My husband and I are complete foodies—we love to cook and create a multitude of recipes from the everyday (pizza) to the exotic (foul mudammas). When our little girl was born, we weren’t sure how our unusual diet would work for her young palate, but she constantly surprised us by being intrigued by sophisticated flavours—forget the carrots and ham, she wanted the lamb Harira soup.
Now that she’s getting close to two years of age, she’s becoming interested in how we prepare the food. She wanders into the kitchen and raises her arms, insisting on seeing what is on the counter and learning the ingredients. As a consequence, I’ve begun my ‘Kiddie Culinary Training’.
First we started with cookie cutters and play dough (before graduating to real dough). Then, we tried dressing a pita pizza together with the prepared ingredients of cheese, pepperoni and mushroom slices (we haven’t graduated to the sauce part yet). My attempts at getting her to mix up a liquid mixture with a wooden spoon ended up a bit messy, but she waved it around with great flourish! But my favourite moments in the kitchen with Ally include making her fruit smoothies. She puts the fruit into the little magic bullet blender container, then I add the juice and yogurt and together, we do the blender dance (not unlike a full body wiggle—see below) to make that sound less scary and event lots of fun.
How did you introduce your kids to cooking?
Comments
I love it! Cooking with your kids has more benefits than you can imagine! First of all, it gets you and your kids spending time together - not Mommy cooking whlie the kids are watching TV waiting for dinner the magically appear! Second of all, if they help prepare it, it is so much easier to get them to eat it! My picky child tastes all her recipes that she learns from her Grandmother - ones she would never try if I put it on the table!
And in addition to all that yummy licking of the dessert bowls, is MATH skills. My grade 3 daugther was surprised that her knowledge of fractions came in handy - not just something her teacher taught to bore them!
So Robyn, when do I get to taste your Foul Mudammas? And I would love to see you do the Blender Dance too!
Great idea Robyn, the teacher in me thanks you for honing all those early years math skills too! I’ll come back and visit your blog. Cheers!
Actually, I’ve got a great recipe for it. :) Super easy and very tasty. As for my blender dance, let’s just say I’m glad Ally finds it funny rather than scary!
I started making cookies with the boys, and like you, the mixing of ingredients in the bowl turned out to be a bit messy, but they absolutely love being a part of the process. We always share our finished product with friends and family and they are very proud to give a cookie or two to grandma or their nanny, stating loudly “I made that for you”.
Robyn~i love what you are doing here.
Memories…
I was probably around 5 years of age when I started becoming interested in what my mum was doing in the kitchen. Clearly that bug never really left me. Now just trying to digest how the DNA of food has changed so dramatically and what the next move is. All the best with this fab project,
Olivia
Great post! My boys started cooking quite early on as they always joined me in the kitchen when I was baking. Now that they are eight and nine, we’re moving into things like scrambled eggs, pancakes and pasta. For me, it’s a great way to spend time doing something fun with them, while they learn life-enhancing skills as well.
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