Our second lesson involved reading a recipe and using measuring cups, spoons, and a liquid measure. I talked about reading the recipe first before beginning and then often throughout. We spread out the measuring spoons, cups, and glass measure to talk about them; Genevieve whirled around to get a paper and pen and show me what she knew about fractions from school - I was so pleased and impressed that she instantly made that connection!
She learned to look at the milk in the glass measuring cup by bending down on the same plane as the red lines on the side. She learned that vanilla extract rushes fast out of the bottle and that tapioca is cassava root from South America (although I thought it was from Africa too, and called manioc there).
She got more comfortable with the stove and what a medium flame looks like; her arm got tired of stirring the pudding, so we talked about different stirring patterns and switching hands and we made silly jokes while she stirred. My husband asked her at lunch what she learned and she explained boiling to him. We talked about stove safety and how to scrape out every little bit of the pudding using a silicone spatula; I told her Granny is the queen of scraping bowls clean.
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| "tired-of-stirring" face |
This was a very successful lesson, even if I forgot to instruct Geneveive in the art of slicing and macerating strawberries to eat on top of the pudding. She was quite proud to serve us dessert! The recipe for the pudding that we used is here.
7 comments:
I can see that she also learned girls with long hair need to keep their hair out of the way when cooking, or the men in the family will make a big show when they find one of these hairs in their food!
She's doing great.
That looks scrumptious! A willing student is a treat to teach.
Wonderful! Now that I think about it...sadly...these were the sort of lessons I had to take from Matt when I first met him. I didn't know squat...other than what was printed on the packaging! She will be so much better off for this training.
Enjoying the cooking lessons!
I'm still planning to post some about our kid-cooking goals and adventures, too....soon, I hope :-)
The hankie post was fun. (well not for Ben)
And...I've been working to reduce my paper towel use. You gave me the idea, and I've been scandalized of late by how many we blow through in a very short time...so I chopped up some unwanted shirts and voila! I'm using far fewer paper towels and that's just me - I've not yet tried to bring the whole crew into the idea. But still, yay!
I found your blog from Down to Earth. I too have a 7 1/2 year old little lady and I have been trying to teach her to cook. I love the idea of once a week structured lessons. That seems like a doable approach - not too overwhelming for either of us. We will definitely try your tapioca recipe.
So fun. My kids LOVE being in the kitchen with me.
I have a love/hate with their involvement, but I know their interest is good and I don't want to dampen their spirits. But I do look forward to them getting older and developing more kitchen sense.
SO proud of Genevie.. She is doing a fantastic job cooking, and she is learning really fast.. She is adorable.
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