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

Having watched Sandra Lee a handful of times on the Food Network, I had an idea of the sorts of recipes she espouses. I tend to cook things primarily from scratch because that’s how my mom did things. She always baked bread from scratch for us and I had no idea what a gift that was. Once she hadn’t yet baked for the week and she and my dad were going out of town. I asked her if we could PLEASE have Wonder Bread. I’m sure she had mixed feelings of hurt that I thought Wonder Bread would be better and some relief that a trip to the store for some bread would satisfy me. She got it for me and I then learned the difference between home made bread and crapola.

Using some prepared items can definitely be a time saver, and I’m not against using whatever will get a meal on the table in a pinch. My philosophy is to go from scratch or at least use good quality ingredients with nutritive value. Lee’s credo seems to be make it EASY and don’t be concerned about the rest. When reading her recipes, they proved to be a litany of ads for foods from various famous companies. Certainly, we all have favorite brands. For some reason, the way she sets forth the FOODS you need for a dish as opposed to ingredients rubs me the wrong way.

Making everything from scratch always can make you crazy, and making a cooking experience with your protégé too long is a recipe for failure. Making everything by combining pre-packaged foods can be a recipe for nutritional disaster, or at the very least doesn’t teach any real cooking skills. On the other hand, we all need combining skills to go along with cooking skills as sometimes making a combination meal is all we can handle. For teaching combining and partial cooking, Sandra Lee is useful.

I found an “oldie but goodie” recipe in her book for Porcupine Meatballs. When I first began cooking meals for the family more or less on my own, this was a recipe I used. Sandra’s recipe uses a mix for seasoning, and canned soups for the sauce. The idea is to make meatballs with uncooked rice in them, roll them in additional rice and simmer them until cooked through. These would certainly be a dish that needs to be made together if your child is as young as mine, but is fun enough to be interesting for the protégés.

The other recipe which piqued my interest was Pizza Braids. Here she takes refrigerated breadsticks, and divides the dough in thirds. One third is rolled in pepperoni, another coated with parmesan cheese, and the last dredged in Italian Seasoning. The dough is then braided together to form a yummy looking appetizer to be dipped in pizza sauce.

Lee’s book is intended for older youthful cooks, to enable them to start preparing meals with just a little assistance from their parents. For that purpose, her combining approach makes sense. I didn’t find much that interested me as an experienced cook, the premise of her method doesn’t gel with my culinary outlook. In spite of this, I would recommend paging through her book if you have a cook of any age in your house who might be encouraged to try cooking something because her combining approach may seem less intimidating.

Lee, Sandra. Semi-Homemade Cool Kids’ Cooking. Des Moines: Meredith Books, 2006.

ISBN: 978-0-696-23265-7

Overall rating schema here is on a scale of 1-10. 

(1 too “cutesy:” seems to insult intelligence of adult and child –

10 imaginative and forward-thinking towards building actual cooking skills).

Overall ratings:  Culinary Interest-Building: 3   Recipe Quality: 4