I am so happy to share another story from Kris with you.  She is a maverick when it comes to cooking with her daughter.  (Stop thinking about Alaska when I say that word!).  Can you believe that Audrey, her 2 year old daughter, has her own night of the week to make dinner.  Yes, you read that right.  If a 2 year old can help choose the menu and prepare dinner once a week, what’s stopping your older kids from doing the same.  She’s my new hero!  You can read more about Audrey’s kitchen adventures at In the Kitchen with Audrey.

With the Food Revolution happening all over the United States (and the world?) I thought there no better time for me to share how easy it is to get even young

Is it ready yet?

children in the kitchen. I started cooking with Audrey after spending some time with my in-laws. We would eat family meals and they kept inviting Audrey to help prep any time she would get underfoot in the kitchen. After seven weeks of watching them include her and enjoying the family dinners so much, I vowed to continue once we got back on our own. It was hard in the beginning; Audrey is two. Not only did I have no idea how to successfully include her, but I had a new baby in the house. We started simple: making bread in the bread machine; using the stand mixer to make cookies; baking oven fried chicken. After a while it got easier and we started having more fun. I have experimented with a great number of recipes covering just about any type of meal and found a few basic tips to help anyone wanting to cook with young children:

1. Baking, roasting, and slow cooking are the simplest types of meals to prepare. Audrey still loves to make her famous Oven Fried Chicken. It requires no more skill than brushing chicken with butter and sprinkling bread crumbs on top. And it is delicious!
2. Experiment with simple recipes until you find what your child enjoys. Audrey loves to crack eggs, measure and add ingredients, and place stuff in the cooking containers. She does not really want to stir much and usually asks me to do that. One of her favorite dishes to make is Muffin Tin Meatloaf. She gets to crack an egg, use the food processor to make bread crumbs, put the meat mixture in the tins, and place sauce on top. Again, quite tasty.
3. There are hundreds of children’s cookbooks out there. Find one that looks good and start cooking. Rachel Ray, Mollie Katzen and Better Homes and Gardens make good ones. We also love the ones with Pooh and Cookie Monster. Those are Audrey’s celebrities. Cookie Monster has a Carrot Cake Cookies recipe that I could not stop eating. We only make it now when we have play dates and I can be assured most cookies will be consumed.
4. Laugh. When your child makes a mess, laugh with her while you help clean it up. She is going to drop an egg or miss the bowl with the milk. The kitchen cleans up later, your child will remember the fun in the kitchen for a lifetime. And remember Rachel Ray’s tip about keeping a trash bowl handy on the counter.
5. Take your child shopping for ingredients. Talk about the food. Let her know you are buying a chicken to make dinner with tonight or ask her which apples to get for the crisp you are making for dessert. I like to let Audrey bring her own reusable shopping bag to the store to put her ingredients in. We have also started going to the farmer’s markets together and soon plan a trip to a local garden to pick our own food.

If it is a little rough the first time, take a few days to plan and do it again. Nothing worth doing is ever easy the first time. One day last week Audrey completely crushed, instead of cracked, an egg. She looked at me, laughed, and we tossed that egg and started over. I made sure to talk her through the process again and she was fine the second time around. I want her to understand where her food comes from and enjoy eating something she helped prepare.

My mother never taught me to cook more than boxed macaroni and cheese and one good chicken dish. For my daughter, I want more. Hopefully, soon, she will surpass me in skill and start teaching me to cook. In the meantime, we are having fun. Soon Audrey’s little sister, Maurene, will be old enough to hold the spoon and stir or brush melted butter on the chicken. I love cooking with my daughter, it makes me feel so close to her.