
Teaching children to cook is not my forte. There's just something about hot ovens and kitchen knives that makes me cringe just the teeniest bit inside at the thought of letting small children into the kitchen to do... well, anything. My mother was an amazing teacher, though she's humble enough that I doubt that she would say so. She had us in the kitchen from the time that we were very young, perched on top of chairs, draped in over-sized aprons, doing age-appropriate bits of cooking like grating cheese or opening cans of kidney beans. By the time I was nine, I had a small repertoire of meals that I could make all by myself such as homemade mac & cheese, Mexican casserole, and French Toast. (Along with the requisite and much larger repertoire of baked goods. I made a mean peanut butter cookie back in the day.) I look back on that in wonder because I've been such a foot-dragger about teaching my own children to cook. Part of that is as I said above--fear of accidents, and part of that is just a time issue. Most days it seems hard enough to get food on the table at all without adding another 20 minutes or so to the prep time because you have a child in the kitchen learning to chop onions without cutting his or her fingers off.