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

At the outset, let’s just say that things don’t always go as planned.  I saw the recipe on which I based this treatment in Eating Well magazine, the April issue.  It seemed straightforward enough. 

When it came to actually making it, I couldn’t get my protégée very interested in cooking.  The recipe called for a blender to make the sauce which is later added to the orzo.  She thought the blender was the noisiest thing ever, covered her ears tightly and didn’t even want to push the buttons!  This is big, as normally, she loves pushing any button anywhere. 

The picture in the magazine made the dish look scrumptious.  (See above).  I made it as directed and found that it lacked zip.  I grated a bunch more cheese and added it to my plate and more salt and found that the taste was much improved.  The recipe in the word document link below has increased the cheese by ¼ cup.  You might want to increase it even more.  I think I might also add the cheese to the individual plates instead of mixing it in with the orzo where I think it just got overwhelmed by the pasta.  I used the ripest, best-looking, organic plum tomato I could find.  That still wasn’t altogether wonderful flavor-wise.  If it were the height of summer a good garden tomato would zip things up a few notches.

Everyone ate the dish, but I don’t think I’ll be making this weekly.  It might be worth some more tweaking to get a fresh summery dish.  Let me know what your suggestions would be to make it better!

Click Here for Chicken and Sun-Dried Tomato Orzo Recipe with Preschooler Instructions