When the cook can't look: A cooking handbook for the blind and visually impaired

by Ralph Read

WHEN THE COOK CAN'T LOOK A Cooking Handbook for the Blind and Visually Impaired by Ralph Reed 1981 Hardcover 5 1/2 x 8 1/4 inches, 113 pages Continuum NY

113 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Abby Stopka · Rating 1 out of 5]

As a blind person I took offence to how this book was written. However the one thing I need to remember is this book was written in the early eighties. And maybe blind people at the time were definitely not aware that they could do a lot of things in the kitchen that they can now. The problem I find is most books written for the visually impaired or blind for cooking are definitely very dated.

[Karla Westjohn · Rating 1 out of 5]

I gave this book one star because that is as low as I could go! It is awful! This man cannot cook, and I doubt that he cooked much as a sighted person. I was a blind high school student/graduate or a blind college student, depending on when in 1981 the book came out. Blind people cooked then. We could use well-written recipes, and we didn't need some sighted savior to come read aloud to us so we could memorize snippets. Blind people grilled before any new technology came out. That includes charcoal grills. We used welding gloves and metal fry baskets. fire starters have been around before I was a Girl Scout in the mid 1970s. This book does n have one single sensible cooking technique. The description of making a piecrust, just to give one example, is a disaster. The pie would be misshapen and tough. The descriptions of how he uses his fingers to eat is disgusting!—particularly the suggestion to fill a baked potato, fold it back together, and eat it with the fingers. Potato, melted butter, sour cream, and cheese would be everywhere. Four cups of milk in a two-quart dish of scalloped potatoes would yield potato soup! And yes, blind people can fry chicken and have done it for decades. Decent oven-fried chicken recipes exist, but the one in this book is not among them. The entire book is so patronizing and utterly bereft of the culinary knowledge one would expect in a cookbook. Novice blind cooks should look at Cooking without Looking—perhaps still available from the American Printing House for the Blind for a reasonable price; Cooking with Feeling and Other Valuable Senses by Deborah DeBoard may still be available in electronic format from National Braille Press. A subscription to Our Special, also available through National Braille Press and a solid, basic cookbookin accessible format—think Joy of Cooking, Betty Crocker, or Fannie Farmer—one of which is likely available on Bookshare if the price is prohhibitive—any of those options would be better than this book.

[Jena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published in 1981, by a gentleman who had lost his sight later in life. Some of the cooking tips, procedures, and attitudes reflect these facts. For example, a grill may not have been safe for a blind person to use in 1981 as stated in the book, but these days, advances in technology have made it simple to grill. By way of another example, some of the instructions read as if they're coming from a person who had sight, not for someone who is totally blind. Even so, I enjoyed the book.

[Suzie Q · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked the concept of the circus itself a lot more than I liked the actual story. The story did grow on me though and the book go better as it went on.