Yummy Yummy In My Tummy

At preschool one of the activities which Daniel's class did was to make fruit salad. The kids were able to cut fruit with blunt knives and add them to the fruit salad. Sue, Daniel's teacher, said that he would have sat there all day if he had the choice to. He has shown an interest in cooking and loves to try and help. I found a couple of kids cook books when at a Lifeline book sale and Daniel was keen to try some recipes. I told him to post-it note any ones that he thought would be nice to make. He basically put a post-it on every page! Ha. I then decided that each week I'll try and have him cook a meal for us. So far he is loving it and I'm quite enjoying doing it with him. I think it's a bit easier planning for him to cook the meal because I get into a headspace that it will take longer prior to starting the meal.

The first meal that Daniel chose to make was creamed corn and bacon stuffed potatoes. Daniel made most of it and I was so very proud of him! He was very proud of himself too and everyone was very keen to eat and enjoy it. He also cut up all the veges for a garden salad - mushrooms, tomatoes, cucumber.

Ready to cook

Stirring the bacon (until it started to pop out)

Mashing the potato filling

Stirring in the creamed corn, bacon and herbs

Filling the potatoes

Ready to cook

Yum! 2 thumbs up

Eliza agreed

The next meal that he cooked was Sang Choy Bow (or the one in the lettuce as Daniel calls it). He cooked the majority of this meal and I was very impressed. It was his first time using the wok. He was quite worried about the different ingredients spitting on him, but was happy to hear that none of them would. He was very proud to serve up the meal and really enjoyed eating it.

Using a wok for the first time

Filling the lettuce cups

Winner!

Then last night he made chicken friend rice for us. Last night was probably the hardest one we've had. I was trying to let Daniel do more on his own but that resulted in rice being flicked out of the wok while he tried to stir it, shallots being cut quite thickly and Daniel being quite distracted. I was tired too so my patience was lower than it should be. Anyway, he was still happy with the finished product, it was very tasty and he didn't think I was too impatient with him, I made it bigger in my head than it really was. 

He's also made muffins from the cook book too for preschool Spring Fair - white chocolate and berry muffins. They're really tasty!

Eliza also had her turn at cooking for mother's group. She wanted to make Magic Monkey Bananas so with made them last Thursday and they were a hit with the kids! Eliza was very excited to have made them.

 
I hope that doing this fosters a love and joy of cooking when they're older. I hope it lets them try new food, and feel comfortable to cook different recipes. So far so good.