Family Time In The Kitchen
Irma Rombauer, in her timeless “The Joy of Cooking,” never mentioned cooking with children. And while it may be challenging to cook with your kids, it can also be rewarding. It’s a perfect time to engage in conversation. Your children’s cooking skills are not going to be incredibly helpful in prepping dinner, but there are wonderful benefits, making their inability to julienne the carrots not so important. Here are some of the conversations you can start:
“Tell me what you think about _____?”
“Tell me about your day.”
“What was the best thing that happened for you today?”
“This was your great-grandmother’s recipe. What do you think of it?”
"Would you like to taste it? What do you think of it?”
When children are included in food preparation, there are so many things that are happening. They are learning cooking skills; you're sharing family history; you’re spending time together. Plus, cooking is one of those activities that is great for facilitating conversations. Because we are doing something and the focus is on the task, it is easy for older children to talk about things that may be too uncomfortable if sitting face to face. This is real quality time. Sounds great, right? But how do you make it work?
Here are 4 tips to get you started:
Schedule it. With busy schedules, it’s easy for cooking together to become something that never happens.
Allow enough time. This is particularly important when cooking with younger children. Learning a new skill takes time and you don’t want to rush a child using kitchen tools.
Try something new. Pick a new food to try. You can model a willingness to learn new things. Plus, you might find a new food you love and get them to try new foods.
Be willing to laugh. Even the best cooks have problems in the kitchen—just don’t take them too seriously. It will make your children comfortable to try things and you will be modeling healthy ways to deal with frustration.
With More Than A Meal, it’s easy for kids – even very young ones—because all the slicing and dicing is already done! The kids can help you put everything in your pressure cooker or slow cooker and wait for dinner to be ready.