Everything I Learned, I Learned in Kindergarten...and Then Re-learned as a Mom!

Cooking 101:  When Weston was five, he wrote the following recipe:

Cookies
Sugar (a little)
Pie in it - "homemade"
Lots of flour
Stir up.
Put in oven and bake 3 minutes at 6 degrees.
Frost them and sprinkle with sugar.
These are my favorite homemade cookies!

Shaylie, age four, wrote this:

Cherries and Strawberries
5 cups of cherries
5 cups of strawberries
1 handful of sugar plus 5 cups
5 glasses of milk
5 squares of butter
1 glass of milk
water
eggs and cookies
Fry until done at 5%.  Eat hot!

Does this remind you of yesterday's blog?  I guess writing recipes runs in the family.

One of my favorite snacks when I was little was invented while me and my brother and sister were playing restaurant.  We melted some butter in a bowl, added peanuts and pickles and stirred it up.  This was a big hit amongst the three of us for years to come.

This knack for making up our own recipes comes honestly.  My Dad, in a moment of what he called genius, (but all of us who suffered through dinner that day called insanity) made up a legendary concoction that the dogs wouldn't even touch and is still talked about today.  Mom was gone for the night which put Dad in charge of dinner.  I don't know if he was trying to clean out the refrigerator or what.  Two of the many ingredients that I do remember were cut-up hot dogs scrambled with eggs.  We all had to try some, but when Dad had a hard time choking it down, we all ended up getting a sandwich to eat instead. 

Just when we thought the nightmare was over, out came dessert.  Dad loved bananas and was convinced that anything with that particular fruit in it was delectable.  I remember bananas and marshmallows but can't remember the rest.  Sometimes, I think our mind protects us by forgetting!

Lucky for our family, Mom did most of the cooking.

As I've become the Mom and do most of the cooking in our family, I, like my Dad, enjoy experimenting.  I don't however put peanuts and pickles together anymore, and I don't go to the extremes like Dad.  I just like to tweak things a little to make them more kid-friendly, budget-friendly, or substitute for ingredients I may not have.  I am happy to report that most of these experiments are successful, (this analysis made by the fact that the kids and the dogs eat them.)

So to encourage my upcoming little cooks, I feel obligated to taste their new ideas.   Some of the more memorable (not necessarily good, but memorable,) concoctions include ham and jam sandwiches, together; pizza topped with cheese, no sauce, or anything else; cookie mixtures of chopped candy bar stirred into any kind of dough; any food covered in ketchup; and various drinks made with melted candies, powders of all kinds, and suckers.

New menu items that I refuse to try include earthworms, (according to Weston, they mainly taste like dirt),  and fire bugs, (just found that one in the diaper, not sure how it tasted). 

Watching my children, I see the natural evolution from playing kitchen on their pretend stove to using their Easy Bake oven; from serving me cold cereal for my Mother's Day breakfast-in-bed to serving banana nut pancakes with scrambled eggs.  What progress! 

These future Moms and Dads may be handing out earthworms today, but tomorrow, Filet Mignon and homemade pies.