What Cooking Does For Me – Chapter 2

My boy wrote this piece in Chapters. Chapter 1 was about how he felt about cooking. For the second Chapter he wrote about ‘Cooking Technology’. See Chapter 1 on this blog.

Again I have reproduced Chapter 2 here – except for spelling and perhaps some grammar, this is my son’s original piece.

Cooking Technology

If you don’t know how to cook, watch the Asian Food Channel on TV. My favorite show is Restaurant Makeover. It’s very interesting because it turns a bad restaurant into a good restaurant. A Bad Chef to a Good Chef.

You need to learn a few things in school to be a chef. You need to learn math, science, and English. Math is to help you know how to measure like how much water you need to add to your cooking. English is to understand cooking and read recipes. Science is to know about what is happening in cooking.

We learn things from cooking like knowing the right ingredients and making food delicious. You can also make drinks.

The end

P.S. My son's musings got me thinking, about children having ambitions to become chefs. I found some books. I reading  the Chef's story - its about their passion and what got them into the kitchen. Interesting read. There are others, if you are interested. 

Our children are angles, with dreams, creatively and imagination. If adults did not forget these child thoughts, the world would probably be a better place.

Happy Pancakes

Do you get your kids asking for snacks or saying that they are hungry or there is just nothing to eat!

In situations like this, I look to the good old PANCAKE. There are other quick bites too but I thought I’d share with you my simple pancake recipe in this blog.

Pancakes are quick, easy and tasty snack.

Have a look at this recipe, it’s extremely easy to remember and easy to make. It makes about 5 to 6 pancakes.

Lets see how to get your kids involved and what they learn with such a simple recipe.

Shopping List and Parent’s Teaching Aid

1 cup self raising flour
(self raising flour is better than plain flour
because of its enhancing structure)

1. What is flour 2. What is flour’s texture 3. What is flour made of 4. Numbers – 1 cup

1 cup milk
(for kids, please use fresh milk or full cream.
Low fat milk is simply not encouraged for kids

1. Where does milk come from?2. Fresh milk vs ow fat milk because of the low fat content
3. What does milk have? 4. Why is milk good for you

1 egg

Let your kids break the egg. Show them the yolk

1. Where do eggs come from
2. Why do eggs have the yellow and the white
3. What happens if you boil eggs
4. Where do chicks come from

Notice that everything comes in 1.

For older children – this is a simple and great recipe to teach multiplication and division and using common sense

e.g.
1. How much flour, eggs and milk I need if I need to make 10 pancakes
2. What happens if I half the ingridients? (Teaching fractions)
3. What happens if I double or triple the ingridients? (fractions and multiplying)

A little sugar and salt
Not too much. Only enough to give a taste.

Blend everything together. Have your kids know what’s little or a lot

Place some oil in a pan and fry the pancakes a little at a time You can help your kids. Be careful of the fire. Teach kids about fire and how something that was raw gets cooked with fire.




Serve as is or with butter and honey or marmalade or fruit, or anything that the kids or adults like.



Mums and Dads,




I hope you and your kids have a wonderful time making the pancakes.

Please let me know how they turn out and whether your kids learnt a lot more that either of you thought!

Happy Cooking!