Letting the family cook
In the monthly
menu-planning template, one evening meal per week is set aside for my
husband or the kids to cook. This wasn’t always the case, so having a
night off from cooking is a great break for me.
The change
also didn’t happen overnight. It evolved as my blogging workload
increased and the children grew older. The benefits of giving the family
a chance to do the cooking are not only mine either. My husband is now
far more capable in the kitchen and has increased the selection of meals
he can cook from five to about ten. My eldest son — who has begun
cooking meals on his own — has more self-confidence and is building on
his independence skills. To get your family involved in the kitchen with
less of a fight, you should set expectations, familiarise your family
with the kitchen and find child-friendly recipes.
I first needed to work
out what assistance I wanted with cooking the evening meals. How often
did I want someone else to cook, and who did I think could do this? My
husband and I discussed his involvement and we agreed on him being
solely responsible for the meal on Saturdays and assisting on Sundays.
Having clear expectations set up between us meant we each had our
accountabilities. He was to cook the meal and I was to leave him in
peace to do it, without constantly looking over his shoulder.
We then had a
similar conversation with our eldest son. We had just begun teaching him
to cook, so we then talked about how often he could cook a meal for the
family on his own. We all agreed on once a month.
Introducing the family to the kitchen
Not everyone feels
comfortable in the kitchen, but that doesn’t have to be an excuse for
keeping them out of it. I’ve witnessed how practice and familiarity can
make a big difference in cooking a meal. To introduce my husband and my
kids to the kitchen I’ve used a very similar process.
• Health and safety lessons. The kids are in the kitchen quite a bit with me, so it’s valuable to remind them of kitchen safety and health basics such as:
⇒ washing hands
⇒ tying hair back
⇒ power-point and electricity safety
⇒ how to face pot handles
⇒ how to handle knives
⇒ cutting away from yourself.
• Start small.
A gradual introduction is easier than jumping in the deep end. Starting
the kids with small cooking projects such as scones, muffins and
slices, and then progressing to light meals such as scrambled eggs,
builds their confidence through success. They’re then willing to try
more complex recipes.
• Watch and learn. Just being in the kitchen and watching how things are done is really helpful. When learning
how to prepare a meal, my husband prefers to watch me cook it in its
entirety. He writes notes on a copy of the recipe while I’m cooking so
he’ll feel confident about cooking the meal by himself.
• Doing it together.
The kids learn by watching me prepare a meal. The next time we prepare
that dish the children cook it with me. This time they’re in charge of
the cooking and I supervise and answer any questions. This stage can
take a while to perfect. For example, my eldest son only needs help once
with some meals. However, for other, more complex recipes he may need
me around a few times before he feels comfortable cooking it on his own.
• Going solo.
Once they feel confident about cooking a meal, I let the kids be solely
responsible for putting it together — from the first steps of finding
the ingredients, to serving it and cleaning up. It can be tempting to
step in and correct anything you see that might not be right. Sometimes I
find it easier to walk away! I try not to intervene unless there’s a
safety issue involved. Kids tend to learn best from making mistakes and
working things out by themselves.
Recipes for kids to cook
Table 1 shows some
examples of recipes that my children and my ‘non-cook’ husband prepare
for the family.
Family-friendly food
Not every meal I
serve up for dinner is received joyfully by all my kids. Each child has
their own distinct set of likes and dislikes. The kids have input to the
menu plan, so their preferences are taken into account, but as the
parent I also endeavour to expose them to new foods, textures and
combinations. I’ve learned through many rejections and wasted meals that
while trying to do this, I still need to keep an emphasis on making the
food for our evening meals family-friendly.
Table 1: recipes for kids and partners to cook
Getting kids to eat
We’ve modified our
approach to eating meals over the years. Originally, we used to offer
the kids dessert after every meal and this often became a bargaining
element. I remember saying things like, ‘Eat three more bites, then you
can have dessert’, particularly if I was getting them to try something
new. But as the children grew older, they’d ask, ‘What’s for dessert?’
to find out whether it was worth eating those extra spoonfuls or not.
Mealtime could become a battle over how much more was to be eaten.
To
avoid this scenario, we agreed at a family meeting that we’d have
dessert only twice a week, and the children would get to eat it
regardless of whether they’d eaten their main meal or not. This was
under the explicit understanding that once mealtime finishes there’s no
further option of eating food for the rest of the evening. If the
children choose not to eat their meal, I don’t discuss it with them
other than to explain that it’s their decision and that they’ll have to
wait until breakfast for something to eat.
There
are nights when, after not eating their meal, one of the kids will say
they’re hungry. This comes mainly from the younger ones, as the older
three don’t bother telling me any more. When I respond I aim to be
empathetic and calm, and I explain they can have breakfast in the
morning. This doesn’t always end quietly or without tears; however, it
happens infrequently as the kids have now grown used to the consequences
of not eating their dinner.
Meals kids love
It’s possible to serve up meals that are healthy and
that kids will love. While the kids do have different preferences,
self-serve meals tend to be winners with all kids. These are the types
of meals where you set food out on the table and everyone selects what
they want.
We
have a number of different styles of self-serve meals like this, but
the format is same: a serving of meat and a selection of pre-cut
vegetables and salads to choose from. I find with these meals the kids
eat more fresh vegetables. They’re empowered by choice and they
particularly love using little serving tongs to serve themselves.
Another
bonus with these types of self-serve meals is that I generally have at
least one child in the kitchen helping me prepare the food: slicing
cheese, peeling carrots, tearing lettuce and cutting capsicum are all
tasks that can easily be done by little hands.
Some self-serve meals that my kids love are:
• tacos
• chicken schnitzel and salad
• homemade hamburgers and salad
• pan-fried fish with salad
• salad rolls
• sausages and salad
• souvlaki
• baked potatoes
• chicken wings, corn and baked potatoes.
