Adulting

ERGGGGH! WHY do I still have this struggle with planning and time management! Well.. I'm pretty stubborn because I have been told on countless occasions that I NEED to put things in my calendar because if I don't, I'll forget. And I say that I won't, and most of the time I don't. But, when I do forget there's a big fire lit under me and I keep a calendar for about two weeks. And then I go back to not keeping track again.There have also been many times when there is no crisis and I vow to plan, still doesn't work.
However, we have spent all day cooking and right now I feel inspired to just learn planning and time management though the things I love. I wrote about this once before and was not sure whether to go back and fix that post or do a new post. Anyway, you know when you cook, when professionals cook, especially a complicated recipe, you need to have everything in place? You should have all the ingredients out, measured and ready-to-go. This step, like all planning in life, (at least to me), almost always feels like a waste of time. BUT ITS NOT.

I was just making a very complicated cake. Even though I think everything turned out fine, it was stressful to always have to leave the food to go look at the recipe for measurements and to make sure I didn't forget anything.I also had to have a pen to cross off ingredients. So, read the recipe beforehand, measure out all ingredients in order and have fun cooking
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The reason this might be to rationalizing that gets these habits to stick? ITS SHORT-TERM. I, and my fellow ADDers, have problems with long-term goals. So try this. Hopefully it'll spill over to other facets of life. Habitually reading recipes before doing anything might help get you into the habit of  reading directions in a manual before you do anything, reading through anything before you sign, give an opinion or ask questions. Don't look foolish when you go into a job interview and ask a question that's answered on the About page of their company. And putting out and measuring ingredients beforehand can lead to both laying your clothes out the night before or writing down your resources for a problem you're having. Crossing off ingredients gets you to cross off items on your list that you've already done. Cooking has been a great help in many parts of my daily life. Hope it inspires you too.

Frozen Foods

I must admit I was in the frozen-food section of the supermarket today, and not just for research. I was there buying frozen prepackaged meatballs. Don't hurt me! However, while buying these, I did notice some even more atrocious items available. Thus, the research part is that I was noticing how many foods are unnecessarily frozen because they are so easy to make. Pancakes. Pancakes! One of the easiest things to make is readily available so it's made even easier! Who cannot make pancakes? The companies that make frozen pancakes should really be ashamed of them themselves. To make pancakes one needs butter, flour, and milk. Nothing could be easier. Sure, there might be some things in the frozen section it is hard to make or take a long time to make, such as waffles and meatballs, but there are also pancakes.

I like ice cream. Ice cream isn't that hard to make if you get an ice cream maker. And I suggest you do it! Make any flavor you want! And add fruit, chocolate, nuts, liquor. You can make chocolate whiskey ice cream and won't have to search around for the perfect combination of flavors, chips or candies you crave. I can even make sticky toffee pudding ice cream! How wonderful! No specialty foods here! Learn to cook and you should never have a one-time dish experience
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But, this trend is also creeping into other sections of the supermarket. Do you understand how to cut an apple? It seems some people don't...or at least they don't have time to. You can now get pre-cut apples. Now, I actually see one pro to this, but at least two or three, maybe four cons. The pro- it might be possible that when hunting for a snack, one grabs pre-sliced apples instead of a Snickers. Even though they usually aren't near each other...
Here are the cons:
1.DO YOU KNOW HOW TO CUT APPLES? Then just do it.
2. Are you too busy to cut apples? If you are, slow down. Not taking the time to cut an apple is unhealthy. Consult your neuroscience book's section on stress.
3. Do you realize you are paying someone else to cut your apples? Or its probably a machine... but I think buying pre-sliced apples, or prepared anything, it is more expensive than buying a dozen apples
4. Are you teaching your kids that this is the natural state of apples? Take your kid to a farmer's market and buy a juicy, organic apple that won't kill him. Actually...the killing him part might apply more to the bubble-gum flavored apples.
5. *facepalm* I am a bad Obie {Oberlin College graduate}..a very bad Obie, but oh right....the environment. Mother Earth really doesn't like it when we make extra packaging for our convenience, which means she has more landfills with too much waste that won't degrade for thousands of years. 

Time management

 I am ADD and struggle tremendously with time management. When you are cooking you have to pay meticulous attention to what you are doing. Especially when you have something in the oven, you cannot be distracted by other things. You must also plan meals so that they are ready on time, making sure dishes that should be hot are not prepared too soon before the meal and timing multiple dishes to be ready at the same time

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The first lesson of my certification from Top Chef University urges meticulous organization. It teaches that one MUST read a recipe all the way through, prepare all ingredients beforehand and have an idea of all the steps one must take in order to complete your meal in a timely fashion and with the best results possible. It also talks of hygiene, something that must be foremost in all places, especially the kitchen.

I'm sure you can conjure many metaphors on your own. But, let's use some of the most common and general ones- the school assignment and the office project. Learning the importance of reading through a recipe thoroughly before starting cooking will (hopefully)help a person form the habit of reading through instructions before he/she does anything else. For the student, this means reading though assignments so that she can ask any question up front. I have been caught many times having to go back and re-read something or e-mail my professor at ten o'clock at night because I didn't understand something. There have also been times where I ask my teacher, and then I re-read it, and then I feel silly that I ever asked

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Which leads me to talk about jobs. I guess this applies to office projects to, but of the things I've been exposed to, this is the most critical time one need to do their homework. APPLYING TO A JOB OR GRAD SCHOOL. There is little to no excuse to ask a potential employer or an admissions officer a silly question that you would have found the answer to if only you had scrolled down one more paragraph.

Ok, next. For both the student and the professional, one must be prepared. Whether it's for class or an office meeting, it is important to lay out everything he/she needs for where they are going. This might include laying an outfit out at night, putting things by the door, or writing notes and putting them somewhere they will be not be overlooked..

It is always helpful to break one's work down into steps. This helps relieve stress because one does not have a looming doom of a huge project over them.

Cooking will help with instill hygiene as a priority in very young kids. I suggest grabbing your 5-year-old and making cookies.

Essentially, cooking is crucial for ADD kids :p

Burnt Tea

When my mom was small her family had friends who owned Calve Island just off the coast of the town of Tobermary on the Isle of Mull in Scotland. my mom and her younger brother, who were visiting the family for a week, sailed, fish, played golf among the sheep on the island, went on picnics and late each afternoon had tea and played games in a barn which had been converted to a guest house and great room for family gatherings. A lovely burned in the barn's fireplace as tea was served. When my mom tasted the tea, she noticed it was different from tea she was used to and shocked at the taste. She thought her host must have burnt the tea! As no one else seemed to be reacting to the tea the same way she was, my mom tasted the tea again. It had a smoky flavor, and she decided it was a good tea for a gray, cold Scottish day next to a fire. And thus was her introduction to Lapsang Souchong, now her favorite tea.

Universal

We eat, we live. We don't eat, we die. Same for everyone. All cultures. All humanity throughout time and space.
The world has been shrinking at a faster and faster rate. This exponential increase in the interaction between ethnicities is why we have to learn about the food of different cultures, how to eat it, and manners at the table.
We have all developed different food cultures-drawing on the food that is available to us. However, when one studies the cuisines of various cultures, it becomes clear that people all around the globe have developed some of the same tastes. I was speaking with my relative about his growing up in Eastern Europe and business of Bucca de Beppo. He mentioned the astonishing similarities of meals around the globe. He experienced having polenta as a child in Eastern Europe and having the same basic ingredients in the food served in the chain. Rice and beans is popular in the American south and a different rice and bean dish is popular in Spain.

Cocktails At Intermission

Over the past several months an irksome trend in the food served in the theatre today has gradually come to my attention. At one venue my family has season tickets to, you can now bring drinks into the theatre. When this change first occurred, I thought nothing of it. It was only after my experience at the Nutcracker that I reevaluated it.
When I recently went to a production of the Nutcracker, one could buy and eat popcorn during the production and there was a grilled cheese bar. And candy is now as common in theaters as it is in cinemas.
At the risk of sounding WASPish, that is not what one eats in the theatre! I hear tales from those who know first hand that it used to be only the classiest libations and haute cuisine was served at the theatre.
It will be interesting to look at food served in certain venues throughout the centuries. I seem to recall that in the Shakespearian era, anyone could come to his plays, eat anything they wished or could don any attire.

Plea for Culinary Education

Jamie Oliver says we need to teach cooking in elementary school. Yes, yes we do. However, we need to teach kids to cook and value intercontinental food as well. This could be an effective way to open the mind of a child not only to international cooking, but to other international relations.

At least in a certain area, teaching simple cooking to children does lead towards a healthy interest in it that will hopefully last a lifetime. A farmer in California started teaching elementary school kids and-POOF-they started asking for veggies and wanted to eat the stuff they’d learned to make. Thus, kids don’t have to eat this high-fat, prepackaged stuff. It is simply that they are first introduced to these foods through the media and parents who also have not had a chance to receive a sufficient culinary education.

Start preparing them for the world by teaching them how to care for themselves! By the way, cooking also involves time management, chemistry, planning, coordination, and if you teach it correctly history, anthropology, design, psychology. And so on.

Culinary education could potentially also help with international relations. I'm not saying that culinary education will lead to peace….Oh wait, I actually am. In the first few years of school, we are taught to get along with our peers. However, this usually doesn't include the international community, which it should since they are quickly becoming our peers.

So you know cooking cannot solve all our problems, but if we learn and teach our kids how to get along with others- how to eat a meal with people from other cultures- we will definitely and prove relations. Food is the ORIGINAL international language-the universal language. We had food before we had anything else! Think about it, if you have a meal with Japanese businessmen , dothey frown if you use chopsticks and sit down on the floor like they do? No. They are going to feel much more comfortable around you and feel that you understand their culture.

International relations today on more important than they have ever been. For many thousands of years, traveling across the globe was either impossible, dangerous, tedious, or all the above. Thus, culture was internal; it was in isolation to all but what was immediately around it. Today, those cultures are no longer isolated, but are being enveloped in a global culture; one that is still searching for how to handle difficult situations.

"Globalization” was once a far-off dream, but has now become reality, with unforeseen consequences of a new global mindset. This amalgamation of cultures is pulling the riches of the world's eclectic quilt out from under us and replacing it with a homogenized society, eradicating the past. Whatever my views, this push towards androgyny has mixed reactions.

While many ethnographic groups are fighting to preserve their cultures, others seem willing to abandon their collective heritage. For example, a discussion in my anthropological linguistics' class at Oberlin College centered on an initiative in New York designed to preserve dying languages. This project, along with the public library’s Endangered Language Alliance, focuses on languages that have only a handful of speakers left. There is an upsurge in Ireland of teaching Gaelic in schools because the traditional language is quickly fading. In addition, I just heard a podcast about requiring Mexican officials to learn an ancient language.

“Globalization” issues are not black and white, and I am certainly not bashing technology or scientific advancement. I even wanted to be a computer programmer starting in middle school. Of course, this stemmed from an early age when I was a teacher’s assistant in my third-grade computer class. Tangentially related, I am going for a Masters degree to pursue a career as a digitization archivist, a career which would combine science and humanities. I am elated by the ability we now have as a global society to communicate across the globe. However, with mostly all matters, we must walk a tightrope, cautiously placing one foot in front of the other so as not to come to our doom. We must manage it.

Enter "International culture." As the daughter of a Foreign Service officer as well as a trained anthropologist, I feel often much more comfortable than others around foreigners. Not to mention that time spent abroad was during my formative years.

To achieve some of these goals from the ground up, I propose that every student be required to take a minimum of one foreign language though out their schooling. There must also be cultural diversity requirements at all colleges and study abroad should be made mandatory.
For example, Oberlin has a cultural diversity requirement. A student is required to take at least three classes in two universal regions in order to graduate. This idea of being a more cultured and well-rounded person must be implemented more widely; for one is sure to be hindered in this global climate if they are not culturally aware. Being culturally aware is even more crucial in this transition period with such a burgeoning of new technologies promoting interconnectedness.

Interconnectedness is what sets this age apart from other eras of technological growth. However, there must be a balance; we must acknowledge what society is conforming to. Thus, it is a good idea to require that students learn a cultural language. I say cultural to distinguish them from the languages of the future which, depending on your perspective, seem to be computer languages, instead of ethnographic.

It is an enterprising idea that a computer language can count as a foreign language because of the increasing focus on technological innovation starting with our generation. At the same time, this emphasizes globalization over an international culture, a choice that is more than crucial in our current societal climate. Ergo, the idea is a great feat of balance is often difficult to achieve.
I believe that we can avoid to looming inevitability of the cons of globalization though education reform. This education must start with elementary schools and the general public.