Cooking With Kids

A couple links:

My friend Viki told me about the Exploratorium's Science of Cooking website. She and her girls had fun making taffy.

We tried it (look for upcoming post on bilious green goo) and learned a lot in spite of failing to make taffy. For instance, corn syrup is used in taffy as an interfering agent. Its long sugars interfere with the formation of sucrose crystals, which makes taffy soft and squishy instead of hard and brittle.

And in Beyond Cupcakes Tara Parker Pope reviews cookbooks for kids with more meat, so to speak, than the usual kid cookbooks.

An article she wrote was the inspiration for this blog and its ostensible project. Here's the comment I posted on her Well blog, and TPP's answer:

After I read 6 Food Mistakes Parents Make I decided to invite my kids into the kitchen. The success has been jaw-dropping. My 8 year old daughter who did not like any vegetables ate a big pile of salad after she whipped up the lemon shallot vinaigrette.

She can now make a fantastic potato gratin all on her own. And she eats raw potatoes while she makes it. One day, while tasting cole slaw she was making she said “I love eating what I make. I mean…that is the whole point of cooking. To eat what you make. Right?”

Thanks for all your writing on this topic.

FROM TPP — As the author of “6 Food Mistakes Parents Make,” I am thrilled to hear this feedback. It’s one thing to write about the science behind this advice, but to hear a real-world example of the effect is terrific. I do believe this and after writing 6 Food Mistakes, I personally became quite interested in kids and cooking as well. Thanks so much for taking the time to write.