Confidence in the Kitchen: Sharing Cooking Experiences with Your Preschool Child

My interest in eating local made this title stand out. While Vermont is a long way away, the idea of using local ingredients wherever you are is appealing. This book houses recipes using basic Vermont ingredients. It is so specialized that some of the recipes’ required ingredients wouldn’t be found here easily.

Though my original goal of finding some vegetable recipes for utilizing my CSA share was not met, the book was well-organized containing both recipes and stories about the Shelburne Farm. There is an Inn at Shelburne Farm, and co-author Rick Gencarelli, is head chef there.

I took note of several recipes which would transfer easily for preparation in Colorado including Tomato Cheddar Soup which merges the tastes of the grilled cheese sandwich with tomato soup. Their Bacon and Goat Cheese free form tart also woke up my taste buds as anything containing goat cheese does. On the sweet side, Sour Cherry-Chocolate Cheesecakes look definitely worth a try once I can stand to think about turning my oven on again!

Pasanen, Melissa and Gencarelli, Rick. Cooking with Shelburne Farms: Food and Stories from Vermont New York: Penguin Group, 2007.

ISBN: 978-0-670-01835-2

Scale 1-10 (1 too boring for words - 10 could see and taste as I read it) 

Overall Ratings: Culinary Escapism: 5   Recipe Quality: 8

From the DooF website, “DooF shows kids and their families how fun it can be to find healthy alternatives to the fast food many of us eat. Need some help in the kitchen or in getting your kid to eat their carrots instead of those french fries? Stay tuned for the new show that gets kids excited about good food by showing them how they can be part of the magical process of bringing it from source to table.”

DooF is set to be broadcast on PBS in 2009. It is aimed at young school-age children (6-11). I went to their website and watched the podcast on beets. It was a creative and rhyming exposé on the vegetable. Two young beet cops searched for a missing beet. This was for a “magic ingredient” segment. It’s a little too advanced linguistically right now for my protégée to catch the nuances, but by the time it airs on television she’d be at just the right age.

I found out about DooF by reading about DooF-a-Palooza on the What’s Cooking blog (see the BlogRoll). It is a great food festival held at the Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA. While it sounds like a great event, I won’t be traveling to the festival. I will, however, be on the lookout for the show!

Read more about the creative team for DooF by clicking here. 

You can watch clips of the show through this link.

Though not characteristic for our family, we went to see Wall-E on opening day, last Friday. Grandma was in town and it was hotter than Hades in our house. A cool place to hang out was beyond appealing. We piled into the car, turned on the air conditioner and headed for the new Hollywood Theatre on Interquest Parkway to see what all the fuss was about both in facility and film.

We arrived before seating time, but not before the serpentine line formed across the lobby. As such, we found ourselves seated in the front row. My protégée thought that was cool and the rest of us were just glad to be someplace chilly. After what I think was exactly one zillion previews, the film began. Wall-E, a robotic E.T., appeared amongst the largest piles of garbage ever imagined. Click here to watch the trailers.

You may have already heard, that 700 years after humans left earth due to inhabitability, an army of Wall-Es were tasked with cleaning up the mess which had been made of the earth.

 Our Wall-E is presumably the only one left as the story opens. Quite a while is spent getting to know Wall-E and his environment, quite a WORDLESS while. I was interested, pondering how things could have become this bad and listening to the sounds Wall-E made. My protégée was not as enthralled.

About twenty minutes into the film, the second main character arrives. EVE brings with her a sort of conversation in the interaction between the characters. She is a thoroughly contemporary contrast to Wall-E’s modern mechanical being. Without giving away anything, let me say that at this point my protégée became more interested, but not thoroughly interested. EVE’s arrival also results in all sorts of new and LOUD sounds which weren’t thrilling to my youngster. At this point she passed from lap to lap every few minutes.

Though the film isn’t what I’d consider terribly long at ninety-seven minutes, it was a bit too long for my four-year-old. She watched the action, but was asking to leave before the ending was carried out. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and think that a child of five or six could remain interested with some coaxing through the first twenty minutes with the aid of something delicious from the concession stand.  Overall I’d give the movie a big thumbs up.

By the way, the theatre was nice. I enjoyed being able to buy tickets on-line. The lobby was covered in popcorn and the hallway filled with boxes of cups. Being in the front row I wasn’t able to fully evaluate the all-digital picture. That being said, if in the neighborhood, I’d definitely see a movie there again.

After receiving the latest distribution from the Venetucci CSA, I did some more searching to add to the recipe list on the CSA Recipe Spot tab. An organizational note: if a recipe features two vegetables prominently, I have listed it under both vegetables.

Through the technological gizmos related to the blog, I discovered a recipe for a turnip and radish salad by another CSA blogger out of Ithaca, NY. Also new are recipes for a dressing featuring garlic scapes and recipe for wilted spinach and chard.

The newest addition to my culinary knowledge is the recognition by sight of pak choi (pictured above). Recipes featuring this vegetable are harder to come by. So far I’ve found a link which gives some basic information and three recipes. Perhaps you’ve got a great use for this pretty green veggie. If so, will you share it through a comment and enlighten us all? Happy cooking!

Today has been one non-stop session of pretend. My protégée and I have switched roles so many times that it might be wise to call in a mental health professional to cement our true identities. When bedtime finally arrived I hoped for a good story to ease the transition to sleepytime. We just went to the library, and therefore we have a whole bunch of new books.

Tonight’s choice was Hooray for Fish, by Lucy Cousins. The author is also the creator of Maisy. The fish book has the same whimsical, color-filled style as Maisy. I found it a visual feast and a delight especially since I was part of the listening audience.

The summary from inside the front cover reads, “Little Fish has all sorts of fishly friends in his underwater home, but loves one of them most of all.”  For all of you mothers out there, the fish Little Fish loves most is his mama! This cute ending was a nice encouragement at the end of a somewhat exasperating day. On a scale of 1-10, I’d rate this book a 9! Find it at your library and enjoy swimming with the fishes.

Cousins, Lucy. Hooray for Fish! Cambridge: Candlewick Press, 2005. 

ISBN 0-7636-2741-0.

“About the time you think your children are able, get them started on some simple kitchen tasks. Eventually a child can be put in charge of the whole dinner once a week, from planning the menu to cooking it. Having kids work in the kitchen is undoubtedly a struggle at first, but later it can be a great gift, for the parent will get some relief and the child can take pride in making a meaningful contribution- and will leave home with a truly practical skill.” I couldn’t agree more with Deborah Madison, author of Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone.

Madison’s attitude towards vegetarian cooking is highlighted on the book jacket. She’s not preachy about vegetarianism, rather giving her readers options: if you’re a vegan you can cook most of the 1,400 recipes in the book, if you’re a committed vegetarian you can prepare all of them, if you don’t attach a label to your eating style you can cook everything in the book and serve it with meat, fish or fowl.

Madison dedicates forty-eight pages of background before a single recipe is given. She gives thorough treatment of selection and use of basic cooking equipment and techniques. Next, she turns to seasonings in the kitchen, offering full explanation of the possibilities and effects or each from butter to nuts and herbs. Then she devotes thirty-three pages to sauces.

The chapters which follow are equally meticulous. Her chapter on sandwiches reads as a list of delicious brainstorms. Combining the same ingredients in new ways gives her recipes pizzazz and appeal. Grilled Onions on Toast with Romesco Sauce (page 120) sounded especially good. The chapter on salads continues in the brainstorm vein. One especially interesting idea is for Sabzi (page 143), a salad composed mainly of fresh herbs with spinach and arugula thrown in for good measure.

Her soup chapter gives recipes for many vegetable stocks. Meat stocks are the basis of so many dishes in French cooking; it makes sense to have a good arsenal of flavorful stocks for vegetarian cooking. Additionally, she gives a primer for making vegetable soups in ten basic steps.

In visual terms, the layout of the cookbook is inviting. There are well-drawn pencil illustrations throughout the book which are enlightening in some cases and pure embellishment in others. Her tome is instructive to the nth degree, so the escape factor isn’t there for me. In essence, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone is a manual for how to cook, period. Famous vegetarian and cook Mollie Katzen; and Alice Waters, owner of Chez Panisse laud the book on the back jacket. I add my praise: Madison is fastidious without being fussy, imaginative and expert. 

Madison, Deborah. Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone. New York: Broadway Books, 1997.

ISBN: 0-7679-0014-6

Scale 1-10 (1 too boring for words - 10 could see and taste as I read it) 

Overall Ratings: Culinary Escapism: 4   Recipe Quality: 9

Garlic Scapes are an interesting vegetable. They are the “flower” part of the garlic plant and carry a milder garlic taste when cooked than traditional bulb garlic. I tasted a small cut raw and it was spicy! I was collecting up my scapes provided in my half of the CSA share I split with my mother hoping for the 1/2 cup needed to make the Spinach and Garlic Scapes Pasta. Even after begging an additional scape off my mother, I only ended up with a 1/4 cup. I still had some spring garlic saved, and one spring onion. I threw caution to the wind and put all that in the mix. The result was good, but a bit over garlicy even for me. Next time I will save up enough for a half recipe and not be so free with the bohemian mix. Half would have been enough as my protégée rejected the sauce on sight, tasted it after coaxing and then ran to spit it out.

The intention of the recipe is a spinach and garlic scape pesto to put with your favorite pasta. The pesto is made with fresh vegetables, so the vitamin content is at its peak. The recipe says to add some pasta water if the pesto is too thick. I needed to do this and my friend said her run at the recipe also required the pasta water. I used a food processor and she used a blender- either tool seems to result in requiring additional liquid to get the right consistency. I added about a quarter cup of pasta water and next time I’ll add more.

The results of the first run were encouraging enough to try it again. If anyone else out there has tried this, please share your experience by making a comment so we can all benefit!

My Recipes (features recipes from Cooking Light, Southern Living, Sunset, Coastal Living, Cottage Living and Health magazines:  http://www.myrecipes.com/

Myrecipes.com is filled with features. To review all of them in one post would be too long and cumbersome. My focus here will be the recipe search, the feature I use most on any recipe site. The myrecipes recipe search can be attacked from several different angles. The four options offered under the Recipe Finder tab are: Recipe Finder, Enhanced Recipe Search, Search Recipe Categories, and Search Menu Categories.

The general Recipe Finder option offers categories to search by as follows: ingredients, courses, regional cooking, occasions, diet, conveniences, publications, and partners. There are pictures with popular subcategories under each one with tempting pictures to fuel your imagination.

If you’d like to browse, Search Recipe Categories gives more detail than the general search. You can view all the recipes in a given category. I chose fruit and a myriad of recipes came up. Pictures were shown for the first 15 of 4210 recipes in which fruit was featured. The fruit was in main dishes, desserts, drinks and dressings on that page. An option to search within those results is also offered. The pictures make this option an inviting one, if you’re wanting something that looks good you can gander at the picture and see how your appetite responds.

The enhanced recipe search gives you even more options, allowing you to check boxes for multiple subcategories at once. Main ingredients, exclude, courses, occasions, cuisines, conveniences, cooking methods, dietary considerations, publications and partners are the subcategories. Here the options are more detailed even if only one option interests you. I did a search for chocolate, dairy, fruit, dessert, exclude nuts and came up with 1,650 recipes. There are multitudes of recipes available in the database, so you need to be specific or you’ll be looking at options all day. I did a new search adding ice cream maker to the options and the result was 131 recipes. I redid my search narrowing with French cuisine. That search netted five sorbet recipes, none including chocolate!

The last option is Search Menu Categories. Here you can select a given cuisine, occasion or convenience. I chose the make-ahead category and 107 menus showed up. I picked Casual Make Ahead Buffet for summer entertaining which featured the following recipes:

• Thai Eggplant Dip
• Chili-Spiced Smoked Turkey Breast
• Herbed Potato Salad with Green Beans and Tomatoes
• Chunky Plum-and-Ginger Ice Cream
• Passionate White Sangría

Myrecipes.com also has options for saving your recipes in your own online recipe box. This feature will be examined in a future review. Myrecipes.com is one of my favorite search sites. I especially like using their Cooking Light recipes as I’m trying to shed a few pounds. I’ve had good success with the recipes I find there. I hope it will be a useful tool for you too!

In general, I’m against cute food. This is no surprise to those of you who have read my Culinary Interest Building cookbook reviews. In some cases, the sheer delight of the creation trumps fundamental ideology. These adorable penguins caught my eye while blog surfing the other night. I decided to try them with my protégée even though fine motor skills seemed to be necessary. We divided up the tasks, and she handed me supplies like a surgery nurse and I assembled and filled the little bodies. Jumbo olives, small olives, carrot and cream cheese are the ingredients needed. The other requirement is a bit of patience.

I found the basic directions on allrecipes. I have flushed them out a bit and geared them towards making them with young protégés. Click here for detailed instructions for Penguin Appetizers

This post was featured in The Gazette yesterday. I discovered that I had an error in the recipe! The second ingredient should be 4 cups of SUGAR, not 4 cups of vinegar. The recipe as well as the accompanying preschool directions and printable recipe have been corrected. I apologize for my error.

Great Aunt Elizabeth’s Refrigerator Pickles are famous in our family for being delicious and very easy to make. They require no canning, spending about two weeks in the refrigerator to become pickles instead. This is a fun ongoing project to do with your protégés. Once pickled, they’re very good with a sandwich, a hamburger or even as a snack on their own. Our grocery store was having a super sale on cucumbers, so I decided to take advantage and make a big batch. You’ll need a gallon jar to make these pickles, or several quart jars. I saved some jars from prepared spaghetti sauce and they worked just fine. Pack the cucumbers in tightly and pour the brine up to the neck of the jar if using smaller jars.

The ingredients are simple as you’ll see:

4 cups white vinegar  

4 cups sugar  

1/2 cup salt  

1/2 teaspoon turmeric  

1 1/2 teaspoons celery seed  

1 1/2 teaspoons mustard seed  

3 medium onions, sliced thin  

5-8 cucumbers, depending on size to fill a one gallon jar, peeled and sliced

click here for Refrigerator Pickles recipe with preschool instructions