Cooking Lessons

As you probably know by now, I do a lot of cooking with my girls.  And yet I find I have so much still to learn.  That's the thing about this parenting gig.  As soon as I think I have (part of) it figured out, they grow up a little bit more and learn to read enough to work the forbidden TV at a friend's house.  Why is it always my kid who does these things?

But back to the cooking.  Right.

What I learned from cooking with my sixteen-month-old this morning.

Whatever I am doing, she wants to do too.

I can give her a decoy, but it will only buy me a few minutes, because she knows that this bowl of oats is not what you are making for dinner, mom!

Baked beans is actually a pretty good dish to make with this particular kind of help.  With the slow cooker still off, I let her stir in each new ingredient.

I am not totally convinced that my ingredients were the only ones added to the pot, however.  (See that half an onion in the picture above?)  And I estimate 20% navy bean loss out of the slow cooker.  At least she said "thank you" each time she scooped out a handful of soggy beans to give to me.  Or to dump in the sink.  Or to dump on the floor.

I am incapable of remembering whether I have molasses in the house.   Is there an app for that?  Because I always have three jars or none.  Today, it turned out, I had none.  I'm sure the brown sugar substitution will work out fine, right?

It is much easier to get a sixteen-month old interested in cooking than getting her interested in not cooking when, say, you finally really need to turn on the slow cooker.

It is a great tragedy to have to stop cooking.  She will repeatedly pull out the step-stool because she firmly believes that there are too many beans in that pot, and not enough onions or oats or toy cows or something.  Her only consolation is a very, very patient cat who does not mind being hugged by a small person joyfully yelling "Cat cat cat cat cat!"