What do you do with a super picky almost 10-year-old during quarantine? Let her cook! This has some added advantage in that it is also a great teaching opportunity! I had her pick out a recipe a few days ago and made sure I had everything for it. I did, because I totally have a stocked kitchen for our lovely quarantine life.
She has an America’s Test Kitchen cookbook for kids, so the recipes are super simple and require minimum ingredients. I had her read the recipe twice before we began. The book also had separate reference pages for her to learn how to dice a shallot, how to safely use knives, and blender safety, so that was awesome.
The recipe was designed for 1-2 servings and there were 3 for dinner, so she accurately deduced we would need to double to recipe. This added a nice math component to her preparation. I helped her identify where things were, as she doesn’t spend a lot of time in my kitchen (no one does!). She measured each ingredient out prior to starting. She then made sure she had all the necessary kitchen tools prepared and ready, and then she was off!
She made a very nice creamy tomato soup. It was very romesco sauce-like in that the thickener was bread. I made some grilled cheese sandwiches for us to eat with them to complete the meal.
In the end, she didn’t eat much of the soup. She did eat her grilled cheese. So I learned it isn’t just my cooking she doesn’t eat. I’m kidding. The recipe was really kind of flavorless. Sadly, it was one that assumes kids don’t like spices and herbs, and you know, flavor. It wasn’t terrible, it was just sweet and lacked depth. She also noted that she wanted some texture. We explored ways it could be improved if we try to make it again, and all agreed that leaving out the brown sugar was a definite!
She now wants to learn to make alfredo sauce. Oy veh…I may have gotten myself in trouble.
Foodie's Delimma 
One thought on “Let Her Cook!”