Cooking while disabled can be a huge challenge, and for me there is a huge combination of reasons that make it so difficult. I will mention some of the difficulties that I have here.

For years I had a mixture of disastrous cooking attempts that resulted in inedible meals and ready meals. Then I gave up attempting to cook at all and relied solely on ready meals. Then a few years ago I started getting ill and having gallbladder attacks and anyone that has ever had gallbladder attacks will know how excruciatingly painful they are. I had to wait a few months for surgery and while waiting I was still having the gallbladder attacks. I was told that to minimise the attacks I had to cut out processed food and eat only low fat foods. They explained that high fat foods can trigger attacks and that low fat eating without processed food can stop the attacks happening so regularly.

When I explained my difficulties with cooking I was met with silence. It seemed that nobody had an answer to the problem. After surgery to remove the gallbladder I still get pain after eating processed and fatty foods. Right after surgery I was so scared to eat I decided I had to find a way. While looking online I found my saviour – the Cuisinart soup maker.

This brilliant machine takes all the difficult bits out of cooking and does it all for you. No need to chop veg – it does it for you. No need to worry about handling hot pots and pans on the hob – it does all the cooking for you, including sautéing the veg and meat on the built in hotplate before you add your stock. It also has an automatic stir function. It even switches itself off afterwards so you don’t even have to remember to do that.

Although it is not supposed to, I find that it will chop the veg for you too, especially if you cook them for 5 minutes first in the machine with a little stock, or just buy preprepared vegetables for it.

The only problem with the machine is the glass jug. It is a little heavy – although I do use a ladle with it so I don’t have to pick up a heavy jug full of hot soup. There is an excellent recipe book that comes with the machine, but I tend to just chuck everything in and hope for the best.

All in all I highly recommend this soup maker for anyone either disabled or elderly who for whatever reason can no longer cook for themselves.