embrace your own culinary path and discover the abundance that comes from cooking with love and intention.

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Transcript:

Speaker #0
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome back. And if you are just tuning in with me for the very first time, it’s so nice to meet you. And I’m really glad you’re here with me today. I am your host, Heather Carey, nutritionist, chef, mom, and a woman who has been around the block with food. I want to open up about real food in relation to health, weight, and our bodies so you can make peace with what you eat. Hi everybody and welcome back to the Real Food Stories podcast. Today I am so excited. I have Debra Erickson here and Debra is the executive chef and founder of The Blind Kitchen. Debra is blind with very little vision and one eye only. She attended and graduated from cooking school and was the only blind student in her class. Her website and business, The Blind Kitchen, is where she showcases adapt… culinary tools, strategies, and techniques for cooking safely and independently in spite of vision loss. So hi, Debra. Welcome to Real Food Stories. I’m so happy to have you on here today because I think when you first approached me to be on the show, my initial thought was this is a topic that might not appeal to my audience. I mean, fascinating topic to me. But as I continue to hear your story. I realized the courage it must have taken to cook in the kitchen in cooking school and even now when you have lost your vision. And it occurred to me that for many of my clients, that fear around cooking is real. And we talked about this a little bit off air. And I think that fear stops people from getting into their kitchens because they either don’t know how to cook. or they’ve never learned how to cook and they feel a real sense of shame for thinking that they’re letting their families down or they just can’t figure this out so this is a very real thing with with my clients so i thought this would actually be a perfect conversation to have and i want to just jump in and start and hear your story and so can you start from the beginning when you lost your vision and going to cooking school and… And all of that.

Speaker #1
Heather, thank you so much for having me. And that fear and that shame are around so many things in women’s lives that they often go together, that you’re afraid of something and then you’re ashamed because you don’t step up to the fear. And my specialty has to do with cooking, but it can apply to so many other places in our lives. So I am. So I went blind. I was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa at 28 years old. I went to the doctor just for some eyeglasses, for astigmatism, and got the notice that, by the way, I think I see something in your eyes that you’re going to go blind. And he referred me to an ophthalmologist, and I went to them, and they confirmed that I indeed did have this disease. It does not exist in my family on either side. So, I mean… It meant my parents were recessive gene carriers. And I’m one of 12 children and three of us have it. So, yeah.

Speaker #0
12 children. That’s a lot of children.

Speaker #1
Same parents, same parents. Indiana, hello. Wow. So, when we went back and got, you can’t make this up, his name was Dr. Korns. That was our eye doctor. My sister wore glasses and my dad wore glasses. So… They would take, you know, there were two or three new kids a year, it seemed like, that had to go to the eye doctor, and we’d get in the station wagon and go to Dr. Korns, and we went back and retrieved the records. And when I was 17, one of my notes in my records indicated that I had signs of decreased peripheral vision, and I should see a specialist, but that got lost in the mayhem. And so it looks like I started losing my vision in adolescence. And that made me. very clumsy. So the initial signs of retinitis pigmentosa are lack of night vision and lack of peripheral vision. But how do you know how much night vision anybody else has? Or how do you know how much peripheral? And the DMV doesn’t test for night or peripheral vision. They should, trust me. Yeah, they don’t. Yeah, it’s just what’s in front of you is what they test for. So I ended up, I So at 28, I was diagnosed, went to a support group, and they were like, oh, they’re going to take your license now. So I didn’t go back to a doctor at all for a long time because I couldn’t quit driving. That driving is freedom. And that’s a myth. But if you drive, you can’t imagine your life without driving. And at that time, there were no Ubers, no Lyfts, no cell phones. You had to call a taxi from your home phone and arrange an advance. And I had two little boys. It was just a real, so I continued to drive, but I was very careful, very, very careful. I would, I was, the day I quit driving was I was pulling out from a side street onto a busier street that crossed it. And I was very careful to look to the left, to the right, to the left, to make sure no cars were coming. And then I gently accelerated and I hit a kid on a bike. I didn’t hit him hard, but he, he did fall down. The bike fell down and I stopped and I. put the car in park and jumped out and honey are you okay okay and he got back up hopped on his bike and rode away so he was fine terrified oh but you must have been terrified oh my gosh that was my that was my sign you know i i can’t do this anymore i will never know if it’s my vision because people with perfectly good vision get in accidents it it happens but i i would never know if it was my vision and so i couldn’t And my two boys were in my car with me. They were like two and six at the time. Like, this is it. So quitting driving was huge. But then I ended up pretending I could see for a long time. If you have retinitis pigmentosa, they call it RP. But it also stands for resistant people. Because we can pretend for longer than other people can. That everything’s okay. But I was very clumsy. I would knock over displays and apologize to shopping carts and garbage cans and things like that for bumping into them thinking they might be people. And so it got to the point where I couldn’t fake it anymore. So I went to the Oregon Commission for the Blind, and they taught me my cane skills, Braille, orientation and mobility, adaptive tools I use, an iPhone. with the screen completely dark. I just use swipes and gestures to make it go where it goes. And then at my computer, I use a computer. I don’t have a mouse or a monitor. All I have is, well, they exist, but I can’t see them. But I just use keyboard commands like control C for copy, control V for paste. But I can do everything all over the place using different combinations of keys. So I live in a time when technology is pretty amazing for us.

Speaker #0
Yes.

Speaker #1
And so I have taught in the past. I’ve taught adults. And so I knew I wanted to teach adults. And I was at the Commission for the Blind. And my dear friend, she’s now my friend and colleague, but she was my teacher at the time, I was taking meal prep lessons. And the light bulb went on. And I said, I’d love to. to teach us. This would be fun to teach people how to cook. And then the light bulb went off, and I thought, I don’t know how to teach people how to cook. I don’t know how to cook myself. My mom, you know, basically distributed food. And she didn’t have, she had seven daughters. She didn’t have time to put us in front of the stovetop and really teach us.

Speaker #0
I can imagine what that must have been like getting, I mean, that’s 14 of you.

Speaker #1
Oh, it was chaotic. Breakfast, lunch,

Speaker #0
dinner every night. That must have been like a A production line.

Speaker #1
It was. First,

Speaker #0
they didn’t have time to teach you how to cook. And I think that’s a really good point because that, for my clients, they say that too, that there’s like no one taught them how to cook. And if you, I mean, yeah, cooking is a skill. Absolutely. So if you didn’t learn it from your mom or your grandma or something, or you didn’t go to cooking school like you and I did, that, how do you learn how to cook? So, you know, so great point that. Yeah, you didn’t, or just great insight that you didn’t learn from your mom because she was just in a production of eating the masses.

Speaker #1
It’s so true. And so, and I didn’t want to learn to cook. I wanted to be out doing cartwheels and climbing trees and playing baseball and stuff like that. I was a tomboy. So I have two sons. I mentioned them earlier. And the youngest is now six foot five. And I didn’t cook well for them either. I use things like… Hamburger Helper and macaroni and cheese. They love macaroni and cheese. And things you put in the microwave are that, you know, come in boxes and I could follow directions. And that’s how I cooked. But I was not a good cook by any stretch. But Kyle grew tall, so I must have done something right. So when I was thinking about teaching cooking, you know, teaching people how to use their phones to read boxes was kind of what I could help them to do. So I elected to go to culinary school. And as the only blind student, it was interesting that the chefs could not have been nicer and more helpful, but they held me to the same standards. And I made it through. And I had no intention of starting a business at that point. I graduated in June of 2019. And I just for the record, I was 59 years old. So I was no spring chicken. I wasn’t 18 years old. And I… wanted to come back to the commission and teach cooking like Char was doing. And so, but March of 2020, and I did teach, but March of 2020, COVID kicked in. And then I was sent home for a year and a half. And so I started, or in real time, culinary school is very intensive, many hours. And it’s hard, a lot of memorization, science, technology, formulas, different things.

Speaker #0
I understand that. I mean, I went to cooking school, too, and I guess that’s to do it blind. It’s hard for me to imagine. And I mean, what courage that must have taken you to even show up on the first day.

Speaker #1
Courage or stupidity. I didn’t know. I didn’t know if I’d get through it. And I have a dear friend. I was with her yesterday evening and she said. When you first said you wanted to go to culinary school, I thought, yeah, sure you will. She didn’t say it out loud, but she told me later after I graduated that she couldn’t figure out how I was going to manage it. But, you know, we all get given obstacles in our roads. And you just, if you want it bad enough, generally you can figure it out. And I have a great support system and that definitely helps. And I wanted it. That’s the bottom line. So I started to organize all that information I’d learned in culinary school because I’d find little gems here and there. I didn’t make all the stuff up that I’ve done in the blind kitchen. I learned it through webinars and podcasts and cooking shows. I mean, there was like, like there’d be a cooking technique. I’d be like, that would work very well for blind people, you know. And so I had all these little pieces and then pulled them together and organized them.

Speaker #0
I want to just backtrack for one second. How long were you in culinary school for?

Speaker #1
For one year. Now, I could have done two years and gotten an associate’s degree. But the second year has to do with catering and culinary accounting and running a restaurant, those kind of things. And I knew I didn’t want to do that. So I just did the one year. Plus I already had a master’s degree from a. prior life. I was a recreation therapist. And so I thought there’s no advantage to me to paying another year of school and getting this degree. It would make sense for someone else with different career goals, but it didn’t make sense for me to put in more time and energy into something I’d never do. I got what I needed in that first year. Yeah.

Speaker #0
Yeah. And in a year’s time, you learn everything. Yeah. You learn a lot in a year. I know.

Speaker #1
You do. Crazy how much you learn. And it was hard. It was exhausting. I’d come home. I’d be so tired from lifting heavy things and running around so many steps, you know, to clean your station and get the things you need to perform. But I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world. It was just like a labor of love is what it was.

Speaker #0
Did they accommodate you in culinary school?

Speaker #1
So I was held. to the same standards as all the other students. But yes, they did do some accommodations. Like, they put, labeled all the spices. They probably had 300 jars of spices in one room. And they had, they labeled them both in braille. And there’s a tool called a pen friend, which is a little plastic thing that runs on batteries. And it reads, if I hold it to the dot and the dot was in the same place on each label it would read out to me what was in there or I could read read Braille but the My Braille is still poor. The Pen Fender is faster. So they did that. I had talking scale. I had a talking thermometer. Reading recipes. I couldn’t read the text. And Braille in the kitchen can be rough because it’s paper. And if your fingers are messy or a little bit wet or whatever, you’re washing your hands constantly.

Speaker #0
Good point.

Speaker #1
Yep. And so I ended up the Victor ReaderStream. It’s a little machine that I could put in a Ziploc bag because you can’t have your phone. You can’t have a… iPad. You can’t have a computer. It’s against the health standards. You have to put them in plastic or cellophane, and then they’re useless if you’re using gestures to guide them. And so they did. They did what they could, but where they couldn’t help me is, it’s like, so everybody’s there wanting to work in a restaurant or own a restaurant or a catering business. And if you come into my restaurant and you order scrambled eggs and hash browns and bacon, And two hours later, you wave down your server and say, hey, where’s my food? Well, you know, the chef is blind. And so she takes a little longer. You don’t want to hear that. You go into a restaurant, you want to get your food. So it’s just like the cooking shows. You are given like an hour and a half to make a super salad and then a protein, a starch, and a vegetable. And you have to make three plates. They always made odd number of plates just to see if you could get. the quantities right and the plating without waste. And I wasn’t the only one that didn’t finish those on time. Sometimes I’d run five, 10, even 15 minutes late. Other people did stagger at different times, but I was the only one that never made it on time. I’m slower. It takes me longer. And I’m sure there’s really good blind cooks out there that are as fast as can be, but I am not one of them. And I found most of my students aren’t because we have to be very thoughtful. about where we’re putting that towel down or where we’re putting that salt and pepper. If we don’t know where it is, it might as well be invisible. It’s gone. And so you can’t spend a lot of time searching for things. You’ve got to be thoughtful and take that extra, you know, five seconds to make sure it’s planted in a place where you’ll be able to find it. So, and that those five seconds add up. So I, but they would say, if you can’t finish on time, finish strong. And that’s what I focused on. You lose more points if you don’t season your food well than if you don’t get done on time. So I just played the cards, though, you know, the food’s got to be good.

Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, well, what what incredible courage and mindset. I mean, I heard you say like that there wasn’t a there was no like I can’t do this, but I versus I can do this. And I think that’s. That’s such a great distinction, you know, between like that fear and then limiting yourself and just being open to the process.

Speaker #1
Yeah, it’s more like I have to do this. I would say I would argue that it’s more like I have to do this. I, you know, you kind of just got to put your vision, so to speak, on on the goal. And then you just you just go forward and you do it. I… And I don’t know where that comes from one way or another. I’m no hero one way or another, but it just is part of who I am. And I know a lot of other women out there that have done some pretty incredible things with, you know, abusive partners or, you know, where things are thrown in their way and they still achieve it. And I think, how in the world do you keep going to do that? And so mine happens to be vision loss. But I… a lot of other people are doing some pretty incredible things out there.

Speaker #0
Yeah. I mean, you lost your vision and then you were brave enough to go to cooking school, of all things, and you are 59 years old when you went to culinary school. I mean, I’m wondering right now if I went back to culinary school, how I would actually do, because when I went, I was pretty, it was in my 20s.

Speaker #1
I didn’t know, to be fair. I had no idea what I was getting into.

Speaker #0
Yeah. So, okay, so you graduate from culinary school and then tell me what happens after that.

Speaker #1
So I went to teach immediately at the Commission for the Blind. And so that was in June. In fact, the woman I spoke of earlier that had taught me how to cook under blindfold had an experience happen where she was set to teach that semester. I wasn’t. And so I started teaching on Monday. When I graduated on a Thursday. Oh, wow. I started teaching immediately in June and then was sent home in March of 2020, as we all were, till the world could figure out how to navigate a world with COVID in it now.

Speaker #0
Was there any thought of going online with your cooking?

Speaker #1
You know, it’s a good question. Teaching people to cook remotely, there’s a lot of risk in that. I don’t know how to do it. If I’m standing with you hand on hand and you can’t see in front of a stove, I can keep enough hand on hand with you, what you’re doing. I can talk to you. I can make sure that you’re doing what I tell you. If it’s remotely, I really can’t. So that’s the other thing about the blind kitchen is a lot. of my customers are people that have cooked for their families and been, you know, for Christmas or Hanukkah or Thanksgiving, and they’re known as the cooks. But now, often because of age-related vision loss, they don’t know how to get back in there and cook. They don’t know how to not get cut. How could I possibly not burn myself? And so the blind kitchen, some of the most emotional emails that make me emotional are the ones where they say, you know, this has helped me get my identity back. I now can cook for my family. And I mean, something like a turkey, if you’re making that, or a big roast chicken for your family, a lot of the recipes will say, cook it until the juices run clear, cook it till it’s golden brown, cook it until it’s no longer pink. If you don’t have access to that information, that’s where like a talking thermometer comes in. Now I can hear through my ears what temperature and if it’s at 165 or higher, I’m good. I’m not going to make my family sick. But if you don’t know about talking thermometers or how to use them, you’re kind of stuck. I wouldn’t try and cook a turkey for people I love without a talking thermometer. There’s no way. Yeah.

Speaker #0
Yeah. So it’s just back to, you know, going remote versus in person. So, I mean, I know when… COVID happened for me because I teach cooking classes as well. And I had, right, it’s like either you go totally remote or you had to pause,

Speaker #1
right?

Speaker #0
You’re cooking for a while. So that was a big part of what I ended up doing was going remote. But I can understand that for you and to teach people who have vision loss and are blind that you need to be very hands-on with them. in the kitchen.

Speaker #1
And I get the request all the time. Are you going to do cooking lessons? Are you going to do cooking lessons? And I haven’t figured out how to do it without because the insurance company is, first of all, going to not be very happy about it. And I am insured because I teach workshops and things. So I need to be I can’t sell blades. That’s another thing I’m not able to do. People are always asking me, recommend them knives and stuff. And it’s like, You know, you’re going to have to do your own research on that. I teach blind skills. I don’t sell just regular knives. I’ll send you a link for a knife with a guide on it so that your bread slices are exactly the same or your brisket is exactly the same because there’s a guide that helps connected to the knife. But that’s very blind friendly. Just a regular serrated knife isn’t what I do.

Speaker #0
Right. Well, I was curious, what kind of knife do you use? do you use just on like a personal level?

Speaker #1
Sure. I use, I’ve got a eight inch chef knife, and then I’ve got a serrated bread knife, and then I’ve got several serrated paring knives, and that’s all I use for, as a rule.

Speaker #0
Yeah.

Speaker #1
Yeah. They’re just, I don’t need that many knives.

Speaker #0
Yes. I agree with you. I don’t need, right. When you see those knife sets sometimes with… Oh, my gosh. 20 knives in there. Like, you don’t, yeah, you don’t need those. You just need one good chef’s knife if you even just had that. That would be. Agreed. Agreed. So let’s talk about then some of those adaptive tools and that make cooking easier when you have vision loss and are blind. Like, I know we had talked about, or I went on your website and I know you had the. a cut glove. Right. And as I was looking at some of your adaptive tools, I’m like, these are just perfect for just like my clients, like people who have a lot of fear around cooking.

Speaker #1
It’s true. It’s true. And most of these aren’t made for blind people. They’re made for people that have fear around cooking or that work in a commercial kitchen where an insurance company will require every cook whenever they’re cutting, they have to wear them. And I’ve got really strong knife skills. I’m sure you do too, because they force you to in culinary school. But this cut glove that you’re talking about, it’s an amazing tool. And I actually have extra small ones because people want them for their children, even if their children can see. And they are relatively thin. They’re a little bit stretchy. And you put them on the hand that’s holding the food. And the knife cannot contain it. through it. I have videos, audio described videos on my website where I’m holding, wearing the glove on my one hand with my palm facing towards the ceiling. And I’ve got a sharp, that was a 10 inch chef knife just for the looks of it. And I, I slide it back and forth on the palm of my hand, the blade. of the knife and I can feel the movement and I can feel pressure, but it doesn’t cut through. My skin is just fine. So it’s a really good thing. So like if I’m cutting, let’s say like a carrot on and I’m cutting, slicing, slicing into coins, and all of a sudden that knife hits the hand holding the carrot, and I don’t expect it to, even just barely nudges it, it’s not going to cut through it because I’m wearing the glove. If I’d not been wearing the glove. By the time that knife, my brain got the message that the knife is in contact with my skin, it would be cut. And so the other place that works beautifully in is with grating foods. Because box graters are wonderful tools, but they are weird. They’re angled, they’re slanted, they got four different sides with different numbers and sizes of blades. And it’s really hard to judge when you’re too close to it. And so I don’t know of any cook. I did it when I used to be able to see. I would get that knuckle skin right in there. Oh, yeah.

Speaker #0
There’s nothing.

Speaker #1
It’s not being careless or anything like that. It’s just a difficult tool to navigate using your eyes. And if you don’t have any vision at all, it’s difficult to navigate as well. But if you’re wearing that glove, you’re going to be grating, And all of a sudden you’ll feel snag or pressure or contact you don’t expect to. You’re not going to be bleeding. and your skin won’t be in the food. You’ll just stop.

Speaker #0
Yeah. So the cut glove. I mean, I think when I saw your video, when you were just like rubbing a knife back and forth over it, I mean, and I’ve seen the cut glove before, like over the years, and like I’ve never recommended this to any of my clients. And I definitely will start doing that because I think that is a number one fear for people is Using a knife, because I always, I’m sure you do this too. I mean, you need a sharp knife, right? You don’t want to have a dull knife. You want your knives to be nice and sharp. Right. Yeah, that scares people.

Speaker #1
Yeah, if I’m trying to cut that carrot with a dull knife, I’m going to have to push harder. And to force that dull knife through it, I’m going to get cut worse. And it’s going to be a jagged cut. not a smooth cut if I do cut myself. So it seems illogical, but a sharp knife is much safer than a dull one.

Speaker #0
I tell this to people all the time that make sure your knives are sharp. That’s safer than a dull knife. And I think people, yeah.

Speaker #1
It’s illogical. It doesn’t make sense in your brain.

Speaker #0
Yes, exactly. But the cut glove makes a ton of sense. Anyone who’s then fearful of using a knife. What other tools, adaptive tools, do you promote? Or what are your top couple of tools that you feel like people couldn’t live without?

Speaker #1
Sure. So one of them is called an auto-measure spout. And it’s just a spout. It doesn’t have any power source or anything. It goes on top of a bottle of olive oil, vegetable oil, vinegar, whatever you are going to use, a tablespoon. The only measurement I have is a tablespoon. And you tip it upside down. And it dispenses exactly one tablespoon of like olive oil in your pan or your bowl. And then it stops automatically. It’s made of plastic. It’s got ball bearings in it. It’s magic. I don’t know how it works. That’s not my job to know how. It’s just to source it. And then if I want a second tablespoon, I just have to turn the bottle upside up again and then upside down. And you can hear it dispensing. And then it stops, even if you’re holding it upside down. It’s crazy.

Speaker #0
That is a great tool as well, because I know that for. for my clients too they just say like because i’ll i’ll sometimes just not measure you know i’m sort of eyeball falling eyeballing it and you know but when the recipe says two tablespoons of olive oil and you’re new to cooking people are following that to the letter and so that’s i love that tool also that’s a greatGreat. Rather than having to get out a measuring spoon and, you know, like taking that extra step.

Speaker #1
Oh, yeah. And especially if you can’t see with vision loss, if you’re trying to measure like a teaspoon of vanilla, vanilla is very expensive. And so you’ve got to hold the spoon with one hand, hold the bottle with the other hand, pour a little bit, put the bottle down, touch. Is it full? Oh, I don’t think so. Let me pour a little more in there. Put the bottle down, touch it. And you only know when it’s when it’s level is when it overflows. and you wasted it. Yes. And even when I could see, I had a hard time knowing exactly when it was level. It’s hard to do, but ours are shaped like ladles. So if you want a teaspoon of vanilla, it’s a regular teaspoon, but it’ll have one dot in the handle. If it’s a third, it’ll have three dots in the handle. They’re made out of stainless steel. If it’s a quarter spoon or a quarter cup, there’ll be four dots. it’s very easy. It’s not braille. You just have to be able to count. And then so you, but the handles face towards the ceiling for the wet measuring. So we send a little spouted pitcher, like a little beaker, basically. It’s only about an inch around and two inches tall. And you put the spoon in it. And I’ve always said, if they were going to take my vision, they should have given me a third hand because I never have enough hands. Yes. So, but now if I put that spoon in there, it’s standing up by itself. for the most part. It’s a little bit slanted, but that doesn’t matter. I’ll explain in a minute. So then I take that bottle of vanilla and I pour it into that where the spoon is standing up in the little pitcher. And I overflow the cavity of the spoon, not the pitcher, but the cavity of the spoon. So that way, when I go to lift that spoon up, if I don’t hear anything drop, I know it’s level. If I don’t hear anything and I can just pull my target bowl very close to where that is. pick it up, don’t hear anything drop. I know I’ve got an accurate measurement and there won’t be any waste because we also send a small funnel with the spoon set and I can put that funnel in the bottle. So instead of the opening of the vanilla bottle, the two ounce ones, it’s about the size of your pinky. Now I put the funnel in there and now I’ve got a little over three inches for a target. So it’s very quick and easy for me to just pour that overflow vanilla into there. So I got an accurate measurement and I didn’t waste any.

Speaker #0
That makes a ton of sense as well. And I, yeah, because I know that just all of those little things, I mean, just without having vision loss that people get nervous or fearful about, am I measuring correctly? Am I, you know, all of, just am I doing it right? And that, just all those things just make it so much easier.

Speaker #1
Right, right. And I also, we… started out talking about fears of getting back in the kitchen. And what I’ve, of course, my venue has to do with vision loss. But I think this is true of a lot of people, whether you can see or not. One is the fear, of course, cutting yourself and then burning yourself. Those are very real fears. If you don’t, if you aren’t afraid of that, you’re not going to last very long. I mean, your body is telling you this is not, you know, you’re holding a knife, you could get hurt. It’s important to note that, but you can overcome it with the right tools. and strategies. But there are other fears. We talked about the fear of making your family or friends sick. That’s a real fear that if I don’t cook that turkey or chicken long enough for that meat or whatever, it’s not that it’s not going to taste good or it’s going to look unattractive. It is going to make them sick. And so you’ve got to be very on top of that and have a strategy to make sure that you know it’s cooked enough. But the other fears that people have are fears of of being embarrassed. And this… Definitely applies to vision loss, but I think your audience is going to understand this, the fear of embarrassment. Am I going to look messy? Am I going to look disorganized? Am I going? And then the other part is the food presentation. If I can’t see the food and I’m handing you a plate, what is it? You can see it. I can’t. What’s it going to look like? Is it going to be attractive or not? And because we can’t. it organization. That’s a human thing. Some people are more organized naturally, some are less organized, but there are strategies you can do to not look unorganized. And talking about the vanilla, one thing that I couldn’t do without in my kitchen, and I’ve talked a lot of sighted people into using these, are called work trays, but they’re basically cafeteria trays. So when I’m pouring that vanilla, I’m going to work. It’s like a cafeteria tray that you’d get in a school or a hospital. And you just, it’s got those little slightly raised edges around the edges. So first of all, now my workspace is contained. It’s a known variable. It’s not the entire stretch of the counter. It is that tray in front of me. And if I want to get out my ingredients for making cookies or whatever, I can gather those all and put them on a different work tray. Now, they’re all in a predictable. defined place. And so when I’m doing that vanilla, I spilled things when I could see. I mean, everybody spills wet or dry ingredients. But instead of that vanilla running across the counter, down the front of my cupboards, onto the floor, I’ve got to clean that all up now. It’s probably going to be contained in that tray. And so that’s another strategy I could not do without my work trays.

Speaker #0
Yeah, I love that idea. I mean, I’m just Just while you’re saying that, I’m thinking that I use, when I’m teaching a cooking class, I put everything on rimmed baking sheets.

Speaker #1
Yeah.

Speaker #0
Kind of the same thing, you know, just to like distinguish like this is the salad ingredients, this is the salad dressing ingredient, you know, just to, you know, to help organize myself. But I think that’s such a great idea for even more fearful cooks and, you know, just people who are learning how to cook as a way of organizing.

Speaker #1
I agree. And I’m guessing when you went to culinary school, one of the first terms you learned was mise en place. Oh, yeah. That means everything in its place. So one of the things that most cooks do that cause a problem, whether you can see or not, is you’re trying to solve problems in real time, trying to find the vanilla, trying to find this, trying to find that. Yes. Most people start to cook and they’re not ready to cook yet. You need to get all your stuff in place. Cut your, you know, get your garnishes ready. Get your potatoes ready. Get everything in place before you turn the stove on or the oven as much as you can. Different recipes call for different steps. But most people aren’t ready to cook when they turn on the stove. They don’t have everything in place to get going. And it’s a pleasure if you’ve got everything, if you’re not scrambling to find the carrots or the potato peeler or whatever you’re looking for. That stresses me out. if the stove is on and I’m trying to find the lid to that pan, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s not a good thing and it’s very stressful longer. Yeah, exactly. I pleasant. Yes.

Speaker #0
And I totally agree with you. Yeah. The mise en place is something I always impart in my cooking classes and, and just to get yourself organized, know what’s coming in the recipe, know what you have to be, You know, you don’t want to know that like when you’re five. steps down in the recipe that, oh, shoot, I needed to have cooked brown rice, which is going to take another hour to cook, anything like that, that, right, look over your recipes, know what’s coming to you, but also, most importantly, to have everything there, right, on your tray or, you know, just in your space. Such a good point.

Speaker #1
Do you teach remotely?

Speaker #0
I do. Well, you know, like I said, when COVID happened, I mean, I was all in person until COVID. And then I went totally online for a while. So right now I do. I do hybrid, you know, I do in person and some and some online.

Speaker #1
I’m going to take your cooking class. Yeah,

Speaker #0
that would be great. I would love it. That would be that would be wonderful. That would be fun. Um, and so, and going back to, you know, what you were just saying about the, the fears around being in the kitchen and like just this, and you use the word embarrassment. I know that that’s for my, just the, the women, this is especially like your, I work with a lot of women and, um, I think one thing that they have said, you know, is that like they’re getting the backlash from. their kids or this doesn’t taste good or like that fear of is it going to taste good is it going to is everyone going to you know give me a pat on the back for doing a good job and being good enough and that just right here of their spouse their partner not liking it and this is these are just things that really I think block women, at least the women I’ve worked with.

Speaker #1
Absolutely. And the secret to that is, is make sure they’re really hungry. When you feed it to them, they’re more likely to like it.

Speaker #0
That’s a good, yes, that’s a good point too. Yes. But, you know, but all of these things that we’ve been talking about, like just using adaptive tools like the cut glove or organizing yourself, the mise en place, having all your ingredients ready. builds that confidence in the kitchen.

Speaker #1
Yes.

Speaker #0
Right. I mean, it does, you know, and you have to practice, right? I mean, you know, you know, going to cooking school, that was all, it was a year long practice, right?

Speaker #1
Absolutely. Six hours a day.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Well,

Speaker #1
two hours was class time, four hours a day.

Speaker #0
Yes, exactly. And then you have to keep on cooking, right? I mean, you have to keep this, like the skill.

Speaker #1
Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

Speaker #0
Warmed up like every day. Yes. It is. Yeah, truly. truly skills. So how, so I’m, I’m just curious. So after, you know, COVID happened, is that when you opened the blind kitchen?

Speaker #1
No. Well, I, yes, it was, I was organizing it during it and getting my, you know, the, the business license and all that. But I went back to teach at the commission for the blind and cause I love teaching in person. You obviously do too. That’s what you do. And, um, But I did that for about a year and a half, and I was starting to drop balls on both ends, you know, fulfilling orders and doing videos for the blind kitchen. And then teaching cooking is a, you have to be very mindful. You have to make sure you have all the ingredients, all the supplies, all the everything, because you want your students to have a successful experience and not because you forgot to buy the vanilla or whatever. So I was dropping things. And when you have two or three students, two or three days a week, they’re each having a different lesson. So that’s a lot of planning going on.

Speaker #0
A lot of planning. Yes. Yeah. Cooking classes take a lot of work to plan them, then to make sure you have the ingredients, get all your stuff prepped together, you know, and then execute the class so it all times out. And yeah, it’s more in the right amount of time.

Speaker #1
Right. Yes.

Speaker #0
More work than people imagine.

Speaker #1
And cleanup. Thank you very much. Yes.

Speaker #0
Yes. And then cleanup. Yes. I forgot about that. Yeah. That adds an extra, you know, hour.

Speaker #1
Yeah, exactly. So I was dropping balls on both ends and I decided I had to make a choice. So I decided to go with the blind kitchen. I was getting really good feedback on it. And people were saying this is making a difference. And I there were two other teachers at the commission that could continue. It could continue teaching. legally blind adults. And so I decided to go full-time with the blind kitchen and it’s been a real trip.

Speaker #0
Well, tell me about it. Tell me what you do on in your website. I mean, I looked a little bit and I know that you sell some of these adaptive tools.

Speaker #1
Yeah, well, we have over 90 now and some of them are organized in collections like a cutting and chopping collection. But an individual doesn’t need a whole collection of cutting and chopping tools. Everybody has different strengths. But those are mostly sold to agencies that teach people with vision loss how to cook so that they have a toolkit of things they can go to. If this one doesn’t work for that particular student, maybe this other finger guard will work. So we make audio described videos so that. People, no matter what your level of vision loss is, if you’re completely blind, you’re going to know what’s happening in that video. If I’m not talking and describing what I’m doing, maybe I need to concentrate. Then we have a professional voice, voiceover and talk tells the people watching the video what I’m doing when I’m not talking. And that all takes a lot of time and editing and things like that. I’ve got to… an extremely good team. I’ve got a web designer, I’ve got a videographer and photographer, and I have a social media person. So my husband and I, and one other person are do the packaging and shipping and we get orders every single day. And I I’m really looking forward to sourcing that out. We’re not at the point where I can pay someone to do that full time, but I really am a, I think it’s important to know what your strengths are. And I am. a cook and I am a teacher. And that is where I excel. And if I’m spending a lot of time putting things into bags, and the reason I’m able to do that is every tool is packed in its own bag that’s marked in both large print and braille. So that’s how I can, I can’t do the part where, well, I suppose I could if I had to, but I don’t have to, to put the stuff in one cardboard box and then put a label on it because none of that’s done in large print or braille. and then mail it out. So that’s what our days are doing is I process the orders, I answer emails. There are so many people that have vision loss that want to go to culinary school.

Speaker #0
Wow.

Speaker #1
Yeah, I had no idea. I mean, my friend, yeah, sure you will. I mean, it’s more like that. And so I get a lot of it. So maybe I’ll start a culinary school for blind people. Probably not.

Speaker #0
That would be a fantastic idea.

Speaker #1
I love it.

Speaker #0
Lots of work. Yeah.

Speaker #1
Yep.

Speaker #0
But you truly are like a, I mean, I’m sure you are such a fantastic role model for other people who are blind. I mean, if you can go to a mainstream cooking school and look where you are now, I mean, that’s really something to be proud of.

Speaker #1
No, thank you. I appreciate that. And the other piece that I get a lot of communication is being an entrepreneur. a blind entrepreneur. There aren’t that many of us out there. There are some. There are more blind entrepreneurs than there are blind chefs, trust me on this one. But that’s the other piece that I feel like I can give blind people advice. Say, hey, you can do this, you know, but nobody gives it to you. You’ve got to work. Just like nobody gave you your culinary school degree.

Speaker #0
Yeah. Well, yes. And I think that you have such a great attitude. I mean, it sounds like you, you know, even if you’re like doing it scared, even if, you know, if it has felt scary to you, you’re still doing it and you’re doing fantastic things with your business and your cooking. Sounds like the possibilities are almost endless. I mean, you could do a lot going forward.

Speaker #1
True, true. Just like any… You know, in the cooking world, it’s a thing now. People are into it. So, yeah. People are very into it. Yes,

Speaker #0
exactly.

Speaker #1
And they’re more educated than they used to be on it.

Speaker #0
Yes. I mean,

Speaker #1
I could probably watch the cooking shows and learn as much as I learned in culinary school now. They talk about the art and the science and the history. That did not exist in the past.

Speaker #0
Yes, exactly. No, I agree with you. So the blind kitchen. Where can people find you? Give me your website and I will put these links in the show notes and all your all your info. But tell me how people can find you, because I think that for just my listeners who are who have their vision or not, I mean, to get some of these adaptive tools is like can be a game changer.

Speaker #1
Thank you for that. Yeah. So it’s. theblindkitchen.com and make sure you put the word the in there because there is a TV show called Blind Kitchen where in Boston, they take people that can see perfectly well and put blindfolds on them and then have them do challenges. And we could talk for hours. It’s pros and cons, but that’s Blind Kitchen. I am theblindkitchen.com. And then it’s a very… clean website. I don’t have any affiliate ads or anything like that. It’s going to be very friendly to software that helps blind and visually impaired people to navigate the web. So yeah.

Speaker #0
Well, that’s great. And you have recipes on there too?

Speaker #1
I do. And I think you’ll appreciate this too. So if you’re reading a recipe and you can see, they’re going to say it’s one cup of flour, two eggs, half a cup of sugar. or whatever, they’re going to have the ingredients listed. And then when you go down, they’re going to say, cream the butter and the eggs or the sugar. And you’ve got to then use your eyes to go back up to the recipe. How many eggs was it? How much sugar was it? I put the amounts in the recipe, cream, you know, one stick of butter and one cup of sugar. And I put that in the thing. But the other thing I do is I, because I am a teacher, I when I’m doing the recipe, when I’m doing the ingredients, if there’s something special about the ingredients or something that I think people have a question about, like I did a peach bourbon cobbler on that is one of the recipes. And so when I talked when I said, you know, you need, you know, 12 ounces of peaches or whatever. And then I said, if you use canned peaches, they’ll work. but you got to do this. They’re going to be softer. They’re not going to be, if you use fresh ones, it’s going to be about four large peaches. You know, things that people will have questions about or frozen peaches. So I do, so I have ingredient notes. And then when I’m doing the recipe, I’ll do it starting with the garnishes and the produce first, because if I have that work tray I’m talking about, I’m trying to minimize dishes. If I cut up my protein, like the chicken on there and season it. That work tray is now no longer usable for me unless I wash it and disinfect it and everything like that. But if I do all the produce on it first, set it off to the side, do… the potatoes next and set it off to the side, measure it, get it all done. I’m going to have a lot less dishes. So it goes through and it describes why I did that step first. It’s teaching you so you can apply it to the next recipe that you do when I’m not there to help you with it. The other thing it does is that I put the tool I use to do that particular step. So if I am doing something, there’s another thing that’s incredible. because I use like a lot of parsley, cilantro, rosemary, things like that, fresh herbs, is you take a little bowl, like about a six ounce bowl, and you put the parsley, you know, trees in there, and then take a pair of scissors and just cut, cut, cut, cut, cut into the bowl, chop, chop, chop, chop, chop. It is amazing. And it keeps the oils and all those little pieces of parsley, they’re now not all over your cutting board, it keeps them in the bowl. And you just cut, And then you check, nope, it’s still a little bit too big. Cut, It’s amazing how uniform and consistent it is. And it’s all contained in the little bowl. It’s a game changer. So those are the kind of things that I put in the recipe. That doesn’t cost you any money. You just have to have a pair of kitchen chairs and a little bowl, and you can do it.

Speaker #0
Well, those tips are kind of genius. I mean, just even talking about just. taking from the ingredients and putting that then the ingredients again in the directions and then in the directions saying like what tools you’re going to need and i mean those are all if you don’t mind i’m going to adopt some of those for some of my recipes no please do that i think that this is you know this is what people really want and need and you know that rather than i mean for me like looking at a recipe i can easily go up and down but you know when you’re when you are a new cook. with fear and you know doing it right that having all of those other little steps is just people appreciate that easier yes just make it easier and why not make it easier those are just yeah really uh you know cutting with the scissors and herbs over a bowl all all genius yeah great great tips i can’t i can’t claim credit for inventing them but i but for

Speaker #1
Putting them in the recipe, stuff like that.

Speaker #0
Yeah, no, but really, really, you know, just some things that I probably have never thought about doing, you know, and because I don’t know, no one’s really like asked me for that. But now that you’ve said it, I’m like, oh, that’s such a good idea.

Speaker #1
It helps you clean and organize too.

Speaker #0
Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, Debra, this has been such a pleasure to talk to you. And you’re… Your story is just really infectious. I mean, I just think it’s, I think your website sounds fantastic. And I hope, you know, great things come for you more, you know, and I can’t wait to see your future cooking school, which I hope you manifest.

Speaker #1
I’ll need an assistant principal. That’ll be you.

Speaker #0
Yeah, yes, we can talk. That would be great. So thank you so much. I will put all your links in the show notes. Hope you have a great day.

Speaker #1
Thank you. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. This has been fun.

Speaker #0
Yep. And as always, if you loved this podcast, please consider gifting me with a five-star review. It is so helpful for me to get the word out on real eating, our real bodies, and real food stories. Thank you so much and have a great week. Bye for now.