SubscribeMe & Grandma: Teaching my daughter to cook
During the school year, my daughter wasn’t interested in eating breakfast. She wasn’t inclined to eat anything before catching a 6:30 a.m. school bus. So she grabbed breakfast bars, fruit, bagels and other convenient on-the-go foods to eat when she could after the 7:15 a.m. start of classes.
This summer, however, she has found her breakfast groove. As a result of her growing confidence in the kitchen, she has been pulling together robust morning meals. Whole wheat pancakes and turkey bacon. Biscuits and eggs. Biscuits, turkey bacon and cantaloupe. Cinnamon raisin toast and turkey sausage.
I have been giving my 15-year-old daughter cooking lessons, with help from other family members. For a year, I’ll be teaching her the basics, along with family recipes, and hopefully stir in her an interest in preparing a variety of healthy foods. My Mom, sisters and an aunt are helping. Our guide is “Martha Stewart’s Cooking School” cookbook.
I’ve been delighted to see my daughter take charge of preparing some of her food. She is increasingly spending more time in the kitchen, either to wash dishes or help out when we aren’t having a class. And, she goes with me regularly to the grocery store or farmer’s market.
One morning recently, my daughter decided to experiment for breakfast. She prepared a sandwich: an egg and turkey, fried in a bit of olive oil, with cheese on whole wheat bread. She understands that eggs have a lot of cholesterol and eats no more than three a week.
Some of her friends from Maryland will be visiting us for a few days in August. I’m going to turn the kitchen over to my daughter for breakfast.
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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.
