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My colleagues and I are coming up with holiday wishlists of AT (assisitive technology). Since one of my favorite hobbies is cooking, of course, I want some things to help me out in the kitchen.  I have chronic upper back pain that usually flares up if I have to do a lot of chopping or when I am doing dishes. Our dishwasher is a big help in this arena and my husband has graciously agreed to be our household dish cleaner for the rest of the items. That leaves chopping as my back’s nemesis. I came across the Chef’N Veggie Chopper in a buzzfeed of 36 Clever Gifts for Food Lovers You’ll Want for Yourself. In the article it is $47 which is ridiculous, but a little searching on Amazon landed the same item for $17-$18 (prices fluctuate rapidly for the same product on Amazon on an almost hourly basis). Watching the video of the way the product works and reading reviews, this is now top on my wish list. If I do receive it as a gift this holiday season, I will definitely use it to chop nuts and onions—both of which I hate doing by hand, but am rarely willing to go to the work of getting out the food processor for. This simple device could fulfill a need with little clean up afterwards. My other AT wish is for higher countertops/sink in my house. Since that isn’t in the budget, I did some research on options to relieve my posture-related back pain. I have read that standard countertops are all too low if you are over 5’5”. I’m 5’8”, which seems close, but I guess because of my body type, they are really low for me. One option is to build a raised cutting board so that I can maintain better posture when I am chopping things. I would love this handmade, custom, cutting board built to my specifications. While I wait for my close friends and family to acquire custom carpentry skills, I came up with another solution from some more online searching—stacked, thick wooden cutting boards. I looked at where my hands end up when I bend my elbows at 90 degrees and it is a good 5-6 inches higher than my counters. I am going to wish for one, 2 inch or taller, sturdy cutting board to stack on a lovely, thick wooden cutting board I already received as a gift from my aunt to see if 3-4 inches relieves some of the postural back pain caused by my too-low counters. I found some nice options on Amazon and Etsy. What AT items are you wishing for this holiday season?

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