Family Fun – Food

Family Time Includes Good Food

Family time that includes cooking and eating together is a great way of building relationships and making memories through fun activities and interactions, especially when everyone plays a part!

Do you remember being a child in the kitchen, savoring the aroma of some wonderful desert baking in the oven? The sense of anticipation that smell prompted? Maybe you recall the feeling of pride that you helped create the desert.

What comes to mind when thinking of birthdays and special occassions? Your favorite cake? A superb Thanksgiving Day meal? We all know food plays an important role in making these times special. In a traditional family home, everyday meal routines, including preparation, are also an integral part of what makes homelife feel welcoming, comfortable, and relaxing.

Why Cooking With Kids?

Children love to mimick what they see the older people do. How much more fun for them to be allowed to actively participate in what they have seen?

Even a very young child can be led through the process of breaking an egg over a small bowl before adding it to cookie dough or cake batter. Yes, he may make a small mess the first time. That’s a learning experience! Gently explaining as you work together, as well as demonstrating how to handle things such as an egg, builds trust in your child for your leadership. As she learns the skills related to preparing foods, your child will gain a healthy self-confidence and discover the pleasure of serving others.

Once your child is ready to safely perform food preparation tasks, give them the opportunity! You may be surprised at how creative he can be. As your young chef matures, watch out for those “I made up this recipe” salty-brownie or fallen-cake flops, turning them into humorous and encouraging learning times. This is memory-making time, another great reason to cook with your kids!

Another benefit of cooking with kids is to prepare them for life on their own. Traditionally, culinary skills have been learned by children at the elbow of a parent. Through watching, listening, smelling, touching, tasting, trying to mimick actions such as mixing without splashing…your young person learns most readily when you make it fun for them!

Teaching Culinary Skills

You, as the experienced parent, can explain the reasons behind the various aspects of food preparation, even to a very young child. It’s amazing how much he will retain because you included him and made it fun!

Among the things you can do to teach your child is talk about what you are going to do, then talk about what you are doing as you do it. This actually applies to teaching anything, not only to cooking.

Here are some easy things to share with your child:

• Why you cream the butter and sugar together first, then add egg
• Why all of the dry ingredients for a cake are mixed together before adding to the creamed butter mixture
• How egg whites are whipped into stiff peaks for merengue and Why there must be no oily residue on the beaters or bowl
• Why you should not leave the kitchen when boiling water or frying food
• How to safely open an oven door, and Why: so the heat escaping as it is opened doesn’t hit the child’s face

These are suggestions based on baking. If your cooking skills are more geared toward creating savory meals, you can teach your child what herbs and spices go well together to bring out the best flavors in your select dish. I learned from my mom and gramma to use my sense of smell when deciding what might best enhance the flavor of such things as soups, stews, and sauces.

Don’t Know How To Cook?

There is no time like the present to learn! Start with easy things, start with asking people whom you know have a good grasp of how to cook if they will show you, start with looking through cookbooks or cooking blogs, and ask God for help!

You can learn WITH your child! Children, of any age, often admire the attitude they see of being willing to learn something new when seen in their parents. To admit you don’t know how to do something, and that you are willing to learn, then being patient with the learning process, cheerfully dealing with mistakes you make along the way, is to set your child up for success in life by setting a godly example for them! Plus you ARE gaining a new skill!

Don’t Enjoy Cooking?

I have a dear friend who says she doesn’t like to cook. She has not been in a position where she has needed to learn, so she has never learned to love cooking. Most meals throughout her lifetime have been fast foods, freezer meals, easy sandwhiches, canned soups, or made by other cooks. I don’t believe this stems from any fault on her part.

If you’re in a similar plight, two ideas came to me to pass your way:

• First, pray about it. Praying, asking God for his perspective and direction, is always the first thing to do. Especially when presented with the thought that maybe you should be doing something that tends to make you feel the urge to run or draw back from it. When you take things to God with a sincere heart of willingness to do his will, he leads. Sometimes his leading is immediately apparent, other times he shows you over time, through life circumstances. What matters most to God is not so much What you do, as your Willingness to do whatever he shows you is pleasing to him.
• Second: You might ask a friend to help you out! One option would be to invite them over for a Meal Cooking Dinner, where she gives you the list of items needed to make the meal, you purchase them, then she cooks the meal while explaining what she is doing and why, to you and your child in the kitchen of your home. OR it could be hers. You can use your imagination to improvise from this idea, coming up with what will work for you. This lets you off the hook, yet allows for a fun time together in the kitchen with your child.

Remember, the primary objective here is to accomplish some rudimentary cooking skills in your child, and to make it a fun, memory-making time!