SubscribeMe & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
My daughter didn’t particularly like this part of preparing a meal — clipping coupons and grocery shopping.
I’ll admit it’s not as interesting as experimenting with spices and herbs or enjoying the aroma of cooking food wafting through the kitchen. But it’s something we ought to teach our daughters, particularly in these days of practical living. The economic crisis has forced many of us to view coupons and sales with a different intensity. I’ve always been value-conscious but it’s just plain ridiculous to ignore the free money offered through using coupons. And grocery stores, faced with penny-pinching families, are competing against each other for the best weekly promotions.
My daughter rushes to get the Sunday newspaper after church services so she can get first dibs on the comics. She didn’t smile when I pulled out the coupon booklets and told her that we would go through them, looking for discounts on items we regularly eat. The trick to coupon clipping, I told her, is to forget loyalty to any one brand and to ignore coupons for the preservative, sodium-filled foods in boxes and cans. Of course, she was excited when she stumbled upon a buy-one, get-one free coupon for Cold Stone Creamery.
Our exercise in evaluating coupons — and it will become a regular part of many Sunday afternoons — is part of my year-long effort to teach my daughter to cook. I’m figuring it all out as we go along. My Mom is going to give a few hands-on sessions and I’ve just about memorized the table of contents of “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” cookbook, which I’m using as a guide.
With our coupons in hand, we made stops at two grocery stores near our house that are less than two miles apart. First, we did a walk-through as I explained the general layout of grocery stores, with fresh and refrigerated foods located around the edges. We looked at the aisle groupings, so she could understand generally where to look for different items.
The first grocery store offered triple manufacturers’ coupons so we used all we had there and picked up a $3.99 watermelon, broccoli, buy-one, get-one free whole grain bread and a few other items on sale. By the time we left the store, my daughter’s eyes were practically rolling in her head from boredom. She wanted me to drop her off at home and finish the shopping. I didn’t.
At the second store we found split chicken breasts for 89 cents a pound, ground turkey for $1.97 a pound, oranges, yogurt, etc. etc. When we got back home, we had been out shopping for about two hours. My daughter was cranky, I was irritated. It will get easier, I told her.
Related posts:
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.
