E-cooking

If you have a kid with a Nintendo DS as I do, you might sometimes feel a little left out of the action as he (or she) is glued to the screen helping Mario and Luigi defeat enemy after enemy. At least I did until I discovered the America’s Test Kitchen: Let’s Get Cooking game. Complete with 300 recipes that have been tested to perfection by the three dozen test cooks at America’s Test Kitchen (that’s the 2,500 square foot kitchen that is home to Cook’s Illustrated and the America’s Test Kitchen TV show), the game cum cookbook helps give everyone the tools and training to make dinner together.
You pick a recipe from the database—by ingredient, cooking time or degree of difficulty—and the software provides the recipe, helpful cooking how-to videos, and a section where the chef can add notes. There is even a rate and review feature so you can remember whether the dish was a family favourite. But since I try to get all the kids involved in cooking dinner together as much as possible, my favourite feature is how the program suggests age-appropriate tasks for each recipe so everyone can help.

If you try it, I would love to know what you think.