As I write this, writers and radio announcers are busy recapping the past decade as we get ready to start the 2010s. Each journalist has his or her own take on what the past ten years have been like, and what they expect will happen in the next ten.
To me, the past decade (really the past 15 years) appeared to be all about making money and buying things. The number of college students exploded as parents raided their home equity to pay for college for their children so they could get a good job and make good money. That was the goal, anyway.
But the events of the past two years have changed everything. The unemployment rate is the highest it's been in decades. Many college students now graduate with no jobs but lots of debt. And their parents can no longer mine their homes for more equity. In fact, their houses may no longer be worth what they owe on them.
While the first few years of the 21st century were about making money, I really believe the 2010s will be about hanging on to your money, about saving where you can and making things last.
I don't believe that's a bad thing. I think the excesses of the past few decades have not benefitted us in the important ways. I look forward to people concentrating less on big houses, pricy vehicles and designer everything, and more on being content with what they have, helping each other and learning to become more self-sufficient.
As homeschoolers, we have the time and opportunity to share the skills required for self-sufficiency with our children. That will benefit them as they become adults in a world where everything's changing, and it will also allow them to help others.
This month, let's talk about cooking.
Perhaps one of the saddest aspects of modern life for many American children is that they don't live in homes where family meals are regularly prepared and enjoyed together. For them, family meals are a mix of snacks, fast-food picked up in the drive-through lane and eaten on the road, and restaurant meals.
Interestingly, even some school districts have discovered this gaping hole in kids' lives. Programs like the Edible Schoolyard offer schoolchildren a chance to prepare a meal, set a table and share the meal together.
We homeschoolers are so fortunate to have the time and opportunity to teach our children the very valuable skill of cooking. By doing so, we give them the joy of preparing and sharing family meals AND we insure that they won't become adults who have to rely on unhealthy prepared microwaveable foods and fast food because they don't know any other way to eat. Their diets will be so much healthier if they've been taught to prepare fresh food from scratch so that they can cook for themselves.
Their financial lives will be healthier, too. In a difficult economy, knowing how to cook for themselves and their family will be the source of savings of thousands of dollars a year. That's extremely important when every dollar counts.
"Imperfect Homeschooler" reader Linda says,
I think that not only the basics of buying groceries and cooking food from scratch is necessary, but learning to 'make do' with very little is a very important skill. When we were first married and money was not only tight, but scarce, I took it as a challenge to see how I could stretch it further and further. Our kids need to know how to do that, too.
Linda makes some great points. 'Making Do' is a skill that can be taught right along with cooking, and by your example. Freeze bread loaf ends until you have a bagful and then let your children break them up into crumbs using a mallet or (with supervision) a food processor. Don't throw out bruised fruit; show your kids how to cut off the bruises and use the rest for sauce or in baked goods. These are little things, I know, but what you're doing is establishing a mindset that will serve your children well in good times and bad.
So how do you get started teaching your children to cook? You don't need a curriculum. You can simply start when they're preschoolers by letting them help you in the kitchen. As early as age two, my kids helped me make dinner by shaking chicken pieces in a bag of flour. They rolled hot dogs in crescent rolls ("Pigs in a Blanket") and used an eggbeater to scramble eggs.
Preschoolers don't have to cook anything complex in order to feel like they're cooking. They're just thrilled to participate. The praise they receive at the dinner table only feeds their desire to cook more.
Now, it's not always easy for parents to let preschoolers participate in cooking. It's much faster to cook by yourself. The cleanup is certainly simpler, too! But what you're doing is paving the way for teens who will cook dinner for you someday. Keep this in mind as you wipe flour off your kitchen cabinets!
Simple cooking with a microwave oven is a good place to start with young children as you don't have to worry about hot oven racks and doors. When he was little, my son with Down syndrome began making what he calls a chalupa (a flour tortilla sprinkled with cheese) and still makes them regularly. Or how about letting your little ones melt some almond bark in the microwave and dip pretzels in it. After drying on a piece of waxed paper for a little while, they'll be ready to eat.
By the time kids reach five or six, they can help by running the hand mixer or flipping pancakes on the stove (with your supervision, of course.) You can also let them put meat, veggies and spices into a crockpot in the morning so that they can enjoy the aroma of their concoction all day before finally enjoying a homemade supper that night. Try chicken pieces with sliced carrots and celery, plus a few pinches of salt, pepper, sage, thyme and rosemary. Another tasty dish: beef stew pieces with chunks of potato and onion, plus a shot of Worcestershire sauce and a pinch of garlic salt. These are simple meals that don't require a recipe.
Next, walk your children through the process of using recipes and measuring ingredients. If you have a large family, you probably double or triple most recipes. That's a great math exercise for your children to do before actually making the dish.
Each recipe you use with your children can be added to their own personal cookbooks. My kids carefully printed out their recipes and stapled them together, as I did when I was a child. Nowadays, the versatility of computers will let your kids type their recipes on the keyboard and print them out for use.
To really encourage your children, have them assemble their recipes into a document that can easily be turned into a cookbook and self-published using a publishing service such as Lulu.com. They can even design their own cookbook covers, and upload them with your help. An 84-page digest-size book will cost you about about $4 at Lulu. (While Lulu is set up to sell books to the general public, you can also make the book a personal project that will not be available for sale on their site.)
As your children get older and are able to do basic math, take them to the grocery store (yes, this counts as a field trip!) and teach them to figure out which foods are the best bargains, how to calculate per-unit costs for comparisons (ex. which cereals cost the least and most per ounce?) and how to read nutrition labels. Keeping a price book where you compare prices at different stores for your most-purchased items can be a real eye-opener for kids.....and parents!
When holidays approach, let your children choose a recipe to prepare on their own for the big meal. They can find the needed ingredients at the store while shopping with you. Make them responsible for the prep and cleanup of their signature dish. Make sure the entire family knows that they made it, so they can enjoy the compliments that are sure to follow.
If you make these activities a part of your daily lives, at some point your children will be ready to start cooking and baking on their own. How well I remember the first time I came home from running errands to find a surprise: a fresh-baked batch of homemade cookies waiting for me, courtesy of my eldest daughter, who was around ten or eleven at the time. I'm not sure which of us was prouder!
That daughter, by the way, is now 26 and has lived on her own since she was 20. She cooks all the time and loves teaching herself new ways of cooking. Just recently she asked me to keep an eye out at the thrift stores for a food dehydrator, as she's thinking dried fruit would make a great addition to the homemade lunches she takes to work. Her homemade hummus (something I've never made) is always a hit at our family gatherings.
To me, that's the goal: to raise kids who can and will cook for themselves. Watching them take that talent to new levels (and surpass my own cooking ability) is a real thrill for me. My 18-year-old is now in culinary school. As a result our family is eating treats like homemade pasta these days. (She gets some delicious homework assignments!) At Christmas, we tackled a new recipe together (Swedish potato sausage). She taught me some things about working with meats that I never knew, things she learned from the chefs at school.
It's been a long time since I had flour-covered toddlers in my kitchen. But it was worth all the messes and chaos to see them as more-than-competent cooks now. I do recall the feeling of not wanting to prolong the dinner-prep process by letting the kids get involved. In fact, I still feel that way sometimes, as I have one more child learning to cook, and that's my 16-year-old son, who has Down syndrome. But having seen the results with my older kids, how can I not let him learn to cook, too? It's very important for him to be able to help around here. So even when I'd rather throw something together quickly by myself, I let him cook with me.
Below are some sites that will give you ideas for teaching your kids to cook. Remember, this is a long-term project. Be patient. Someday, your kids will thank you for making sure they left home knowing how to cook.