Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Kid's cookbooks and a cool realization

We have three kid's cookbooks (Cooking Rocks! Rachael Ray 30-Minute Meals for Kids, Wookiee Cookies: A Star Wars Cookbook, and The Spatulatta Cookbook) and I finally got around to going through them with the girls to make a list of things we'd like to make. As we were picking, I realized what a cool opportunity this is to teach them a little about menu planning and grocery shopping. Kids love eating and they love it even more when they get to pick what they're eating and then help make it, so I think this could easily be a long-term project.

For two weeks, I let them pick:
6 lunches
6 snacks
3 desserts
3 breakfasts
and
3 drinks

I didn't want to have my entire menu taken over by this but I also wanted to gave them a decent number of recipes to try, so I feel like this is a happy medium.

Tomorrow we're going to go through the list again and I'll have them read me the ingredients so that we can make a grocery list! I think even a kid that can't read would be excited by this (you could tell them the ingredients and ask what part of the grocery list to put them in -- canned? fruits? frozen? meats?).

I could see this becoming a regular thing at our house.