Gratituesday: My Kitchen Helper

I have enjoyed cooking as long as I can remember.  I cooked a lot with my own mom (and still love to when I get the chance) and I have been looking forward to cooking with my own children.  Now that Olivia is two and a half she has really begun to take an interest in helping me in the kitchen.  She loves to help measure and dump ingredients and she stirs things very enthusiastically.  She really LOVES to cut things with "'her knife" aka a butter knife.  When I have some chopping to do I give Olivia her own cutting board and a slice of cheese to mangle cut.  She also enjoys drinking milk out of the measuring cups.  Olivia is even pretty good at cracking eggs when I remind her to be gentle.

Squishing the beef to make ranch burgers!

This has turned out to be a wonderful time for us to spend some one-on-one time together.  Now that Molly is around we don't have as much of that time anymore and while she doesn't act jealous, she does seem to love doing something so grown up to help Mama.  I love how excited she gets, feeling like I'm teaching her something, and watching her learn new things and skills.  There are so many things you can learn while cooking and baking!  I love all the little funny things she says and does.  I also get to work on my patience, which is never a bad thing! 

Stirring the batter for beer bread.  By the way, making a beer bread recipe with hard cider is delicious!

Placing pats of butter on the beer bread batter.

I'm grateful for the chances Olivia and I have to do this together.  I'm grateful that my own mother took the time to teach me how to cook and to allow me to be in the kitchen with her.  I'm grateful my mother passed along a love, besides the ability, to show people hospitality and care through cooking.  I'm grateful that I grew up knowing how to cook more than boxed mac'n'cheese and frozen pizza!
I can't wait for Molly to be big enough to help us too!

I found this in the kitchen when I thought Olivia was putting butter on her zucchini bread!  Guess she needs to work on those knife skills a bit more!

Join us for Gratituesday at Heavenly Homemakers!