Unfortunately, we have not had any responses from the community kitchens from the list we were provided. The only response we received was that one of the kitchens no longer provides a community kitchen program. Therefore, we have designed a new strategy to arrange survey appointments. We have divided our team into three pairs. Each pair is responsible for contacting and surveying one of the kitchens on the list provided as well as find another community kitchen in Strathcona. By the end of next week, we hope to have each pair survey one kitchen and have an appointment schedule for the following week at an additional one. Further, we have consulted with our Teaching Assistant regarding our difficulties in procuring responses and hopefully we will get some guidance on how to approach this problem.
We realized that this project is not going as smoothly as we originally hoped. We really related to this week’s podcast where Dan Barber explained his difficulty in raising geese for foie gras (Barber, 2011). Dan Barber explained how he had problems raising his geese to have large livers naturally (Barber, 2011). Similarly, we have been contacting kitchens without response. Dan Barber later realized that his plan to raise his geese was not going as expected (Barber, 2011), just like our project. We had initially hoped to already have surveyed some kitchens or at least have appointments to survey kitchens by this point. However, we have not reached that goal. So, Dan Barber called Eduardo for help and his advice helped him re-evaluate his plans (Barber, 2011). We had a team meeting and discussed this podcast and found it very motivational. We were inspired to assess our current strategy and adjust it. We now feel like we have a direction with smaller, better organized and tangible goals.
Our main upcoming objective is to make appointments to survey kitchens in the upcoming week. To accomplish this, we have divided the kitchens that we already have amongst three pairs in our groups. Each pair will contact the kitchens frequently by phone and by e-mail, if possible. If we do not have any responses by next Wednesday we will then have a serious consultation with the teaching team to re-evaluate. Each pair is also responsible for finding an additional kitchen next week and contacting them to survey the kitchen two weeks from now.
Barber, D. (2011, Dec 2). Poultry Slam 2011. The American Life. Podcast. Podcast retrieved from http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/452/poultry-slam-2011?act=3#play
