My daughter gets cooking
On Memorial Day weekend, my mom, my sister, her two kids, my daughter and I all went to a thrift store that was having a big Memorial Day sale.
My mom bought a binder and a few other items, my sister bought clothes for herself and the kids, I bought a bowl to hold fruit, and my daughter, out of all of the things the store had to offer, most wanted a book called "Betty Crocker's Kids Cook!"
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| "Betty Crocker's Kids Cook!" cookbook |
On the way back home, she sat next to one of her cousins and flipped through the cookbook, and then suddenly shouted, "Mommy! It has French toast sticks in here! I want to make that for Daddy for Father's Day!"
My mom got such a kick out of that.
My mom has been cooking since she was 6, the same age my daughter is now. My grandmother had taught my mom the basics, but it wasn't long before she left my mom to do complete meals by herself, learning some tasks through trial and error. Or that's how Mom remembers it, anyway. My grandma might have a different story to tell.
To be fair, it isn't like Mom would've been cooking five-course meals or anything like that. Mom was a kid in rural Oklahoma in the 1950s and 1960s. Her family was large and didn't have a lot of money, so many a meal consisted of beans, potatoes and biscuits.
Even still, it's hard for me to imagine my daughter, or anyone else her age, cooking a meal alone.
I've let her help me cook on occasion with the simplest tasks, like sprinkling cheese on a pizza or scrambling the eggs after I've already cracked them open and put them into a bowl.
Most days when she asks to help, though, I say, "Not today," because showing her how takes longer than doing it myself and because it's super hard to stop thinking of her as my baby.
But if my mom could make a meal for her whole family when she was 6, surely my daughter can make French toast sticks under my supervision. That is, after all, how I learned, with my mom showing me and letting me make mistakes. I cracked hundreds of eggs before I learned how to do it without getting eggshell where I didn't want it.
So this is a new chapter for both of us, my daughter learns to cook and I learn to let her learn.
I'll let you know how the French toast sticks turn out.
To be fair, it isn't like Mom would've been cooking five-course meals or anything like that. Mom was a kid in rural Oklahoma in the 1950s and 1960s. Her family was large and didn't have a lot of money, so many a meal consisted of beans, potatoes and biscuits.
Even still, it's hard for me to imagine my daughter, or anyone else her age, cooking a meal alone.
I've let her help me cook on occasion with the simplest tasks, like sprinkling cheese on a pizza or scrambling the eggs after I've already cracked them open and put them into a bowl.
Most days when she asks to help, though, I say, "Not today," because showing her how takes longer than doing it myself and because it's super hard to stop thinking of her as my baby.
But if my mom could make a meal for her whole family when she was 6, surely my daughter can make French toast sticks under my supervision. That is, after all, how I learned, with my mom showing me and letting me make mistakes. I cracked hundreds of eggs before I learned how to do it without getting eggshell where I didn't want it.
So this is a new chapter for both of us, my daughter learns to cook and I learn to let her learn.
I'll let you know how the French toast sticks turn out.
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