Cooking Show

Our daily schedule often includes the PBS cooking show that is on every day at 12:30. It is the perfect time when lunch is finished and I require Rocky to snuggle with me so we have a few minutes of wind-down time that lead into the 1:00 nap. Usually by that time she is tired enough that she will sit still, but I've been surprised at how much she has been influenced. Lately when she sees something good she'll say, "Oooh, we should make that."


One of her favorite things to do is to host her own cooking show. She'll be out on the playground stirring a bucket of wood chips and telling the other kids, who aren't listening, how to make posole (Mexican soup). She always picks a couple of leaves off the bushes and adds it saying that it isn't right until it has 'spices.' She's funny about spices because she always has to smell them like the cooks on T.V. Now a generous hand-me-down kitchen from Callie and a Rocky sized apron has added sophistication to her production. She's getting good enough that I think we should be able to start taping by the end of the summer. She always starts by saying, "Welcome to the cooking show. Today we are going to cook..." whatever is on the menu which usually consists of tortillas, spaghetti or eggs. I like when she does the tortillas because she will spend a lot of time patting them out. She's pretty creative about her recipes although I have noticed that she makes a disproportionate amount of cookies, and birthday cakes.
Daisy is always willing to be the designated taster, whether the food is edible or not.

We also try to give her some experience in the real kitchen. She and her dad made some gourmet chocolates. It turns out that stuffing toasted almonds into dates and dropping them in chocolate makes for an amazing treat. I think the girls preferred the pretzels, but that just meant more for us.


Hopefully this lasts and by the time she is 10 she'll be able to make dinner every night.