Cooking With Kids

When cooking with your kids, or anyone elses, you have to have a few things....patience, a sense of humor, and the ability to remind yourself that the experience is more valuable than a clean kitchen for the evening. They might spill the flour, drop an egg on your foot, or sneeze in the batter. It happens. When the finished product means a lot to you, as it usually does to me, this can be so challenging. Don't do it on a night when company is coming over. Do it on those evenings when it will just be your family, and you've got a back up frozen pizza in the freezer. :)

Use your intuition when deciding what to let your kids do. I let my oldest son do some things the other ones don't get to do yet, like turn the oven on, and take things in and out of the oven. He is an especially careful kid. However, we have a rule in my house that we will not visit using knives until the age of 8. The reason I picked this age is that when I looked into cooking classes for kids, they do not let kids into the ones that they use knives with until they are 8. I figure they know what they are talking about.

The week that I cooked with Elijah I learned a few things. Children's cook books make some assumptions. They assume that children apparently have no taste buds, like everything bland, and only eat about 3 different kinds of vegetables. Very sad. The meals were mostly bland, and dissapointing, even though we made them correctly. The only cookbook that impressed me, was one that my dear friend Joia recommended to me. It's called Honest Pretzels. It's by Mollie Katzen of the famed Moosewood restaurant and cookbooks. She has the cutest step by step pictures, and the recipes actually taste good. Joia's favorite from this book, and I have to agree, is the yummy Lasagna filled with lots of fresh torn basil. The whole family liked this one, and we had fun making it too. The recipe is below, and remember it is written for a child to read. :) My notes are in italics.

Lasagna

2 pounds ricotta cheese (4 cups)
20 fresh basil leaves

1 tablespoon minced (cut in tiny pieces) or crushed garlic

1 cup grated parmesan cheese (buy a wedge and grate it yourself - its a fun thing for the kids to do, plus it tastes better!)

A 26 ounce jar of tomato sauce (A generous 3 cups) (we used Muir Glen Organics and it was really good)

12 lasagna noodles ( about 3/4 pound)
1 pound mozzarella cheese, grated (4 packed cups)

Yield: This makes about 16 servings

Time: It takes about 45 minutes to make, and almost an hour to bake. Then it needs to cook for 15 minutes. Figure about 2 hours start to finish.

You will also need:

- Small sharp knife (or a garlic press) and a cutting board for mincing (or crushing) the garlic ahead of time
- Handheld grater or food processor fitting with the grating attachment for grating mozzarella ahead of time
- Large bowl

- Scissors

- Measuring cups and spoons

- Long handled spoon or fork

- 1 cup liquid measure

- 9 X 13 baking pan

- Soup spoon

- Aluminum foil

- Timer with a bell

- Knife and spatula for serving
- Plates and forks

1. Ask an adult to turn the oven on to 375 degrees.

2. Put the ricotta cheese into a large bowl.

3. Make a little pile of 20 basil leaves. Hold them tightly together and snip them into the bowl with scissors. Snip them really snall.

4. Add 1 Tablespoon garlic and 1/2 cup of the parmesan. (You will use the rest of the parmesan for the top)

5. Mix well with a long-handled spoon or a big fork. You have just made the ricotta mixture. Set this aside for now.

6. Measure 1 cup tomato sauce. Pour it into the baking pan and spread it a little with the back of a spoon.

7. Put a layer of noodles on the sauce. They should touch edges, but should not overlap too much.

8. Use a soup spoon to put blobs of the ricotta mixture onto the noodles. The blobs do not need to connect or touch. Use about half of the ricotta mixture.

9. Measure another cup of sauce. Pour it over the blobs of cheese and the noddles and spread it a little.

10. Sprinkle on about half of the mozzarella.

11. Put another layer of noodles right on top of the cheese.

12. Put the rest of the ricotta mixture on top of the noodles, in blobs, like before.

13. Sprinkle the rest of the mozzarella over everything.

14. Pour on the rest of the sauce and spread it a little.

15. Cover the pan tightly with a big piece of foil. Ask and adult to help with the foil, and with putting the pan in the oven. Set the timer for 40 minutes.

16. Ask an adult to do all of this: After 40 minutes, take the pan out from the oven, remove the foil, and sprinkle the top with 1/2 cup parmesan. Bake, uncovered, for 15 minutes longer, and then take it out of the oven.

17. Let it cook for 15 minutes before serving.

YUM!!! :)