It’s Foodie Tuesday!
My two year old made us dinner last night, sorta, and it was awesome. Here’s what happened:
My two year old isn’t particularly interested in eating. Weirdly, he loves novel foods, so he’s happy to try new stuff and old stuff presented differently, but he bores pretty quickly. He’s also very light and we’re trying to fatten him up. So we are constantly looking for ways to spark a love of food: fun farmers market trips; engaging him in cooking; celebrations – big and small- at our meals.
The other day I learned that Molly Katzen, author of one of my favourite cookbooks, the Moosewood Cookbook, has a line of children’s cookbooks. She’s so unfussy, with a great sense of humour, someone who brings all the senses and a pretty aesthetic to cooking and I immediately thought what better author than she for cookbooks for kids.
So we got Pretend Soup and Other Real Recipes the other day and had a blast trying out a few recipes. The recipes are simple, tasty, and easy to execute. There’s a précis page for adults and then each recipe is laid out for kids in hand-drawn pictograms in a quasi comic strip grid. This book is for presechoolers – 3 to 6 year olds- but my 25 month old got a lot out of it. I can’t recommend this highly enough: it’s brilliant and cute and educational in so so many ways. Everything from sequencing and measuring, to reading the pictures left to right; we even talked about nutrition as he prepped these. And did I mention we’re now one step closer to the kid making us food!
We started with quesadillas, the first recipe in the book. Here’s a peak at the first part of the recipe. So easy a 2 year old could follow it!
Look our book's already stained - a mark of a great cookbook!
This book is one of three in her kids’ line. Salad People is her latest, also geared at preschoolers:
Images from Salad People
Honest Pretzels is for children 8 and up.
What a wonderful gift one these would make to those budding chefs on your list. It’s a fun way to introduce cooking to kids. It will make them feel capable, confident, responsible. With younger kids, this is a great bonding activity; and with older kids you can sit back and reap the rewards of meals. Need I say more?
