Cooking with Kids

My sister always bakes with my neice. She started with having the neice add the pre-measured cup of flour into the batter, for example. After a couple years of that type of thing, she let the neice make her own cookies. My sis said she didn't coach her, but I know she must have. They weren't normal cookies, but they were edible.

Baking is way easier, but we don't do it that much. (We could do it more, I guess...) I'm hoping to actually kill two birds with one stone -- get some edible (heh) dinner on the table and keep her occupied. Well, three birds if she really is a help. (The garlic was quite useful.)

So.... garlic and..... oh, could she set the table?

She does that!

I held my breath the first few times she did it with real plates, but she's a pro by now. (I've just guaranteed some broken plates in the near future, haven't I?)

My sister also is able to send her daughter out to the garden to pick herbs (chives, basil) and tomatoes.

Ooh! That's cool.

We don't have that.

Hmmm, salad, though -- she could prolly tear up the lettuce and stuff.

Salad is good...... she could slice butter or soft cheese with a butter knife. I dunno, I'm really grasping here.

See, me too!

But thanks, already gave me some good ideas.

Gotta get to bed... nighty night!

My niece always wanted to help in the kitchen and John and I let her... fairly early. I think she was using a small sharp knife by five or six, but then she'd shown a lot of progress that made that ok. (She never did cut herself.)

First, when she was two and something, she helped me make pizza. She could roll small balls of dough out to be baby pizzas.... and put on the toppings, which... no, no, I didn't let her cut them at two!

I let her stir things, starting with cold batters and then, yes, gulp, at the stove, if something was simmering. Although she was four or more then, and I was right there.

I should back up... her father is a building inspector, does carpentry, can live very competently roughing it, and he's always taught her how to get along, and that has come in quite handy over time - she was if nothing else a very competent teenager.

She was at ten quite the discerning food critic when they visited me here and we went to a local Spanish restaurant, the Barcelona.

Unfortunately, dad's girlfriends have not wanted her help in the kitchen, my ex's new wife didn't, and dad got off on some Trader Joe's regime, with everything being in packages from there and always predictable. Mom was quite a troubled person, and, er, a poor provisioner, so when she was at Mom's she'd really be at her friends' houses. So... at this point, at near eighteen, she only cooks when she visits me...

but, she has food memory..

Food memory is good. Nice job Osso!

Well, she's a sharp young woman and was an alert and curious child.

My neice (6 years) is trying to acheive un-chaperoned toast making. I haven't let her, but I am much more cautious on this type of stuff than her mom is, perhaps. She's very cute. She puts on both oven mitts before doing anything, handling the cold bread slices with pawwed hands.

My father, and I would always be in the kitchen watching my mother cook. He would be playing with his deck of cards, and I would be watching her get all the ingredients ready. I can see her now in my minds eye how she would stand and dice onions, and other spices. How she washed the rice, and added salt to the pots. I can see her walk back, and forth from the stove to the refrigerator. I learned how to cook by watching her, and I will never forget those moments in the kitchen with my parents.

Even if a child is too young to actually help with the cooking; sitting and watching is good too. The memories alone are worth it.

Heck yeah, let that child into your kitchen! She can stir, mix, measure, rinse, and all sorts of things.

Youngest cub was in the kitchen with me begging to help from the time he was 3. We were cponstantly making cookies, mini pizzas, tuna salad, fruit salad, deviled eggs, etc.

This is a great time to teach sozlet about measuring, which helps "immeasurably" when she gets to doing math in school.

You can open the cans of beans and let her pour them into the pot, grate cheese to put on top of the chili, spread the crackers out on a plate, or mix the cornbread if you prefer that with your chili. She can grease the bottom of the pan for the cornbread or anything else you make that needs pre-greasing. She can learn where the ingredients are and what they look like by gathering them for you. Show her which spoon to use and she can measure out a tsp of this and a TBS of that which also teaches her the differences in the abbreviations and which one is more/ less/ half of..., etc.

You don't have to change your eating habits or menu's. Just think, as you are preparing dinner and getting ready to do the next step, is it something sozlet can do? Then let her. She will LOVE being asked to help.

Think of all the times she has to ask you for help getting a drink, buttoning, tying, reaching, etc. She'll feel so special knowing you need HER help for a change.

Most of all, have fun!

Great ideas, squinney. Sozlet can also get stuff from the fridge and put it back when done, put things into ziploc bags or tupperware, and can crack eggs.

She would probably also really enjoy it if, when you go food shopping, talk to her while you're making the list. sozlet, what would you like for dinner on Wednesday night? Omelets? Okay, then let's think of what we need to buy for that, eggs, cheese, scallions, mushrooms.... Then, when you actually go food shopping, there's the list that you made together, and as you put things in the cart, you can say, this is for Wednesday's dinner. What are we missing? Did we get everything for Wednesday? This enforces the connection, that food doesn't just make itself, and the fridge doesn't just stock itself, it's a process.

And I bet she'd really enjoy being a part of that process, to feel that she was making some very grown-up decisions and helping out in very grown-up ways. Then, for Wednesday dinner, she helps as much as she can, and you can honestly say that night, sozlet, this was a great idea! What a delicious dinner!

Do you have a bread maker with a "dough" function?

I couldn't live without mine!

We usually let the maker get through the intial mixing stage then we knead it, let it rise, (or leave it in the maker until after it rises) knead it, roll it, smash it, whatever it and bake it. Sometimes our creations are inedible but mostly we come up with good or at least salvagable stuff.

We use this dough for mini-pizzas or for cinnamon toast or bread sticks or loaf bread or crackery type things with assorted goop. Really, there are endless things to do with dough.

I like using bread dough so that we don't end up with gobs of cookies and such around the house.

Mo also loves anything involving squirting stuff from a pastry bag: peanut butter, cream cheese, frostings. I usually put stuff in a little zip lock bag, snip off the corner and have an instant, disposable, kid sized pastry bag.

We also make this stuff:

I cup room temperature butter
1 egg
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
2 t. vanilla extract
1/2 t. almond extract
2 1/2 cups flour
1 t baking soda
1 t cream of tartar

Mix the first 5 ingredients, then add the rest.

Bust the dough into chunks and color with food coloring.

Then, just use it like playdough. We even use the playdough sqeeze tools and cutters and rollers and other playdough type accessories.

Try to keep the cookies about 1/2 inch thick.

Bake at 350 for about 10 minutes.

I found that recipe in the "Mad Professor Extremely Weird Science Projects" book. It has a lot of fun stuff in it but most are not edible.

Hmmmm.... thinking of other stuff....

He helps make tortillias....

We have an ice cream maker that is fun to experiment with.....

I'm sure I'll come up with more. I love to cook and Mo is my constant kitchen companion.

Anything with mixing items works well - like littlek mentioned baking. You could even buy the boxed cake mixes and stuff, just to start getting her involved.

My daughters do the same thing - so any where I can get them involved I do. Mac N Cheese - one pours the water, the other mixes the cheese mix. Pizza is a great one. I usually buy fresh pizza dough at the bakery in the grocery store. The kids can help spoon out flour on the table, help roll out the dough. They can help add the toppings. All this takes a lot more time than doing it yourself, so make sure you have the extra time. Another fun thing especially if you have more than one child - is to do individual pizzas - you can also make faces on the pizzas too.

Even making simple things like eggs, pancakes, etc. - they get to take turns whisking them, grilled cheese - they can put the cheese on the bread or butter the bread.

I think simply observing you, she will learn about cooking alone.

So, did sozlet "cook" anything today?

Hi there,

Not today, we just had leftovers. (That's what I love about chili, one of the few foods that's even better the next day, and soooo nice on these newly shivery evenings...)

Boomer, thanks for the goop recipe!! One of her teachers gave me that exact same one, I think, and some cream of tartar to boot, but I lost the recipe and eventually threw out the cream of tartar (it had been in my purse too long, in a plastic baggie, looking suspicious and threatening to burst).

You MAKE tortillas, Boomer? Wow.

We had a bread maker and never used it and gave it to my brother-in-law. Maybe we can ask for it back. :-D

I don't know why, I'm primed for it in every other way, I just plain don't love cooking. It could be that the social aspect is necessarily missing -- I simply can't chop onions and chat at the same time. I don't hate it, either, I'll do it and do it happily, but for someone who loves so many of the other kinds of things that my friends who love to cook love -- and it seems like most of my friends love to cook -- it's fine, but <shrug>.

I am finally getting better at it after being decidedly mediocre for a long time, but it's been slow and I'm still mediocre. I can follow a recipe. <shrugs again> Just not a way I choose to spend a lot of the limited time I have if I have a choice.

At any rate, sozlet often hangs out with me -- baseline is that she sits at the kitchen counter and draws while I cook, and we talk occasionally, but mostly focus on our own thing. She does watch, too, as AE says.

I let her stir all the time, she seems to be wanting more than that, though.

I love the greasing-the-pan idea. And having her gather ingredients! That one's great. She already helps put away groceries, so that ties in nicely.

Lots of other great ideas from you (Squinney) and Jes, too.

OK, I'll start using some of these. Thanks! I'll let you know how it goes.