Today I wanted to teach the boys some basics of cooking and baking but have fun too. I think part of my job as a mom of all boys is to make sure they won't starve on their missions and at college. Of course, as long as milk and cereal is in their budget I know they won't starve! However, it was fun to spend the day teaching them how to make some things we eat all the time, some new things they NEVER eat, and a surprise here and there too. I realize we didn't get any where close to the Cordon Bleu Cooking School arena, but hopefully a thing or two will stick so they can at least impress some unsuspecting girl in the future.
So back to Iron Chef Day! We didn't really have an Iron Chef Contest, but by the end of the day the true Iron Chef of the group emerged. He was the only one who endured all the tasks during the day and was still smiling. His identity to be revealed later.
We started the morning by making homemade waffles, biscuits and cinnamon rolls. The latter two were thanks to our friend Mr. Pillbury. The little boys thought it was cool to watch me bang the can on the counter top to get it to pop open. I'm not going to lie--it was fun to bang it on the counter top! We were so busy eating and cooking that I forgot to take pictures but believe me when I say you have never seen cinnamon rolls disappear so fast!
After we cleaned up (come to find out Brock has mad dish scubbing skillz!), did a little exercising with the Wii downstairs, we started in on the first food assignment: spaghetti sauce. You might think that was a weird thing to have them make but it was fairly easy, it taught them how to brown hamburger and I needed some more to freeze anyway. Bradley and Bryson worked on the hamburger, Bryson and I opened all the cans of tomato sauce and paste (we did a double batch), Bryson and Brock dumped it in and Brock and I cleaned up the cans and recycled them while Bryson stirred the sauce. While all the goodness simmered I had them work on lunch which was Mac-N-Cheese. Again, you're probably thinking "Why?" My kids don't like most pasta in general but they do like spaghetti (hence, the sauce). So I thought we give Mac-N-Cheese a go and see if anyone's tastes had progressed. We did simple Kraft Mac-N-Cheese and taught them how to boil the water, cook the pasta without letting it stick, drain it in the colander (that was the vocabulary word for the day), and follow the directions to make the sauce.
The above picture is Brock's reaction to Mac-N-Cheese which was pretty much everyone's reaction too. Eventually, they all ate a small portion because they knew that the next food assignment was baking cookies!
When it comes to cookies Brock is my right hand man! He always pulls a chair over to help dump things in and snag a chocolate chip or two or 10 in the process. Today, he and Blake sort of took turns at the chair and Bryson also helped measure and dump ingredients in. After I scooped out a few cookies to put them on the cookie sheet Brock said he wanted to "roll them" (like little balls). So I scooped and he rolled and the oven baked.
He was impressed I could lift three cookies off the baking sheet at a time with our pancake turner.
Thanks to Aunt Kaley's extra arms and legs we were able to clean up in between each project and not go crazy. She and Brock finished baking the cookies while I ran to grab Egg Beaters for our last project. In the meantime we started dinner: Meat and Taters. You can't really mess up this three ingredient casserole, although some have tried. Bradley, Bryson and Brock watched as I smashed down the hamburger, they lined up the tater tots and then Bryson spread the Cream of Chicken soup on top. It was completely devoured an hour later!
It had been a little bit of a long day for the King of Rock and Queen of Everything. They did have fun playing on the floor and kissing each other--that will have to be stopped soon but now it's totally cute! Brett was so excited to crawl over to Madi's carseat, grab on to the seat part and pull himself up by hanging on to the bar. Madi and Kaley were getting ready to leave so he leaned over for a last good-bye.
Our last assignment was the one I was most excited for: My Grandma Partridge's Homemade Ice Cream! I have never made it before but somehow inherited their ice cream machine and felt like I was not living up to my heritage! The kids have asked numerous times if we could make ice cream but I always put them off. So today was the day and I think Grandma and Grandpa would be proud of our first time efforts! All the boys took turns mashing the strawberries. Bradley's height and muscles came in especially handy. Blake even came out of oblivion to help on this one and was excited to mash for a while. He and Brock helped me dump and mix the rest of the ingredients and watched me pour it into the ice cream machine.
We had a brief pause while Scott got some ice (duh, should have thought of that yesterday) and we got things churning. Brock stayed in the kitchen to monitor the ice level and helped me fill it up when it needed more.
Everyone was upset we weren't making vanilla but my childhood memories of Grandma and Grandpa's strawberry won out--it's my Spring Break too, right? So when it was finished Brock was curious to see if it turned into vanilla or was still strawberry. After a quick taste, he decided strawberry was ok after all!
Oh, the goodness!
It's heaven in a big ice cream bucket!
And so our Iron Chef of the Day was Brock. He did a great job helping all day long--even scrubbing dishes and dust busting crumbs under the table. He hung in there with me until the very end where we shared a big spoonful of ice cream! That's my Brock-lee!
1 comment:
That ice cream looks so good! Strawberry is my childhood homemade memory, too!
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