CREDIT: LCN
Nick Gucanin Gazibaric, Executive Chef at the Best Western Lamplighter Inn, helps lead adaptive cooking classes for people with disabilities.

Cooking is a skill, there is no doubt about it. It takes practice and creativity to be able to create a variety of healthy, balanced meals every day. But what happens when something that's already hard is made harder by having a disability?

That's where Londoners Brenda Ryan and Anne Robertson step in. Both have histories of health difficulties: Ryan suffered five cardiac arrests, two strokes, being paralyzed for a portion of her life, and is now being kept alive by bionic bits, and Robertson deals with a severe psychiatric disorder and was in a wheelchair for a long time.

Both women understand the difficulty people with disabilities have, even with seemingly simple tasks like using a can opener, so they co-founded Adaptive Cooking Classes. These are cooking classes for people with disabilities using adaptive methods.

It was a vision-impaired friend of Ryan's with a passion for cooking that led Ryan towards this great endeavour.

“I had a dear friend who wanted to learn how to make a few things, and over a period of time, I realized he was interested in cooking.”

Ryan found nothing in the way of cooking classes that catered to her friend's needs. Knowing her friend and many others like him were suffering from poor diet due to many frozen dinners, she drafted the idea for the Adaptive Cooking Classes.

Ryan sits on a board of directors with an organization dealing with the disabled community and brought the idea to them, only for it to be rejected almost immediately.

Committed to this idea, Ryan pursued her friend Robertson, who was a retired occupational therapist with a lot of experience in the area of disabilities.

“I obviously have a purpose,” said Ryan, “and that is to do what I can to make our community integrated with the able-bodied community.”

Robertson joined forces with Ryan, and in 2011 their master plan came to fruition.

These classes are the only one of their kind in Canada. The program runs in six-week sessions with basic, intermediate and advanced levels. The whole program is voluntary.

“People who live on small government pensions, they cannot afford $65 to go and take a class,” said Ryan. “The only qualifications are, do you have a disability? We don't gauge the disability — that's your determination. Do you eat? And do you want to learn how to cook?”

The program started up with a small grant from the City of London to purchase food and rent a kitchen space. After using many unsuitable kitchens for the range of disabilities in the classes, McCormicks Canada donated a portable kitchen unit that was accessible for people with a variety of disabilities.

Ryan and Robertson said they are humbled by the success. They are still putting people into this year's classes who applied last year because there was such a mass of applications.

The participants learn to use certain adaptive equipment, which makes all the difference between whether somebody can cook or not. Participant Cliff Young has a passion for cooking, but he had a stroke, which made him paralyzed throughout the whole left side of his body. Diabetes then claimed his left leg. Having use of only his right side, he uses a special cutting board.

“I have a one-handed cutting board; it has a chef's knife on it that pivots at the tip so I can chop one-handed.”

While he was in Parkwood Hospital, Young watched the Food Network every day. “I dreamed what I was going to cook when I got out,” he said.

Eventually, when he did, things weren't so smooth in the kitchen. He became reliant on frozen pizzas.

“To get back into the kitchen was daunting,” said Young. But he knew his diet had to change — otherwise, he was at risk of another stroke — so he applied for the cooking classes.

“I didn't think I'd ever be able to do it again but Anne and Brenda and the cooking classes have shown me that I can do it.”

Nick Gucanin Gazibaric, Executive Chef at the Best Western Lamplighter Inn, ensures everyone has the opportunity to participate in class.

“It's not ‘I show and they listen.' They actually have to cut with me, some of them cut the vegetables, some of them stir the pot.”

Ryan and Robertson even go so far as planning outings to get groceries as a group to show them what to look for.

The participants take away so much more than a few cooking lessons and new cooking tools. Ryan remembered one participant in their very first set of classes: “It was the first time from the day he became ill that he really understood the true meaning of rehabilitation.”

For Young, it was something so simple but so meaningful: “Self-confidence and better health.”

Chef Gucanin Gazibaric had never worked with disabled people before. “It's very rewarding,” he said. “In the beginning, I was hesitant because I didn't know how to react or maybe I should behave differently, but it was not like this at all. It was just a normal conversation; I made some jokes. It helped me also to understand you know don't treat them any differently because they may look different.”

Once the six-week course comes to an end, participants have a graduation where each participant brings a dish they made at home for a potluck. Each dish is presented with a plaque on a nicely decorated table. At the end of it all, everyone leaves with a diploma in hand and the confidence in their ability to create healthy meals.

“It gives these people great pride to suddenly see their food on display,” said Ryan. “There's nothing more valuable then to give somebody dignity and pride in themselves.”

The program is gaining media attention and momentum. The Ontario Hotel and Restaurant Association is co-sponsoring a pilot project to take place in London in March. The project heads to Toronto in April.

“Based on the feedback given to the Provincial Government the Minister of Social Service and Health have committed to providing funding for all 444 municipalities around Ontario to be able to have this type of program,” said Ryan.

At this point, Ryan and Robertson are creating a document that can be used as a training manual across Ontario.