The Little Chef

One of the greatest developmental milestones we have reached is Rush being able to stand on a kitchen chair and help cook.  If he ever opens a restaurant or becomes a famous chef, he can tell interviewers that he has been cooking since he was one.  I have to be careful to only say “Do you want to help me cook dinner?” if I actually mean it, because he’ll start dragging a chair across the room. 

A lot of his cooking involves stirring cereal and moving it from measuring cup to measuring cup.  He also likes to add spices and emptying the bread box.  But look, here he is with a zucchini.

I like how he’s presenting the illusion that he’s eating it.  He’s a great actor. 

I was really smug about it when he was a baby and would eat any baby food we put in front of him.  Now we’re in the stage where we offer him vegetables over and over again and serve him whatever we’re eating, knowing that sometimes he’ll eat it and sometimes he’ll give us crazy looks.  He’s pretty consistent about loving salad though.  The other day I neglected to put some on his plate during dinner and he was really offended.

Rush cooking with me is generally easier than letting him have free reign downstairs.  Because we’re hosting Christmas this year and I’ll be nine months pregnant, I was testing out a potential Christmas dinner recipe the other night.  Maybe I should have read every detail of the recipe before I started, but typically recipes from Everyday Food are pretty simple, so I just scanned it.  I missed the part that said "whisk sauce continually for ten minutes until it boils and thickens.”  I wouldn’t normally attempt a recipe like that anyway, and certainly not with a 19 month old who can open the pantry by himself.  Rush was great at entertaining himself through the long process of making the recipe, but in the end everything in the house two feet and below was on the floor. 

Maybe cooking is something he’ll always enjoy and he can cook dinner when he’s older…