CT FM 006: Cooking With Your Kids

CT FM 006:

Cooking With Your Kids Brought To You By: RecipeThis.com

Introduction Welcome to our sixth Podcast from CT FM. For our 6th Podcast I wanted to talk about getting your kids cooking and getting them into the kitchen.

When it came to me and my mum (who is a great cook by the way) I rebelled. I always thought she was bossing me around in the kitchen and hated every moment. The sooner I was out of the kitchen the better!

Then my teenage years hit and I realised that she was perfectly happy to cook for me so why should I join in? I would come home from school and dinner would be out and ready for me. There was no request to help and since when would a teenager offer from the goodness of their heart to get involved?

I might get asked to do the washing up, which I would do, but that was about it.

Pretty much everything that I knew how to cook by the time I was 16 was thanks to other family meals and I looked forward to them showing me.

There was my amazing aunt who taught me how to make a delicious cheese quiche. I have adapted it very slightly these days so that it includes olive oil in the pastry as after all I live in Portugal!

My Grandad taught me how to make the best ever fishcakes. He was a fisherman so it was his signature dish and I would make them whenever I get the chance. Here in Portugal his recipe lives on!

My Grandma taught me how to bake. I used to love watching her use the washing up bowl as her super sized mixing bowl and then we would make pastry after pastry. Bun after bun and cake after cake. It was proper old fashioned baking and I loved it.

Sadly she died when I was 18 but whenever I bake with my kids I always think of her.

Anything else I knew how to make was taught to me at school via the various cooking classes that we all have. I remember learning how to cook a cheese scone, dice an onion, making chocolate biscuits and so much more.

In the end my mum said to me when I was 17, that I better marry a chef as I would make a useless home cook. Of course I took her advice seriously and married Dominic!

But I do wish that I had a better understanding in the kitchen and had learnt to cook from a younger age, so it was always my plan with my kids.

My son is now 14 and he can cook more than I could at 21.

He still has a lot to learn but he knows the basics in order to leave home and be able to cook healthy meals for himself!

My daughter is 16mths and her limits are passing me the onions and potatoes and stealing all my tea towels. But I am sure she will get there one day!

So Where Should You Start With Your Kids

Your kids minds is like a sponge and they can learn so many things in the first 6 years of their life. This is the best time to start teaching them about cooking and healthy eating.

I am not saying you go off and teach your 4 year old to make a Beef Wellington as this is just not going to happen. And you would look like a weirdo if you tried it.

But what we would is we have our kids in the kitchen with us when we are cooking and they watch what we do and they are secretly learning while you are cooking.

Once they are of walking age they are old enough to be able to pass you light things. Such as tea towels, a ladel, a potato, an onion, a plastic container and lots of other similar things.

By the time they are two, they can be sat on the kitchen worktop or stood on a chair (under your supervision) while you make biscuits together.

Last month over the Easter holidays we were doing our typical Easter baking. There were lots of chocolate biscuits, Rice Krispie buns and lemon shortbread. The entire time I was baking Sofia was by my side and even put all the 100’s and 1000’s over the biscuits. She had a lovely time and it is nice to see that she is learning a little at a time.

It is also much better if we can start our kids when they are younger as then you are not weaning them off things they love, as something they have never had, then they will never miss it!

Indian Families Put Us To Shame

I love the culture of families that are away from the Western modern world. The fact that kids are taken into the kitchen with their mothers at a young age and they learn to cook from a young age really does put us to shame.

Whenever I have met Indian families it is amazing how well they understand cooking and cook for scratch using fresh ingredients and love their food.

A lot of the time they have learnt to cook from their parents and grandparents and this will carry on for many more generations with them adding in their own recipes as they go.

We seriously need to take a leaf out of their book and teach our kids about home cooking and get them cooking from as young as possible.

Plus I also love the fact that they appreciate the cuisine of where they come from. We are British born but we are raising our kids in Portugal. As such our son has no memories of his younger years in Britain and we all consider Portugal to be our home country. This means that a lot of what we teach our kids is Portuguese with some English food thrown in a long the way.

It is nice, because it allows us to keep the memories of England alive and it is rather funny when we mention British dishes to our kids and they look at us like we are aliens.

Embrace local food with your kids and teach them what you know and it will be amazing what an interest they show in it and how good a cook they will become.

Where Should You Start?

I always say to start with the meals that are confident cooking that you could teach your kids. Just think about those easy meals that you have cooked hundreds of times before and you could do it in your sleep.

And kids love stories so you can tell them the story behind the recipe and when you first made it and who originally taught you.

Then you can partner up with your kids and look online together for new recipes to try out. Your kids will love you for this as it is their chance to work with you and be involved in the decision making.

You could say that you have never made a type of biscuit and that you want to try it and you could then choose and print off the recipe together. It will keep the excitement going and they will be learning every step of the way.

Every now and again when I want to learn something new I will turn to looking online for recipes and to do it together is so much more fun.

You could also create a recipe book for them – where you have a handwritten recipe book and everything that they make with you, goes in the book. It will give them a great focus and they will then be proudly be able to share with friends and family what they personally made!

This brings us to this Podcasts Sponsor: For Podcast 6 of CT FM we wanted to bring to your attention Yummly.com. We are currently members and it is like Pinterest but just for recipes. We find it a lot easier to use than Pinterest and it is perfect for planning recipes and sharing recipes that you have tried out or want to try out.

In our links and resources section we have the link to follow us on Yummly and we really recommend that you get involved with the site.

Frugal Family Cooking The best thing about teaching your kids to cook is that you can make it a frugal experience. You can teach them things that would be cooked from scratch in the old days. The old fashioned days when small amounts were spent on grocery shopping but food was still amazing.

You could teach your kids to make shortbread, homemade ice cream, chocolate chip cookies, shepherds pie, cheesy mash, beef stew, cauliflower cheese and loads of other cheap to make dishes.

It will also give you the chance to teach them about the value of money and understand that they can eat well without over spending.

Also if you want your kids to be healthy and eat very little processed foods, then you can show them how a lot of meals are made from scratch or healthier versions.

For example one of the favourite things that we made our son was cauliflower rice and ever since he has been obsessed with how it is made and helping us make it.

He also loves it when something tastes absolutely delicious and he then finds out that the meal or snack in question was very healthy!

Round Up! Thanks for joining us in our Podcast and we look forward to sharing more of our cooking tips with you in the future.

Links & Resources Mentioned In This Podcast

 Cheese & Tomato Quiche  My Grandad’s Fishcakes  Follow Us On Yummly How To Get Involved In Our Podcasts

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Thanks again for listening and best of luck with your cooking.

Samantha & Dominic Milner http://recipethis.com And don’t forget to connect with us on social media:  http://facebook.com/recipethis  https://twitter.com/recipe_this  https://pt.pinterest.com/recipethis/

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