Teach Your Children to Cook
As the year comes to a close, we tend to ruminate over the months past and begin to form ideas about what we would like to achieve in the new year. If you would like a healthy and harmonious year with your family, why not teach your children to cook?
I say bring the kids into the kitchen with you, teach them how to cook (or learn together), and provide them with meals that have less salt, fat, and sugar then any prepared foods you can buy.
Plus, you will have a good time doing it. I had always baked with my kids and it was a fun activity for them, but I generally made dinner myself.
When my son was 17, he asked me to teach him to cook so he'd know what he was doing when he was ready to move away from home.
So for two years, we spent every evening at the stove, cooking, talking, listening to great music, and just enjoying our time together.
At the end of it, he had learned a lot about cooking, I'd learned a lot about indie rock bands and we had cemented a great relationship.
You can start cooking and baking with very young children. Let them stir things, teach them to measure ingredients, let them help plan the menu, and teach them how to clean up.
As they get older, teach them to use a knife safely and how to use the stove safely. Talk to them about what you eat and you can impart all kinds of information about health and nutrition, without them realizing it.
The key to all of this, of course, is patience. Yes, you can do it faster if you do it yourself, but you'll be doing it alone.
If you make cooking fun for your kids, it will be fun for you too, and by the time they are teenagers, they'll be pros and maybe sometimes they'll cook dinner for you.
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