My daughter loves to cook in the kitchen. Too bad she has a Mommy who seldom cooks – but I’m trying to do better and cook dishes that she can help cook.

A few weeks ago, we made homemade pizza. Rae enjoyed mixing the dough and wanted to toss it up in the air like she had seen on some television show. Luckily her Daddy used to work as a manager of a pizza restaurant and knows a thing or two about tossing dough. Unfortunately our dough was too soft to throw in the air. We will have to try again soon – maybe find a nice pizza dough recipe online that would be better for tossing.

Rae loves flour. I had bought some all-purpose flour for some recipe a while back and have nearly all of it left since I prefer self-rising flour. This works perfect since Rae can ‘play’ in her flour when she is done with her cooking part. I read a suggestion that when cooking with kids have their workspace a baking sheet or other small area to confine the mess. I’m going to use her plastic place mat next time we cook pizza – hopefully that will make cleanup a little easier.

Pizza night will now be Saturday night – that way I have plenty of time to get ready for cooking and cleaning up the mess afterwards.

Brownies are one dessert that my daughter will eat. She is five and extremely picky. She does not eat cake, most candies, or cookies. She does love brownies. My mom usually has brownies made for her. For Christmas, my daughter wanted to get my Mom a Perfect Brownie Pan Set. She had seen in on TV and was convinced that Mamaw needed this to make brownies.

We got her one for Christmas and gave it to her at our family get together last weekend. Mom made brownies the next day using the brownie set. My daughter would not eat the brownies. They were thicker then my Mom’s brownies. Each brownie also had an edge on every side – something my daughter does not eat. Their texture was different, too. My Mom’s brownies are more fudge-like while these turned out more the texture of cake.

My Mom made brownies the old way just for her. The brownie pan is nice. All the brownies are neatly baked, and the dish also can be a serving tray. It just wasn’t what my daughter expected. This is a great lesson for her. Just because it looks good on TV, it doesn’t mean that it will work how you might think.

There is one trait that my little girl definitely inherited from me. She is a picky eater. She has her favorite foods and will hardly ever try anything new. So it leaves mealtime very limited and I always feel she isn’t getting enough nutrition.

When I saw the cookbook Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to get your Kids Eating Good Food by Jessica Seinfeld I thumbed through it to see what it was all about. I knew that I didn’t need any more recipes of foods that Rae didn’t eat even if they were kid friendly.

Lo and behold, these recipes are foods that she eats like spaghetti, brownies, and mashed potatoes just to name a few(and I’m running out of foods she actually eats). The recipes call for adding puree vegetables into these kid’s favorite recipes. For example, the mashed potato recipe has tucked away inside it a half cup of cauliflower puree. In the foreword, Seinfeld talks about pureeing some squash for her youngest when she was struck with the idea of adding a little bit of the puree to the macaroni and cheese she was making for her two other children – one who was a very picky eater. The kids didn’t notice the extra ingredient and for once Seinfeld didn’t have to nag her children to eat their vegetables.

I know that we have added Rae’s medicine into her juice to get her to take it. I had never thought about blending vegetables into her favorite dishes. I can’t wait to give these a try.

This Halloween, my little girl is ready. She has been talking about trick or treating for weeks and can’t wait to make her costume. She is going as a ‘machine’ that we are interpreting to be a robot. I bought some Halloween cookie cutters that I’ve been wanting to use but just haven’t make any cookies yet. We will be making some spooky cookies sometime this week. But this morning while I was making biscuits, I decided to give the bat cookie cutter a try and give my little girl a breakfast surprise.

I may have to roll out biscuits more often. She really liked the bat and even turned it upside down and proclaimed it looked like a rainbow. Breakfast time just became a little more fun.

When we made pizza last week, I let Rae stir the dough. She was so excited as she proudly proclaimed, “I’m cooking!” Oh if only I had half her enthusiasm for cooking. It made me realize that I need to find more recipes that she can cook.

I found a recipe that we might try for Fresh Fruit with Lemon-Mint Sauce. She will be able to toss the fruit in the bowl and drizzle the sauce over it. Best of all this recipe uses honey, so it will be a great way to use some local honey in our diet.

I forget about salads or fruit as a dish that the kid can help out with. Her favorite part is mixing anyway. I definitely want to encourage her if she wants to be in the kitchen. Who knows. Maybe in a few year she will be doing a lot more in the kitchen, which means I will have to do less!

This week I made homemade pizza and let the two year old make the dough. She had a blast mixing the flour and water as she has gotten quite fond of mixing ‘flours’ at Mamaws. Once she was doing mixing, she proudly proclaimed, “Look! I’m cooking!”

Once she helped make the dough, she also helped to put the toppings on the pizza. She would place some and then eat some.

Homemade pizza can be super easy and really cheap to make. We buy the Jiffy pizza dough packages that are around 42 cents, one jar of pizza sauce that is $1.08(and is enough for about three pizzas), a package of mozzarella cheese($1.88), and toppings($2-$5 but is enough for at least two pizzas).

The dough is the biggest bargain. All you have to do is add water, stir, wait for minutes, and knead it a few times. It’s really easy and can be a great way to cook with the kids.

Tonight we are celebrating Cinco de Mayo with an easy taco bake recipe. To make it even more fun, we are going to make homemade tortillas to use in the dish.

This is a recipe from High Five, a magazine from Highlights for younger children. It’s a good one that they can help with since the mixing is pretty straightforward and then they can help roll out the tortillas.

Here is the recipe:

3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup water
3 tablespoons vegetable oil
vegetable oil spray
shredded cheese

Mix in a box the flour and salt. Then add the water and vegetable oil.

Mix until the dough forms a ball. Then separate the dough into 12 smaller balls. I was one shy of 12.

Next roll out the tortillas with a rolling pin until they are flat. I was running low on extra flour, so my tortillas wanted to stick. They turned out OK. They could have been flatter. Next over a medium heat, spray a pan with cooking spray and then cook tortilla for two minutes.

The next part of it we didn’t do since I was using the tortillas in another recipe. But once you turn the tortilla, add cheese. Take up from pan once the cheese is melted. Fold over tortilla, eat, and enjoy.

They turned out OK. The tortillas could have been flatter as when they cooked they were more like pitas than tortillas. Next time I will make sure that I have more flour and can keep the tortillas from sticking when rolling them out. Still it was a successful first try at a new recipe.

There is a local place that has just opened up that lets parents cook with their kids. It’s a cool idea. Sadly Rae is a little too young to take part in their classes. The whole concept did get me to thinking about all the fun recipes that Rae and I could make together even with her being so young.

So, I’ve decided to post recipes that I find that are especially good for cooking with your kids. I remember how much fun it was to help out in the kitchen and hope that Rae enjoys it as much as I did.? I’ll have the first recipe up sometime next week as it is one from an issue of High Five. We will try it out and possibly even do a little video.