Kids in the Kitchen: A Regular Plan

After London spent a day planning and creating all three meals for our family recently the other kids wanted to take a more active role in food preparation too.

So I made a plan.

I do love a plan.

For now it’s primarily a plan for London, Mosely and Bergen since they can work more independently, but we’ll add in Piper and Otto as time allows.

When I’m doing my weekly meal planning, usually Saturday sometime, I have the kids each choose a meal and a menu for one day the following week.

To inspire them (and me) I check out cookbooks from the library and also use our own assorted cookbook collection. I look for cookbooks with lots of colored pictures.

Last week Bergen chose breakfast and made French Toast for us.

I think his choices are heavily influenced by his fascination with using the griddle. This week he picked grilled ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch.

Cooking food has already made the kids a bit more adventurous in what new foods they will eat as well.  Up until yesterday Bergen had always said no to mustard.  The cookbook he was using this week – Twist It Up, written by an eleven-year-old cancer survivor – suggested that ham and cheese tasted great with mustard.  Bergen decided he would try that on all the sandwiches and concluded that now he liked mustard.

I can see their cooking confidence improve each week. Last Wednesday Mosely served us chocolate chip muffins she had baked the night before. It was her first time being completely solo with the oven and the recipe. The muffins were moist and delicious.  She was so proud of herself.

I love the fact that the kids are actually serving our family and learning a life skill.

Their tastes lean to sweets and dessert-like options so I am offering some guidelines for their choices when necessary to add variety and increase their learning experience.  And – to keep us from eating meals consisting only of sugar.

When they make their choice they let me know the ingredient list and I make sure they have the right supplies.

At cooking time, I try to make myself accessible for help but I try hard to not step in but to let them make their own mistakes and figure it out as they go. Bergen learned quickly the problems of buttering soft bread with cold butter. He mastered the flipping of the sandwich on the griddle. And confessed that flipping food was his favorite. It was pretty cute to see how excited he was to head to the kitchen and prepare lunch for everyone. While we were feasting on his delicious grilled ham and cheese sandwiches you could see he was really pleased with himself.

There’s really so much more than cooking happening too. As Berg was placing bread slices on the counter he was counting people and determining amounts needed and he commented,”You know – you actually do use math when you’re cooking.”