Kitchen Prep: On Pain

The next few entries are dedicated to making your kitchen as accessible as possible. It is not enough just to have a couple of fancy doodads that do stuff for you. It is insufficient to know just enough about your space and food preparation to get by. We can choose not to be bound by processed meals, pizza delivery, and fast food. After all, we aren’t GI’s behind enemy lines trying to just survive. We deserve to have a chance to thrive, and should be as good at this basic life skill as we are at creating humorous stereotypes about head-bobbing and mismatched clothing.

So let my guide dog get me safely off of this soap box, and let us begin!

Pain Avoidance:

At first, it may be a good idea to keep everyone out of YOUR kitchen until you get a familiarity with the environment and processes. This applies to your service dog, too. Think what he may do to you if you accidentally pet him, miss his face and poke his eye with cayenne pepper caked in your nails? Another blogger noted that others not accustomed to you in the kitchen may leave hot pot handles facing the wrong way, easily knocked off. OUCH! This same wise man demonstrated the need for working smoke alarms when a guest placed a dish towel on a cool stove burner without letting him know, causing a small conflagration when attempting to warm up some soup.

Also—knives are sharp. Keep them sheathed. Know them and their locations as you would your cane or guide dog harness. Try not to mix the two places up either. Poor puppy…