cooking

Master Chef Jr.

/ makingofahome / 1 Comment

My children have an addition.  They cannot seem to get enough Master Chef action on Hulu.  My oldest especially, wants to audition for the next season of the show, or at the very least, start her own restaurant in the very near future.  In fact, she recently asked the owner of our favorite local restaurant if she could live there.  Precious.

So to curb their enthusiasm, I told each girl she could prepare her own dish to serve at dinner.  And I must say, I was thoroughly shocked at the result.  This five-year-old and three-year-old created two different dishes that not only tasted good, but in the words of Gordon Ramsay were “visually stunning.”  It is truly fascinating to me what the minds of small children are capable of when left to run free without boundaries or restrictions.

Completely

/ makingofahome / 6 Comments

Yesterday we embarked upon a new adventure in our household:  the girls made dinner!  From start to finish (with a little help from Mom with some knife skills and boiling water), they created and prepared our entire evening meal.

The three of us girls went to our local natural foods store and I told them they could pick out anything they wanted to use in their dishes for dinner.  What seemed like a very random combination of items to me, ended up turning out just great!  Yet another example of what goes on in those little minds of theirs.

On my two-year old chef’s menu was a fruit salad with watermelon, kiwi, apples and blueberries with a homemade raspberry lime dressing (recipe courtesy of her big sis).

And on my five-year old chef’s menu was a spinach salad with apples and kiwi and a homemade raspberry lime dressing.  (She created the recipe for this dressing completely on her own.  In the store she told me she needed to buy limes to use as the acid with the olive oil in her dressing.  A smart cookie this one is!)  And the main course was her all time favorite:  angel hair pasta with pasture butter sauce.

“I want to make my own thing!”

/ makingofahome / 2 Comments

These are the words that ring throughout our home at least three times a week.  My girls just love to cook and/or bake “their own thing” and yesterday was quite the large step for my oldest daughter.

In the past, she had been content to mix random ingredients together, put it in our counter top convection oven (with Mommy’s help of course), and eat her creations.  Now with that said, she has done quite a bit of experimenting with various flavors and has come up with some delicious combinations, but the creations were random none the less.  But yesterday she said to me, “Mommy, I want to make my own thing, and I want it to be an actual recipe.”

So I decided, why not throw caution to the wind and let her completely take over the kitchen.  With a little bit of my help reading the measurements, she made cut out sugar cookies completely on her own!

Now the crowning moment of this adventure was when it came to the topping for these cookies.  My little five-year old gazed up at me and said, “Mommy I think I am going to sprinkle a little sugar, cinnamon and rosemary  from our garden on top of the cookies.  That way we don’t have to use food coloring or sprinkles with the yucky chemicals.”  (Oh she had just made her mama’s day with that one!) And an fyi…the cinnamon and rosemary combination is one of those flavor combos she came up with during her previous food experiments.  And let me tell you, it is really delicious!

Once she was done with her sprinkles, she sat back, looked approving at her creations and said, “Perfect.  It’s just like Jamie Oliver’s pumpkin muffins when he sprinkles lavender flowers on top for sprinkles!”  (My how this little one impressed me yesterday!)