My Budding Chef

Daniel loves to help me cook - maybe just because I'm in the kitchen a lot. He helps me most nights to make dinner, although his specialty is "trash boy," and he busily takes all the scraps of veggies, etc. to the trash for me - one piece at a time. He really is getting more and more helpful. Now he can open the fridge or pantry and find things for me, though it usually takes longer for him to find it than it would for me to get it. I try to give him jobs throughout the course of cooking to keep him interested.....and busy. He's learned a lot about food and cooking.

He likes to make pretend food too. The other day he had a pan out in the living room. He filled it with pecans, covered it with a towel and then asked me to help him put it outside so that it could "rise." (Can you tell that's where I put dough to rise sometimes?) He's also turned the entertainment center into his own little kitchen center. One of the cupboards is the refrigerator, and the area where the DVD player goes is the oven. I can frequently find pans, bowls, etc. in the "oven" where he leaves them to bake.

He helped me make David chocolate chip cookies for Father's Day. His favorite thing to do is stir the dry ingredients. I catch him sticking his fingers in the flour all the time. The chocolate chip cookies were supposed to be a secret, but David told me later that Daniel spilled the beans several times the day before Father's Day. That was too good a secret to keep quiet!