Tips for Cooking with Kids

•  It’s a good idea to let your child plan dinner one night, but I hope you like “S’more Casserole”.

• There’s a fine line between teaching a child how to follow a recipe and handing him a cookbook and saying "If you need me, I'll be at the movies."

• For safety purposes, only let child use Nerf® knife.

• Making a soufflé will teach your kid an important life lesson: nothing you do will ever turn out right.

• It’s an ideal opportunity to teach children about different spices and which ones (marjoram, cilantro) are poisonous.

• Don’t worry about making a mess in the kitchen; that’s why you hired a maid, silly.

• Praise them for the effort, even if the final result isn’t perfect: “You did a great job kneading that bread, but next time try not to pick your nose so much while you’re doing it.”

• Learning to cook is also about developing life skills, so take your children to the grocery store to help shoplift the ingredients you’ll need.

• It’s fun to teach kids things they don’t know about cooking, such as “Baking powder and baking soda are the same exact thing.”

• A child’s laughter is one of God’s greatest gifts, so show ‘em that trick where you break an egg with one hand.

• It's like the old saying goes, "Give a child a fish stick and he eats for a day, teach him to fish stick and he eats for a lifetime."

• Following a recipe can teach a child important math skills, such as “guesstimation.”

• It’s a chance to learn about the world’s cultures, foreign languages and geography; for example, if you make a box of Kraft® macaroni-and-cheese, you can talk about how it’s from the “United States” which is located in “America.”

• Finally get to crack line: “Hey, I made you… it’s high time you made something for me!”