(gentle music)
Welcome to Hadley Presents.
I'm your host, Ricky Enger, inviting you to sit back, relax,
and enjoy a conversation with the experts.
In this episode, we discuss getting back into the kitchen
after vision loss,
and our guest is Chef Regina Mitchell.
Welcome to the show, Regina.
So glad to have you.
It's a indeed a pleasure to be here.
I am so excited to hear your story
because I wouldn't say that I'm an amazing cook,
but I learned a bit later in life
and it's something that I've discovered
that is a really enjoyable thing for me.
I get a lot of relaxation out of it.
I get joy from feeding my family,
and sometimes there's just something therapeutic
about getting into the kitchen
and doing a little experimenting.
So I am personally really looking forward
to hearing your story and I know that others will as well.
Why don't we start out by just talking a bit
about who you are and what you do.
I am a complicated, amazing woman
that has probably lived three lifetimes.
I can go back in my life
and each of those segments amazes me
that it's an amazing different chapter.
Chapter one, I was born the oldest
of four children to teenage parents
who were absolutely amazing parents.
But older in life, the twins, they were 14,
I was just barely 15,
and the youngest twin passed away,
and he passed away from spinal meningitis,
which now is totally curable.
And so my mother, of course, it just devastated her
and she went into her room
and she didn't come out for quite some time.
And so I stepped in as a older sister.
I cooked, I cleaned, I got the kids, I even say now,
kids ready for school.
I did their lunches. We walked to school.
I helped them with their homework.
The things that I didn't know,
I called both of my grandparents, my grandmas,
and they guided me.
And now growing older, I went to school
and I was a very lively, vibrant young girl.
I had so many activities to go to, cheer camps,
and I was just all over the place.
And football games, basketball games, they called me Spirit.
That was my nickname on my letter jacket.
And then growing, another lifetime,
I met my husband in 1982-83,
and we just fell in love.
He asked me to marry him and I said, absolutely.
We are living in Southern California.
That's where I grew up.
My husband was called to the ministry
and we decided to move to British Columbia, Canada.
And then shortly after that,
I encountered a horrific situation
that caused me depression, I would maybe say.
And then my husband said, "Okay, what are we gonna do?"
And I decided to go to school
and he said, "What do you wanna go to school for?"
"I want to be a chef."
And so he found an amazing culinary school for me to go to.
And so I found a school in Seattle,
the Seattle Culinary Art Institute.
And that's where I went for two years.
My husband would visit me and we go back
and forth from the British Columbia to Seattle.
I graduated top of my class.
And because of my accolades,
I qualified for a British fellowship.
And that was an 18 month fellowship,
which took me the first trip and stay was in Scotland
and then to London, then there, Barcelona, Spain,
then Rome, Paris,
and then finished into Cannes at the film festival.
And then back home 18 months later
where I studied under more chefs.
And then eventually had my own business
where I did team buildings for Fortune 500 companies.
And then from there, I had a few articles written about me,
I believe that is where MGM Grand connected me.
They called and asked if I was interested
for a position at the MGM Grand Skylofts Hotel.
It's a boutique hotel, non-gaming for
what they call global nomads.
High-end clientele, as a butler,
which is personalized service,
which would include culinary skills, also wine,
food, knowledge, just everything
that a global guest would want.
And I said, absolutely.
I was one of almost 4,000 applicants.
They were taking 16.
And so I moved here. And so I worked at the MGM Grand.
This is quite a story so far.
And now we get to the part where it's a different chapter,
I think, where you lost your vision.
And as much as you're comfortable with,
talk about how that happened.
Was it a sudden thing? Was it happening slowly?
How did that come about?
When I came, when I moved here to Las Vegas area,
I started working at the hotel and I was fine.
I was very healthy.
The woman that trained us actually trains the royal staff.
And so she trained us on everything, even how to walk,
how to pack, unpack everything you can think of.
And in learning how to walk, I mean really gracefully,
that's one of the things I noticed, that my gait was off.
Another thing I noticed was when I would put down a cup
on a table to serve my guest, it wasn't silent,
and you're really not supposed to make any noise
when you're in their space.
So I just became aware of some of the things
that was happening to me.
We took a trip to Williams, Arizona, to the Polar Express.
Some people know about the Polar Express, with my daughter.
She was probably maybe eight years old at the time.
And I noticed on that trip I had started to get an eye pain
and I just kind of thought, huh, oh, well.
But, 'cause it came and it had gone,
on the way back, it happened again.
On that Monday, getting ready for work,
I went in to get ready in the bathroom
and as I turned on the light,
it felt like I was hit in the eye instantly.
Like I literally fell to the ground
and just screamed for my husband.
And he came in, he took me to the doctor
and they referred me to an optometrist.
We went to the optometrist.
He did not understand what happened.
My retina was fine, everything was fine.
He gave me some eye drops. It was just a little blurry.
But he said that it would be from the eye drops.
Within the week, I could not see.
I started having my coworkers to read things for me,
'cause we were very close.
I didn't want my manager to know.
So I struggled for about a week.
And then I finally went back to the doctor
and that's when they referred me to a retina specialist.
And he said that there wasn't anything wrong with my retina.
Went back and forth for maybe two weeks,
when one of the younger doctors said, "You know,
in my internship I was
at the Jules Stein I Research Institute at UCLA,
and maybe we should refer you there
because we can't help you here."
There I saw an amazing doctor, Dr. Levinson,
he is a uveitis specialist.
That's when he diagnosed me
with bilateral panuveitis, coupled with,
after taking a gallium scan of my entire body,
another disease that's called sarcoid.
So it's a very rare eye disease
that you would have sarcoid in your eyes,
and that in itself is bad.
If you had it in your lungs, I'd be dead by now.
But it was in my eyes.
And it's a decalcification in the eye, coupled
with the uveitis, which is inflammatory cells
that's very active in the eyes.
And so that's where I see, it is very blurry,
as well as looking like I see through 10 screen doors.
And does that change over time?
Does it stay pretty stable
or do you have days where you see a lot differently than
on other days?
I never know what I'm going to see when
I wake up.
It could be totally like a white out
or I could have some imagery.
So you just never know from day to day
what you're going to encounter.
And you know, that in itself had to be such an adjustment
because you're trying to figure out, well, I don't know
what I'm going to see every day.
And so how do I figure out what's next?
Because I don't know what's coming next.
I don't know what it's gonna be like when I wake up.
And of course then you have your career,
you're a classically trained chef.
What were you thinking as you were going through this,
where you're losing your vision,
things are all over the place,
and here's this thing that you've been trained to do
and now it's a major struggle,
I would think, so what were you thinking?
Well, under my doctor's care,
they did not allow me to go back to work.
There I was at home and I can't see, I'm not working.
So I had so many losses.
It didn't take long
before I sat here and looked around at my house
and said, "What am I gonna do now?"
And immediately I said, "I'm gonna go to school."
I made a promise to my husband years ago
that I would get my bachelor's, so why not?
Why not get it now? I can't go to work.
I have time and I'm going to do it.
And I applied here at the University of Nevada,
Las Vegas, UNLV,
and I got into their biological sciences program.
Little did I know, my vision was gonna be a little problem.
And I like to say that my vision,
my loss of sight was so sudden
I didn't have time to think about it.
So I just kind of went into life like I still had vision.
I gave it thought, but I didn't give it much thought.
I signed up for all my classes
and I realized I can't see the board,
I can't even see my teacher.
I need help. And I found myself getting behind.
My books were not accessible.
I didn't even know what the word inaccessible meant.
I didn't even really know what accessible technology meant.
So this was a whole new world for me.
I had to learn for five years of going to undergrad
with the help of amazing Disability Resource Center,
the first blind woman I ever met, that was my advocate
for disability on the campus.
My teachers, they were very understanding
and helped me along the way because they saw my spirit
and my tenacity to not quit.
I eventually graduated and finished.
But during those five years, even at home,
I didn't cook very much.
I was very apprehensive.
I would imagine so. I mean, this is something
that you really loved and you trained to do
and used to enjoy doing.
And then suddenly,
the way that you approached it had totally changed.
So I think at some point you must have said,
there ought to be a way I can do this.
I wanna cook again.
And so what happened
when you started to make that decision?
How did you start cooking more than a taco or a salad
and what were the people around you like when you decided
that you wanted to go full throttle,
'cause I'm sure you did. How did that all work?
I didn't make the decision.
Someone made the decision for me.
I went into my disability resource advocate on the campus
of UNLV, into my senior year.
And I went in crying profusely saying,
'cause at the the same time I was also,
not only was I a full-time student,
I'm still a full-time wife.
I'm a full-time mom and I'm a full-time patient
because I'm still going to see all my doctors.
Now, I begin to have integrated care at UCLA
because I became,
I had many critical illnesses developed.
I had lupus, I developed lupus as well
as chronic arthritis,
and rheumatoid arthritis actually, coupled with my vision.
And so that one of the ways that they could treat all
of the symptoms was giving me a low dose of chemotherapy.
And so I was in chemotherapy monthly based
on my blood work.
And so I was doing that once a month,
every month while I was still in school.
And so you have the same side effects, you get nauseous
and dizzy and sick, then I would have an exam or study.
So was still going through that whole process.
And that's when I finally went into my advisor
and I just said, you know, "I don't think I can do it.
I think I need a break. 'cause my body, it's just a lot."
I think at that moment, wow,
I realized I was blind.
It took me almost four years to realize,
Hey girl, you're blind.
And she said, I have a place for you.
I want you to go to the Blindconnect.
It's a mobility and orientation training center.
You need to have blindness skills. And I did.
And that had to be so hard to finally face that
because all the moving forward with life,
and it's wonderful that you did it.
You know, I'm sure you wouldn't change any of that,
but to just continue forward then to reach
that point where you say, I've put so much into this
and yet I'm blind.
I can't not face that.
And then to hear, we can help you
and there's a place for you.
Yes, there's a place for you.
And there's people just like you.
First of all, on the campus,
there's no one that looks like me.
Okay. I'm an older student.
There's no one walking around blind.
So there isn't anyone like me.
Here I found a space.
I saw people that had canes and dogs
and that was struggling and had challenges
and learning on their iPhones.
I'm like, what? You mean I can actually use my iPhone again.
I can actually not struggle with my work, my homework
and my schoolwork.
And it was a whole, I mean, I can actually walk
with the cane and get around
and not feel like I'm gonna fall downstairs.
And I could go wherever I wanted to go and read.
And I could take in the sounds.
Like I could hear birds,
I could hear kids play,
the things that I just never thought about before.
It was a whole new wonderful world.
A whole new community of people that embraced me
and taught me.
There was nothing that they wanted to hide from me.
Everything that they had, they wanted to give to me.
I had many cheerleaders that was very supportive.
I didn't have anyone saying, oh, Gina,
you shouldn't do that.
Because they just knew me.
They knew that there wasn't going to be anything
that was gonna stop me.
And so I had no pushback from anyone.
The only pushback, of course, was just my safety.
And, you know, maybe I was, you know,
maybe going too many places.
Like you're on the paratransit again.
Like, yeah, I'm on the paratransit.
But no, I had great supporters, my husband.
I'm a out of the box thinker. I've always been.
And I like to say that he always stands by out of the box.
And then of course, my mother,
she's just such that great warm support, that nudge of,
that's right, sweetheart, you keep going.
She's just that little, that cheerleader at the beginning
and the end of the finish line.
It's incredible that you've had people
who were willing to support you.
And I think it shows, I mean,
you've been able to do quite a lot.
And so I do wanna talk about just a little bit of that
and what happened in the kitchen
when you really started to get back into it.
Were there things that actually weren't
that different than you were accustomed to,
you just kind of had to get used to it again?
And then were there things that were actually really hard
that you really had to work at in order to feel safe
and comfortable as you're cooking?
When I entered the kitchen, it's sort of like
that friend that you talk to every now and then,
just kind of say, "Hey girl, what's up?"
And she's, "Oh, it's cool."
That's kind of how it was with my kitchen.
I wanted to let her know that I'm back.
I had to get reconnected.
I went into my kitchen and I just said, you know what?
I'm just gonna make an amazing meal.
And of all the meals I would make, it was moqueca.
I wanted to go full on.
It's a Brazilian fish stew, and I just wanted to go for it.
That's lots of chopping. It's brilliant, vibrant colors.
It's using amazing ingredients.
It's sauteing, and simmering, and waiting, and processing.
It's a lot. So I did.
And plus I wanted to find out how my skills were.
I wanted to test my skills
and I wanted to test the accessibility of my own kitchen.
I also wanted to test how well I navigated my kitchen.
And so from that test, 'cause as chefs
and as also as a scientist,
because I did eventually graduate
with a degree in psychology
and neuroscience, it's all about testing
and seeing the data.
So I went in and I did it.
I tested, I wrote down some things that I needed
to help me to survive in my kitchen.
And I did it. And I found that there was things
that I was challenged in.
For one, it was my knife skills.
However, I found that I still had that muscle memory.
But what I now needed to do was to step back a bit
because I was just chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.
Like that's what we do. We're done and it's over.
But I had to find that, it had to be methodical.
I had to think about my cuts
and I had to be careful that I didn't cut myself.
The other thing I noticed in my kitchen was measuring,
especially measuring wet ingredients, liquids,
because we use a wet measure, not a dry measure.
Totally two different elements of measuring something.
As far as cooking, it is a science.
And so I had to figure out how can I use my dry measure
to compensate for my wet measure.
So I had to test that,
and it's just simply by adding two additional tablespoons
would give me my one cup liquid measure.
So I had to do a lot of testing for myself to compensate
for my new found vision loss.
Other things that I found was tools
that I had to use in the kitchen to help me.
I had to use indicator dots to help me
with the microwave because the panel,
it's a flat screen panel,
the interface is just not, you can't see it.
So just putting simple indicator dots in my kitchen
on my stove to indicate whether it was high, medium, low.
So I had to organize my kitchen
and make it accessible for myself.
I had to clear off all my counter space
because I found that with my vision
and it's gradually decreasing,
lots of stuff on my counter was too much for me.
It's better for me to go
and pull it out than to have it all on my counter.
So for me, I had to just clear off all of my counter space.
Another thing, I had to clear out all of my spices,
all of my cupboards, and put them into bins
where I could just pull from like all my spices,
just put it in a nice bin,
and then put it back in my cabinet rather than searching
and trying to get way in the back of a cupboard.
And then my spice drawer, I had to pull it out.
It's a huge spice drawer.
And I had to put it all in alphabetical order
because I do have some vision and I can see it.
I took a sharpie
and I actually wrote on all of the bottles,
like large print, like lemon pepper, I put an LP.
For garlic, whatever, I put a big G.
So I had to outfit my kitchen.
And that's how it happened.
I had to figure out a way to make things work for me.
And then in cooking,
because I can't see when something is done,
now I have what I call the sounds of kitchen,
intuitive cooking now.
My listening, smelling, you know,
because when you're baking a cake,
she's gonna tell you, she's gonna send off a scent,
a beautiful aroma.
And food will talk.
Food will tell you what's happening.
And I realized that with low vision,
that I depended so much because I've always
thought it has being a very visual concept.
And now it's a non-visual.
I'm taking it into a non-visual world
and I'm gonna make it work for me.
The sounds and the smells of kitchen,
getting in tune with those other sensory was very vital
and it became my friend.
Just hearing the rumbling of eggs boiling,
the beautiful caramelization of sugar.
I know, I could smell it.
I can smell when my sugar is starting to go
from a simple syrup, into a caramelization, into caramel,
I now don't have to see that, I can smell it.
And so that's what happened.
I had to get back in and not be fearful of my kitchen
and safeguard myself with the equipment and tools,
like long gloves for my oven.
Sometimes when my vision is really poor,
I can use a food processor to chop up my ingredients
and not be too proud to use some of those aids
that's gonna help me.
Although I'm a chef, I can say,
"Look, I don't wanna cut today.
I'm just gonna use my food processor."
I love it. And that's all part of
getting reacquainted
with your kitchen
and reacquainted with what you can do, right?
Because as you said, you always thought, well,
this is a visual medium
and you didn't have a reason to think of it otherwise.
But it took that, I'm going in,
I'm gonna see what this is like.
And by doing that, you were able to rediscover something
that you loved and you were able to do it
and discover different aspects it.
I love as you're talking about using your other senses,
because food really is a multisensory experience anyway.
And so just using those things to make food,
it's a beautiful description that you give,
so I love that.
So not only are you cooking for yourself and your family,
you are looking to share parts of this journey
with other people.
And so I wanna talk a little bit about that.
I know that you do classes with other blind people,
and you're also involved
in something called the Holman Prize,
which is three different people get ultimately chosen
for some financial assistance, so $25,000,
to make a project come to life.
And you've created a video for this specific project
that you're hoping will help the community
and help other people on their journey
of getting back into the kitchen.
So can you talk about just the things that you are doing now
with other blind and low vision people,
and also what it's like being a Holman Prize candidate
and what you have in mind for that?
In cooking, I realized that the more senses
I use,
the richer my world is around me.
What I wanted to do,
because of the pandemic, everything was shut down.
And shortly thereafter,
some of the programming started coming about on Zoom.
And so we started resuming,
say like the support groups came back on Zoom,
and the technology was on Zoom.
And I thought, well, you know what,
what about the cooking?
How can I make this?
And so I did some research
and there really wasn't a model that I found
that I could use.
I did find a lot of discussion groups, which was, oh man,
absolutely amazing.
A programming of discussion groups that I tuned into,
especially with Hadley, has an amazing discussion group.
Then I said, okay, I want to do something
that is live, real time,
that I can have participants watch me do it.
A blind chef, and they're blind
so they can make a connection.
And that I can do this, I know I can do this.
And of course, some people thought,
What, Gina, it's not gonna happen.
And I just thought, you just watch.
So I did, I talked to my colleague and mentor
and I said, "Hey, I think I'm gonna try this."
And she said, "Do it."
I thought, well,
I'm gonna just do an eight week beginning course,
and I'm going to take it back to
when I was a culinary student.
Everything was theory first, and then you started cooking.
And I thought, I will teach them theory, basics,
blindness skills in the kitchen,
organizing your kitchen, safety, food safety,
just those kind of things.
And then eventually I would do just a little demo
of non cooking stuff.
Like we didn't even touch the oven or the stove.
I just did like salads, vinegarettes,
like pesto sauce, you know, things like that
that they can do in a blender.
And then eventually,
my last two classes I did real cooking
and that's when they were able to see me cook
and got involved and they were just really excited.
And then so into the new year, the series then picked up
and it became like totally cooking.
And I had a menu and send out recipes and it's just amazing.
I have participants all over the United States now
that tune in and it's just a beautiful concept.
The one thing different about this product
that I present to my community is
that it's not just a cooking show or a cooking class,
but comes with it, it's a blind chef,
but it's descriptive cooking.
So I am actually telling you how to hold your knife,
what tools to use, how to use your tools.
Everything I do is descriptive so that that person
that's sitting in that Zoom seat
that has absolutely no vision,
should be able to follow along with me.
And that's the whole thing.
That's what you're not going to get on a YouTube channel,
because as we know, if I go to YouTube channel,
I don't even know what they're doing.
There's nothing descriptive about it.
So that's what I bring to my community,
is allowing them to be able to come into their kitchen,
to be a friend with their kitchen and to step in,
just like I had to step in, with confidence,
with independence, and to cook and eat amazing food.
There's no reason that
because our sight is impaired,
why we can't eat amazing food and cook amazing food.
There's no reason why we can't use leeks and ginger
and purple potatoes and all these amazing ingredients.
There's no reason why we can't make our own vanilla extract,
compound butter, simple syrups and infuse sugars and salts.
So I'm able to, as a professional, classically trained chef,
bring them into a whole new world
of amazing food.
With the Holman Prize, herein lies my project.
I thought, here's an opportunity
for me to totally give back to my community
by first of all,
developing and publishing a cookbook designed by
and written by a chef who is blind.
I want to make it into braille, large print,
and also an audible format.
In that cookbook will be descriptive language,
meaning your techniques are very descriptive.
Unlike any recipe you're going to find,
along with the tools that you use.
When you get a recipe, it says to combine gently.
What does combine gently mean?
What tools are you using?
Well, this will say using a whisk
in your right hand or dominant hand,
turning the bowl slightly upward,
whisk until you can hear the patter against the bowl.
As the egg whites are thickening,
your whisk will become slower.
So it's going to give them descriptive communication.
Additionally, with that, I would like to do,
with the recipes, audio descriptive,
five minute, how to instructive videos
along with the recipes.
So that way when you're in the recipe,
you can click on a link.
If you have an issue in that recipe,
you can click on the link
and there will be a short description
with me doing that same thing.
And so you'll have that instructional video.
With that, a website, with those videos attached
along with the YouTube channel,
where that class participant
and blind centers across the United States
could have access to,
in their home management and culinary programs.
So that when they're teaching students
in these culinary programs and their cooking classes,
the basics of cooking,
no matter where they are, a novice cook
or someone who's in the program that has been cooking,
that they can click on that video and show the students.
And lastly, is that I would like to be able
to present these to major food networks to let them see
that this is a need in the community
so that perhaps these can air on a public channel.
I love this idea
and I know that so many others will as well.
It's something I can say from experience
that would be incredibly necessary
because when you are reading recipes,
they always talk about, do this until it turns brown,
or do this until you see, you know,
something become shinier or whatever.
And so they talk about these visual things
and I'm just thinking, how would I know?
And so having these things described is going to be
so helpful because it makes it accessible to the person
who's cooking.
It makes them understand this doesn't have to be visual.
There are other ways to do it,
and here's what those ways are.
So we will have a link to the Holman Prize video
that Regina has produced in the show notes.
And if you wanna go on YouTube and like that,
it does really help tremendously
as she moves, hopefully from a Holman Prize candidate
to a Holman Prize finalist and eventually winner.
If you're listening to this beyond the time
of this recording, so we're recording in March
and up through April is when things are happening
with the Holman Prize,
but that doesn't mean
that anything Regina is doing just kind of goes away
after that whole process is done.
So do you have a place
where people can find out more
about things like these Zoom classes
that you were initially conducting?
And if you're continuing those,
where can people go to find out what you're doing
and just get some ideas about what it is
that you're sharing and doing?
I have an Instagram.
I post almost weekly, sometimes twice a week
on my classes and recipes and pictures.
And so it's Regina D. Mitchell.
Awesome. And we'll have the link to that Instagram
in the show notes as well.
Regina, it has been amazing getting your story.
I just love it.
And as we wrap this up, is there one final thing
that you'd like to leave our listeners with
that we haven't yet covered?
There is, and I will say to my beloved community,
it takes time and we can get back in the kitchen
and we can make amazing meals.
But not only can we get back into the kitchen,
but we can get back into our lives.
We can navigate our spaces
and we can show ourselves that we are amazing individuals.
We can show others that we can eat
and have great meals.
And I just wanna say that we do not have
to let blindness be our characteristic.
It's just not. We are more than that.
So get up, get into the kitchen and take it slow.
Thank you so much for joining us
and for sharing your story and your passion. I love it.
Thank you.
(soft music)
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