Cooking 101

I love to cook, and I have ever since I was little. I locked my grandmother out of the house and spread cornflakes all over the place in one of my earliest culinary experiments. Since then I have learned from various sources, my grandmother, my mother, friends, relatives, a job as a short order cook, another as a caterer, cookbooks, cooking shows, etceterras. So I always figured that one day, when I had kids of my own I would teach them to cook too. After all, the kitchen is the heart of the home for a reason. Who knew that my foray into teaching the next generation would actually also be a lesson in overcoming stereotypes, for me.

I have two stepchildren that are now in their teens (one in college) and an 18 month old baby, so I have had numerous opportunities over the years to share my culinary expertise with the younger peeps in my life. Unfortunatly, up until now, I always assumed that it would be my stepdaughter that would glean the most from our time cooking together so I offered more opportunities to her in the kitchen than to her younger brother. Little did I know that he was watching, paying attention, and gaining an interest in the culinary arts from a distance, particularly anything to do with baking. I think, for him, it started with a cake competition for cub scouts.

My husband was supposed to be the one to help our boy with his cake that day, but dad had football to watch, so his solution was to make a simple cake and frost it...done. Oh NO, said I, no way. To me that was a total cop-out, how could a simple frosting coated cake ever hope to catch anyone's attention? So I took hold of the reins and created a campground scene complete with a camfire, campers, popcorn ball pine trees, and bears hiding in the woods. Needless to say the cake earned a ribbon, got gobbled up quicker than you could say, "and the award goes to," and our boy was so infatuated with the cake that he demanded we take multiple pictures of it. I was pleased to be able to help him create something he was so proud of, especially since we only get to see the stepkids on every other Holiday, occasionall on long weekends, and a week or so over the summer.

Eventually I would come to find that our son was in the habit of baking on his own pretty often. Mostly he made cookies, but as we know, those are a standard of dessert deliciousness! I also learned that he was infatuated with the show Cake Boss on TLC. So, imagine my surprise when on Spring Break he and his sister came to visit and when asked what he wanted to do over his break he tells me, "I want to try making Marshmallow Fondant." Ok, I say, we can do that! After all, we had the perfect occasion for a fondant covered cake, his sisters' birthdays are close together so we were planning on having a party for the two of them. So together we made a red velvet cake, and I showed him how to make real buttercream frosting. I did not know how to make the marshmallow fondant, so our boy showed me how. He had learned from watching cooking shows, but had never had the opportunity to try it. He did a bang-up job, and even made a couple colors and used cookie cutters to cut out stars. The cake was very pretty, and it tasted yummy.

I learned that day that I should have been more unilateral in the opportunities I provided to my kids. My stepson has turned out to be the one who enjoys cooking and crafting and doing things creatively, whereas his sister is the one who has grown up loving math and science and could care less about cooking or making things. We have no idea, just looking at our kids, what they will be inspired by, so why not offer them everything, discourage them from nothing (unless it's dangerous), and encourage their every dream. You never know, they just might teach you something!