SubscribeMe & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
Lesson 1:
My daughter looked suspiciously at the pieces of chicken breast as she dusted them lightly with sea salt and pepper. As she picked them up, she shuddered slightly and grimaced. “Mom,” she asked, “why do we eat animals?”
My 15-year-old daughter hadn’t given this notion much thought before; she ate meat because I began serving it to her as a young child and she liked the taste of it. But during our first at-home cooking class, she was bothered by handling raw chicken. So we talked about protein.
My daughter and I are on a one-year cooking journey. I’m teaching her, with the help of my mother and “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” cookbook, how to prepare delicious and healthy food. I’ll be honest, I haven’t been an adventurous cook over the years so I’ll be learning some new things, too. My sisters and a couple aunts have promised to spend some time with my daughter in their kitchens, too, so that she’ll learn some other family specialties. One of my aunts makes a fabulous vegetable lasagna!
Our first step in the chat about protein was to look up the government’s recommended food pyramid. We talked about how humans are at the top of the food chain, how most animals eat other animals, how we Americans eat too much animal protein, its high fat and cholesterol content and how I’ve already adjusted our diet to include primarily fish and poultry. She now wants us to eat more plant protein and less meat.
I’ve been heading in that direction over the past few years but I didn’t expect that a major result of my daughter’s first cooking class would be a significant change in what we eat. So we’ll be cutting back on meat and learning tasty recipes without it.
But now, back to her first dinner – pan-roasted chicken breasts with sun-dried tomatoes and grape tomatoes, steamed broccoli, cauliflower and carrots and baked sweet potato. Martha Stewart’s cookbook suggested pan-roasting as an easy and quick first dish.
The pan-roasting required searing the chicken on top of the stove before putting it in the oven for an hour. (We talked about the differences between roasting and baking and the pitfalls to avoid as outlined in Martha’s book.) My daughter was afraid of being burned by the hot olive oil so I guided her hands and stood with her as she dropped the meat in the cast-iron skillet. She clumsily turned the chicken, too. She’ll get better at it. The veggies and sweet potato were easy.
Along the way, I repeated what my mother always told me: A good cook is a clean cook. I showed her how to wash the counters and dishes while preparing the meal. My daughter didn’t particularly like the idea of washing dishes while cooking; she would have preferred to do it all when she finished. But I’ll continue to insist, just as my mother did.
When we finally sat down for our Sunday dinner, my daughter only ate a tiny piece of the chicken, and only after I urged her to at least taste what she had prepared.
Here are other lessons from our first class.
1. Be extra patient. Our kids are growing up in a texting society where everything is instant so it’s going to take some hand-holding along the way to help them enjoy the experience. Cooking takes time.
2. Be open to changing how the family eats based on input from your budding cook.
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I am a member of the Sandwich Generation, a Baby Boomer raising a teenage daughter and dealing with the needs of an aging mother. I am a veteran journalist, having worked for more than three decades as a reporter and editor. Mostly recently, I was an editor with the Metro section of The Washington Post.
