Cooking Experiment with Four-Year-Old: A Further Episode in an Ongoing Series
Winter wish list: check! We are all be-mittened and be-hatted thanks to Kevin heading out solo yesterday morning to do his capitalist duty in this season of exuberant consumerism, while I hauled the children to my mom’s where she tossed together a delicious lunch of sloppy joes on very short notice. We arrived in time for Fooey to help stir the sugar cookie dough, a good start to her day of cooking; actually, perhaps her best moment. CJ participated by eating dough off the wooden spoon, while everyone else gleefully cut out shapes, then iced the baked results, and ate them on the spot.
We arrived home with a sleeping toddler, several bags of cookies, and no house keys because I was wearing my weekend pants, and weekend pants have no pockets for keys. Of course. Lucky for us, Kevin had blown through an errand list the length of his arm and was on his last stop, nearby in uptown.
Late afternoon, and it was Fooey’s turn to cook supper with Mama. Her menu: chicken noodle soup, with extra noodles on the side. And meatballs. And fried potatoes. And beans and rice. And pumpkin muffins except baked as cake. And. Whoa, whoa, whoa, stop!
In retrospect, I made several tactical errors, most critically when I failed to account for the fact that cooking with an enthusiastic four-year-old would not be the same as cooking with her older brother and sister. Who, first off, can both read. Literacy is a real help to these cooking projects. It helps with the menu planning. Reading the cookbooks. Figuring out, independently, whether ingredients are on hand. Reading the recipes out loud during the cooking process. Finding measuring spoons and cups and reading amounts, and measuring them accurately. Second of all, four-year-olds can’t use sharp knives. They might think that they can, but they can’t. Don’t let them. Thirdly, and most crucially, four-year-olds lack endurance. Excitement meets reality and wanes sharply. I knew we were in trouble when she complained–first task of the afternoon–that washing the potatoes was “really hard, Mommy.” Crumbling a quarter slice of bread into crumbs rendered her weary beyond expression. Fetching ketchup from the fridge: “I have all these things I have to keep doing!” Squishing the hamburger into meatballs and placing them on the cookie sheet was perhaps the most successful of our cooperative ventures, but even this carried certain pitfalls. “Um, did you just lick your fingers?” “No.” “Let’s not lick raw hamburger from our fingers, okay, please?” (Yup, error number four: four-year-old handling raw meat.)
Next time, I’m thinking we’ll retool the four-year-old’s cooking date. I might direct the menu just a tad more (I did nix the beans and rice, and the pumpkin muffin-cake; still, we ended up with a genuinely eccentric selection of edibles upon the tabletop. Poultry, beef, and pork, if you count the bacon fat in which the potatoes were fried).
Next time, I will lower my expectations a great deal.
Still, she was proud of the end results (I think; mostly, anyway), with the meatballs coming in as her favourite. I’m hoping the ongoing experiment will broaden her palette ever so slightly, as she’s currently our pickiest eater. And stubborn as heck. And taken to screeching in disgust at the sight of any objectionable new dish. The good news is that this role used to be filled by AppleApple, who is now willing to try anything. I live in hope.
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If this weren’t already a veritable epic, and if my children were not becoming restless and desperate for attention, I might add something about last night’s fabulous debauch at our friends’ third annual Hi-Fi Christmas bash … something other than the cryptic words whiskey sour, dance fever, barefoot, cognac … forget it, those aren’t cryptic in the least. I’m already looking forward to next year. We’ll ship the kids somewhere for the whole weekend, and dance till they kick us out.
Cold Weather Wish List
Warm waterproof mittens for everyone. Neck warmers for school-going children. Thick warm socks. Long-underwear for those who will deign to wear it (ie. me!). Hats that fit. A new winter coat (me, again).
Last night, after supper, the children and Kevin all went outside and played in the bitter cold, sledding down our tiny hill in the dark. Later, I went out for a walk and was reminded how much there is to enjoy about winter, especially after nightfall. The crunch of snow underfoot, the crisp clean-tasting air, the hush. The world is muted. The mind travels inward.
But if you lack the right protective gear, winter is deeply uncomfortable at best, deadly at worst. Keeps a person humble.
“I Told You It Was Winter, Mama!”
One child crashed on couch. Apparently he needs an afternoon nap, after all. Three children making roads in the backyard. Minus 10 degrees Celsius. Loads of blowing snow. I’m glad it’s a paradise for some of us.
Put It All Together, and Here’s What You’ve Got
Snow overnight. Turning to damp snow by dawn. And by the time I headed up the hill, pushing laden stroller, to meet and steer the walking school bus … well, the substance falling upon us was debatable. One child suggested it was “slush.” Yup, pretty much.
Pushing up the hill through thick unmoving ice-slush? Pretty good work-out. Yet I never seemed to achieve the endorphin rush one achieves following a work-out uninhibited by wailing toddlers trapped in their wet mittens and strapped into a slow-moving stroller for close to an hour. The children were essentially soaked to the bone by the time we reached our destination.
Came home and shovelled the sidewalk. My mitts were wring-able.
Thankfully, babysitter arrived and I got some desperately needed writing time. The new site I’m writing for was supposed to launch on Monday; now it’s scheduled to launch Dec. 17th.
Wrote another book review, this time of A Coyote Solstice by Tom King, with pictures by Gary Clement.
Kevin came home for lunch. Promised that next Wednesday, he’d stay home with CJ in order to spare him the misery of the slow moving bus.
More writing during naptime. Wrote a short piece on baking with children.
Re-read the last story I’ve added to my basically-completed and much-expanded collection. Made some quick edits. I’ve got one more story to write, and then I’m sending the MS to my agent, who has agreed to read it and make a gut judgement–does she think she can sell it, or not.
Decided to drive to school. CJ kept crying “cold, cold,” despite snow suit, mittens, and hat. The wind was sharp. Discovered vehicle was on empty. Dragged pile of children (extra friend included) to gas station for fill-up. Of course, there was a traffic jam. The howls from hungry sad exhausted children were deafening. Hm, this sucks, thought I. Inspiration: send the two big boys into the gas station to buy a snack. Cookies, I suggested, since CJ and chips are a combo that equal choking hazard. They ran in, and by the time I’d filled up, returned, beaming, thrilled, a bag of chips each, and three bags of M&M candies for the others. SIGH. Well. “There weren’t any cookies, so we thought this was a good alternative!” And, really, it was. Everyone was cheered and chocolated, and quieted.
Next up: an evening out with Kevin. Which seems almost unimaginable at this stage of the day, with supper still to make, and children underfoot, and my hair … oh my hair. The soddenness of the morning has taken its toll.
Sunday Cooking Experiment with Eldest Daughter
I wasn’t sure we were up for it. But it was on the calendar: AppleApple’s turn to make supper. We’d scheduled it for yesterday, on Sunday, because Kevin was away and working from Thursday night through Saturday evening, and this cooking experiment requires a second parent on hand to entertain those children whose turn it is not. We started with bread dough in the morning. AppleApple agreed to help. Truthfully, I was so lethargic and unfocused after that time alone with the kids, I wouldn’t have managed to bake bread otherwise–and that’s my new weekend goal: bake bread and bake cookies.
AppleApple is amazing at bread-baking. Has all kinds of opinions about what extras we should add in to make this batch different than the last one. When I told her that some people wouldn’t believe that a seven-year-old could bake bread that looks and tastes like her bread, she was flabbergasted. It seems so easy. Measure, mix, knead. (With help from mama). This bread has rye flakes, and sunflower and flax seeds. It rose up beautifully, and we made four loaves for the week.
While the bread was rising, I took Albus shopping for winter boots. We had to drive around a bit, and he ended up, at the second store, deciding that the only boot in the store that was in his size would do (seriously! And the first store had precisely zero boots in his size). We were home in time for me to deliver Fooey to her first friend birthday party, which had her thrilled with excitement for days leading up to the big event. While she was out, I baked piles of oatmeal choc chip cookies. Kev went to pick up Fooey with Albus and CJ, and Fooey ran through our front door shouting that her little friend “has a daddy! And he’s really nice!” I got all the details at bedtime: musical chairs, a treasure hunt, what her friend’s basement playroom looked like, and on and on. She has no difficulty separating from us and doing her own thing.
AppleApple and I started on our cooking around 3pm, and worked till almost 6. I finished the cookie-baking while she started prepping ingredients. She chose a seasonal menu that did not require us to leave the house to find ingredients. She used the Simply In Season Children’s Cookbook. On the menu: Tater Soup, Granny Apple Rice, and Secret Chocolate Cake. “Tatter soup,” was how she pronounced it. That required scraping and cleaning nine smallish potatoes and four large carrots (we doubled the recipe). I appreciated how straightforward she was about her desire and ability to do certain tasks: for example, she told me that she didn’t feel confident chopping some of the vegetables. She worked very hard. She scrapped and cleaned two large beets for the secret chocolate cake. She peeled four apples for the rice. It was all very labour-intensive, but I noticed something: I didn’t mind using extra pots and pans and kitchen implements with someone else around to appreciate and enjoy the labours, and I didn’t feel impatient at all.
Which I note because I’d felt very impatient when I was in the vehicle running errands that morning (not with Albus, mind you, but with the situation of sitting in the vehicle, waiting at stoplights, having to drive across town, etc.).
But as we worked together, and talked and planned, and measured and made decisions, it felt like we had all the time in the world at our disposal.
The meal was delicious. The soup was creamy and smooth. The rice was sweet and savoury. The bread was tall and chewy. The dessert was decadent.
Next up: Fooey. It will be interesting to see what my four-year-old brings to the table (literally as well as metaphorically). She says she’s already got her menu planned. I wonder whether it will resemble her favourite outfits, when she picks out her clothes in the morning: a skirt, a dress, a shirt, a, sweater, tights, and socks.