As the school holidays stretch on and the rain pelts down, it would be super easy to stock up on DVDs and let the kids lie on the lounge all day.  Until of course, the arguments about ‘what we’ll watch’, ‘who’s on the bean bag’ and ‘you’re lying on my foot’ break out and I wonder whether that plan was in fact a good one.

Craft is always an option too – my kids love gluing, cutting, pasting, cutting, drawing, cutting … until the dining room table resembles a glitter pot and the floor is hidden beneath a pile of tiny paper offcuts that my vacuum cleaner and my patience have a big problem dealing with.  And whilst I love all their creations, the problem of storing all their materpieces becomes a massive undertaking in itself.

So, on days like today, I get into the kitchen and get cooking with kids.  To be honest, it doesn’t matter what we end up cooking.  But today, Gran is here and the kids wanted to make pasta (like they did last time she was here).

My thinking is cooking with kids ticks lots of boxes:

1. We have some fun together – yes ALL my kids and I

2. The kids learn a new skill that may come in handy later on in life

3. The kids start to gain an understanding of how ingredients come together to make a meal

4. We create something that can be enjoyed together and when they’ve been involved, you can guarantee they’ll gobble it all up

So today, my ‘cooking with kids’ project was RAVIOLI.  Sounds difficult but it’s actually quite straightforward once you’ve done it a few times.  My kids have even mastered the pasta machine and do quite a good job of working together (!!!)  There’s also enough steps in the process for each of them to have a specific job (so no fighting over who’s rolling, who’s filling, who’s crimping the edges!)

Cooking with kids is an all-time holiday favourite in our house.  This holiday my 11 year old has mastered Teriyaki Chicken (complete with sesame seeds and sushi rice), little miss 7 is now in charge of our pizza dough and my littlest poppet does the best diced carrots, cucumbers, zucchini, eggplant (yes, we now eat EVERYTHING DICED).  And thanks to our newest purchase, a DeLonghi Nespresso Machine, all 3 now know exactly how to make my coffee!!  Flat White (light blue Nespresso capsule) and 3/4 teaspoon sugar.

Why don’t you get Cooking with Kids?  Everything you teach them, they’ll remember and even better, they’ll remember it as a wonderful time they spent time with you (or Gran in our case this holidays).

When you’re cooking with kids, what’s your favourite dish to cook?  How old were your kids when you started cooking with your kids?

Much MoM Love,

Nikki

This post written by Nikki Hills, Mum of 4 and Founder of Mouths of Mums®. Nikki has worked in marketing, advertising and communications for close to 20 years and created Mouths of Mums® to give real mums a space to connect and trial and review products for free. Mouths of Mums® was also founded to give brands the opportunity to connect with real mums and truly understand what they need to do in order to deliver products that meet mums’ needs and will therefore be embraced by real mums.

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