Many cooks in the kitchen

I've been engaging the boys in the kitchen a little this holiday - part of our master plan to empower them with the knowledge of a wooden spoon from a spatula by the time they leave home. They made chicken jambalaya for tea one night, which turned out really well.  I need much more patience and time to make it fun for them though - you can't really teach a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old to be efficient in the kitchen and multitask when they haven't got the basics down yet.  It has to be a sloooow process - agony for someone who likes to be in and out the kitchen as quickly as possible!

The second lesson occurred one morning when Caleb spied four bananas and thought to make them into banana bread.  He was quite prepared to tackle the entire project by himself but I don't think one can unleash a person into the kitchen on a solo mission when they can't yet successfully and neatly crack an egg!  I offered to help; he grudgingly accepted.  Then Aaron got involved too, so we had a great baking lesson (I thought it was comprehensive; Caleb described it as a nightmare experience).  The outcome was a really super banana loaf (three, actually), a tidy kitchen afterwards, and Caleb learned that if you complain about washing up the baking dishes, then you get to wash the tea dishes too!

"We have brains, we have brains..."