kids in the kitchen: Liam [may 2020]

So, remember last month when we had the boys 'guest chef' three. days. in. a row. one weekend?

(If not, you can read about it here)

The boys had so much fun (...and ok, i'll admit it, so did I) that we've decided to make it 'a thing' around here! 

Here's how we're doing it..

1. Listen, I am an 'anti-Saturday' chef.  Meaning I don't make dinner on Saturdays.  Saturdays are my day off for all. the. things. cooking included. So clearly there's a vacancy for someone to step in and feed my family on a Saturday, ha! Perfect! I'll be passing that baton off to my kids ;) Once a month, on a Saturday (because time and patience need to be in an ABUNDANCE of supply...) each fella will get a chance to get back in the kitchen a whip up something yummy.  

Three boys. Three days out of the month.. I can handle that.

2. To prevent any sort of argument (if you know, you know...), we're drawing numbers to see who cooks when... So for this month I put the numbers '2, 16, 23 and 30', ie: the Saturdays in May, in a bowl (9 wasn't included because we have plans on the 9th)

3. The boys draw the numbers and that's the day they're cooking... Easy peasy!

Make sense? We think it'll work for us.

Ok, so Liam drew first this month, so Thursday afternoon when I was making our grocery list for the week, he sat down with a recipe book and picked a recipe.

He went with Mix and Match Mama's 'Mushroom and Kale Pasta' and OH. MY. GOSH.

...it was incredible. 

He also made 'Fluff' for dessert!

Now that we have 'found our groove' from our first go at this, our 'process' went much, much smoother.

Step 1... Read off and retrieve your ingredients.

Step 2... Prep those ingredients: chop, dice, and measure out EVERYTHING into separate bowls. Yes. Everything. Even if it's just a teaspoon of something. Do it. Wash extra dishes... it's worth not having to choke down an overly salted or spicy meal and having to pretend you like it ;)

...yep, that's a big knife.

Preach safety, safety, safety and watch their comfort ability and follow their ques.  Last time Liam had to chop an onion, he was AWKWARD, so he helped me chop the onion.  This time, he was able to make a few initial chops very, very slowly on his own and then I took it from there.

I know I mentioned this before, but a tip that proved useful again when it comes to using knives:

FIND YOUR FINGERS. 

Before Liam made each cut, I would say 'find your fingers' and once all five were accounted for and out of harms way, he made the cut.

Silly, but it worked!

Step 3: Follow the directions - one sentence at a time.

Liam had to brown sausage for his dish...

Thanks to our friend, Shay, 'slow and low' is the mantra that is repeated 1,000 times during the entirety of the process.

1. Stir SLOWLY and; 2. Keep your utensils LOW (I tell the boys that their spoons, spatulas, etc. should be touching the bottom of the pan at all times)

...not a drop of grease splattered anywhere!

A handsome boy with a delicious, handsome-boy-made pasta.

So how did it go?

Well, for starters, Liam added a few new vocabulary words to his cooking repertoire. He learned what it meant to 'deglaze' a pan and what 'al dente' meant.  I'll keep you posted on how many times I hear him use those words in the coming days ;)

At one point, we had a few dirty measuring cups and needed to measure out 1 cup of something, so instead he grabbed a 1/4 measuring cup and went from there... Fractions. Who would've thought they were important? ;)

This recipe also called for Kale.

...Liam's not a fan of Kale.

...In fact, neither is everyone in the family except for me (wahh!)

BUT, Liam LOVES and I mean LOVES mushrooms.

So you can see how this mushroom kale pasta was a bit of a debacle ;)

So we talked about substituting the recipe... cause you can do that when you're the chef.  Chef's make the rules, chef's are the boss, chef's do whatever they wanna do... we talked about that, too ;)

So...What's another green, leafy veggie that we put in pastas?

AHA, Spinach! ;)

...he came to it on his own and I gotta say I was pretty impressed.

#you'rewelcomefuturedaughterinlaw

He also got to try his hand at chopping an onion again and was able to roughly chop up all of the mushrooms... Progress!

All in all, he did a great, great job and dinner was so so SO SO good that we will be making this again... SOON! You can find the recipe he used here.

Give it a try!