Cooking with Kid(s)

I enjoyed having my nieces in town for Thanksgiving. I think the best part
(other than the Raggedy costume)
was the quality time I spent with Adele in the kitchen on Friday! (Making food that was homemade, but full of refined flour and white sugar - and food coloring! - not exactly Slow Food or Local Food or Real Food.)

I posted earlier about trying to figure out what to serve for breakfast to my niece that does not include eggs, oatmeal, or peanuts. My sister decided on pull-aparts - and actually got up early in the morning to make the dough, so it had plenty of time to rise.

Okay, so breakfast still wasn't ready until 10:30, and I didn't get any pictures of the process, but Adele did a great job helping me put little balls of dough rolled in butter and cinnamon sugar in my Bundt pan.

She's two, so I was afraid she'd pile all the dough on one side of the pan. Actually, she did a great job of putting the balls around the pan. When she had filled one layer of dough about halfway around the pan, she looked at her handiwork and exclaimed (I am not making this up), "oh look, it's a perfect rainbow." She was right. The balls of (brownish) dough in a semi-circle were indeed a perfect rainbow shape. She continued on with her work, and eventually the dough made a perfect circle. After the first layer, I think she got a little bit bored, and she started just throwing the dough anywhere. But it only took a little bit of rearranging before the finished product was set on top of the oven to rise again. The rolls were pretty good, although they could have had more of the butter/sugar mixture!

Later in the day I asked Adele if she wanted to make cookies with me. She and her mom do cooking "projects" at home sometimes, and she really seems to like them. Plus, Portage is a nice town but it isn't the most exciting place for two-year-olds. (We don't even have an art desk.) I got out my grandpa's Crisp Cookie recipe that my aunt gave me a few years ago, when I knew I wouldn't make it all the way to WI (from Kentucky) for Christmas, but didn't want to miss out on Grandpa's cookies. (Or the decorating that goes with it.)

Michael and I had (a little too much?) fun decorating the crisp cookies last year!
Adele helped me pick out good cookie cutters (she named the shapes as I held them up - if she didn't know what the shape was supposed to be, we didn't use that one)
hmm . . . what could this be?

She was very interested in sprinkling flour on the dough mat
and she even helped roll out the dough.
The cookies turned out pretty well by my standards - none of them were burned or undercooked, and only a few were smashed/broken.
With three pans and lots of helpers (and photographers) the job went quickly, even if it was very hot in the kitchen! Adele took a nap while the cookies cooled.

Adele sampled the cookies after her nap.
Oliver and Loki tried to convince Adele to share with them (but she didn't)
Finally, we were ready to decorate! (Aunt Dee Dee made a little mistake about what time the parade was supposed to be on Friday night - I had it in my head all day that the parade was at 5:00 but our internet was down, so I had no way of verifying this (without going downtown to look at the signs). Around 4:45 as we were piling on winter gear to go to the parade, I checked the internet again and it was working - which was a good thing because the parade was not until 6:00.) So we used the extra time to decorate the cookies.

Adele was a very good sport about wearing a kitchen towel as her "apron."
Mommy showed her how to do one, and then Adele decorated like a pro.
Okay, so she got a little bit messy . . . that's what the newspaper was for!
What's wrong with this cookie, MeMaw?He has an owie knee, just like BaPa!
I sent the decorated cookies home with them.
I wonder how long they lasted.

Recipe, without pictures

This past Sunday, I intended to make french toast for breakfast. I had plenty of homemade bread, and a dozen safe, healthy organic eggs in my fridge that have been completely unaffected by any recall. But when I looked at my bread, it had gotten moldy! It was less than a week old (usually I struggle to keep bread around for longer than that) but I think the humidity must have gotten to it. I read that it is best to keep bread at room temperature so it does not dry out, as it would in the fridge. But I opted to keep the bread I made later on Sunday in the fridge to avoid spoilage.

I had to switch gears for breakfast, then! I briefly considered making omelets, but while I was a master at making an omelet for myself in Kentucky (almost every Sunday morning, while reading the New York Times and listening to Sunday Baroque before buckling down and ruining a perfectly good thing with homework), I have not mastered cooking omelets for two people. Do you use two pans and cook them simultaneously? Do you cook a really big omelet and cut it in half? Do you use one pan and serve the omelets at different times? I don't know. I make scrambled eggs instead.

I had about three pounds of red non-storage potatoes hanging out on my kitchen counter from our CSA, and I decided to serve scrambled eggs with fried potatoes. I quartered and sliced three medium potatoes then microwaved them for 5 minutes while chopping my other ingredients. For the scrambled eggs, I diced a small onion, chopped up four bruised tomatoes, throwing out the bad parts, shredded about 1/4 cup of farmers cheese, and about 1/3 cup of muenster, and took some pesto out of the fridge.

When the potatoes had warmed up in the microwave, I put a little bit of vegetable oil in a pan and cooked the potatoes over medium heat until they were browned. I thought the pan might be a little dry, so I added a little bit of butter as they cooked. They turned out to be the best fried potatoes I have ever made. Microwaving the potato first makes all the difference. Without that step, I end up with potato hunks with one side burned to the bottom of the pan, the top side still raw.

While frying the potatoes, I actually cooked down the tomato and onion for a bit before adding the eggs. I don't like scrambled eggs that are watery from vegetable juices, so I typically cook my veggies for a while first to get some of the water out. (Garlic would have been a good addition here but I did not think to add it until after the eggs were cooked.)

I whisked four eggs in a bowl, added a splash of milk, and some salt and pepper, then added the egg mixture to the tomatoes and onions. I let them cook for a while, then added the pesto. It smelled heavenly. When the eggs were almost done, I added the cheese and let it melt.

I am usually a big fan of sweet breakfast foods (hence the french toast - which I make with plenty of vanilla, cinnamon, and I used to add sugar but next time intend to use maple syrup in the batter instead) but as far as a savory breakfast goes, this was one of the best things I've ever thrown together at a moments' notice.