Rachel the chef

Looks like I'm not the only chef in the family. Rachel, who has taken a cooking class this past semester after school, insisted on making us colored waffles this morning. Drew helped her with the dye, and so she and I had pink waffles and he had blue. (The actual waffles she had learned to make in cooking class were filled with whipped cream, but we started small this morning).

Oh, and last weekend she made us cinnamon tortillas, a dish she had watched the cook at her preschool make. They were excellent.

Of course, Drew helps her put together the dishes, but she is also a big help to me when I make things for dinner parties and special events. Yesterday she cracked the eggs for the chocolate silk pie without making a mess, and she knows how to punch down the dough (and knead it, too) for challah. We are just at the point when I can give her a couple of tasks and then do other parts of the meal, confident that she'll follow my directions.

One of my goals is for her to cook us one meal a week by the time she's 9. We figure that meal will be pretty simple: tacos, maybe, or spaghetti with meat sauce, but at least she'll be confident enough in the kitchen to have picked up the basic life skill of cooking for herself (and others). We'll also round out her education by taking her to the grocery store and having her comparison shop for ingredients and work within a budget. Maybe we're pushing her to be grown-up too soon, but I love the idea of her learning how to be on her own years before she has to do so.