Cooking

December always means a lot of cooking and the kids are great about joining in.

Rice Krispie Treats

Washing apples

Making apple sauce

Cooking

Sweet Daughter wanted to help cook. These are also the best photos showing her hair cut I posted about yesterday.

Shredding Cheese

I love having her help!

I'm hungry!

Am I the only parent who gets tired of the kids always expecting food? The good news is my kids can now get their own food. Not just simple microwave stuff either. This day Sweet Daughter wanted a cucumber. I told her to go ahead and this is what happened:

After washing it, she peeled it. 

Then she cut it into chunks and ate them.

Yup, this is another phase I could get used to. She even shared with me and Sweet Son!

Cooking Pancakes

Sweet Daughter has discovered a love of cooking. Since Wonderful Husband and I both have a love of eating, this is perfect! Here she is making pancakes by herself (with supervision).

Decorating Cupcakes

Grandma gave us a scary cupcake decorating kit which was all of the encouragement we needed!

Adding the icing (notice the bit on her cheek, hehe)

Spiders!

He tried to look scary for the photo.

Making Butter

When our curriculum (Moving Beyond the Page) included an activity of making butter, both kids were thrilled. The idea that butter only had one ingredient was fascinating. They were excited to start shaking the jar.

The excitement at the beginning. That excitement started to wear off well before the butter was finished.

After each taking individual turns, they started working together to roll it back and forth between them. This wasn't as effective, but it did eventually work.

Enjoying crackers with their own butter!

Cooking Pancakes

When you wake up and want pancakes, you better be willing to help. It's a life skill not just us being over tired.

See the concentration?

She is a pro!

She did help with the rest of the process, but these were the best photos. I love when kids get to do real cooking rather than just mixing. Besides nothing keeps you on your toes like handing a 5 year old a couple of raw eggs to crack.

Kabobs

Summer kabobs are the perfect solution for lunch. You use leftovers of cold items and the kids put it together themselves. Besides food on a stick is always popular.

Options included turkey or pepperoni, cheese, tomatoes, pita bread, and cheese tortalini

My "example" kabob is also in the picture.

Hers is a little tomato heavy, but look how proud of it she is

I sense a pattern...

Fresh Squeezed Lemonade

After last week's success with making orange juice the kids wanted to make fresh lemonade.

She thought lemons would be easier since they are smaller, hah!

This is one way to build arm muscles.

They both tried pure lemon juice and then agreed we should add water and sugar. They both loved it, but agree it is easier just to buy lemonade from the store.

Hand Squeezed Orange Juice

Everyone in our family loves orange juice, so it was natural that we would need to make some.

PUSH!

It was much more difficult than they had guessed.

The final result

It was really good. However, the kids agreed it was much easier just to buy some already juiced from the store.

Wordless Wednesday

Making popcorn balls

Fresh Coconut

Any time we see a new type of produce in the store, we like to try it. This week they had "fresh" coconut. The kids had never seen a whole coconut.

Drilling holes

Pouring out the juice

Using a hammer

It's open! Turns out the kids don't like it, but at least now they know.

Pizza Roll Ups

The kids love cooking, but we don't always have time to let them cook, so this month we decided they would do a weekly cooking project. This week they are making pizza roll ups.

4 ingredients, though we left out 1 and made them with only 3

Croissants, cheese, pepperoni, and pizza sauce (we skipped the sauce) 

 Unroll the dough, place some pepperonis and cheese on the long end and then roll up.

Bake following directions for croissants.

Simple and yummy!

Cooking

Cooking is great for fine motor, math, science, sensory, and fun. Here we were making "everything cookies". It is a basic cookie mix and then you add as many things as possible. We decided to add an additional step to work on fine motor more specifically.

We bought pecans in their shells.

Growing up, my great-grandmother had a giant pecan tree in her backyard. We would go over there and pick pecans, open them, and eat them on the spot. It was great. You really appreciate them so much more when you have to take them out of the shell.

There's the inside!

This is what they had after 30 minutes of work. Then I helped to get enough for the recipe.

Here the kids are rolling the dough to make cookies. We ate these quickly so no after photos.

Making fufu

When we study cultures, we try to use as many different senses as possible. During our study of Africa, Sweet Daughter wanted to make fufu. I had never heard of fufu, so this was going to be exciting.

If you have never read this book, you should find it. It covers many different countries and is interesting in many different ways.

 

 This is where Sweet Daughter first heard of fufu and decided she wanted to make and eat some.

First time using a peeler. She did great!

Mashing is hard work!

She rolled them into 4 balls so we could each have some with dinner.

 She was so pleased with her fufu and tomato soup. I love when the kids find something new they want to try. It's that smile and confidence I wish every person could understand.

Edible Cornucopia

This year our contribution to Thanksgiving was an edible cornucopia. The kids loved making it and it ended up turning out great. I think this will become and annual tradition.

First you make a foil cornucopia. Be sure to loosely stuff the inside so it doesn't collapse when you add the bread sticks.  Spray everything with non-stick spray.

Using bread sticks from a can, start from the tip and just wrap around and around and around. While the kids did that, I braided 3 sticks for a decorative touch around the opening.

Coat everything in melted butter and cook according to the package directions. Ours took just slightly longer than the package instructions, but watch closely.

Taking it out of the oven. (Please don't notice the messy kitchen.)

 After letting it cool, take out the foil - at least as much as possible. Then fill with something festive - in this case grapes. This made an awesome centerpiece.

Wordless Wednesday

Making their own ranch dressing at a Halloween cooking event

Kid Photographer - Me

These are all photo from Sweet Son's camera. I am often the target subject since I'm around while Wonderful Husband is at work.

Eating a quick lunch.

I didn't know he took this one. Yes, I eat pizza rolls. My kids refuse because they aren't healthy, but I can't help it.

We love waffles and pancakes and buy the mix in bulk. Usually Wonderful Husband makes them, but here is proof I do occasionally make them.