Summer of Cooking Lessons

It has taken me long enough to get around to writing about summer with the grandsons. It has been a strange year -- largely due to my vision issues. I pushed myself hard to make summer really memorable. This may very well be our last such summer as the boys are getting so much older now. We've had a great run with our themed summers for I don't know how many years now. All memorable. The kids like to talk about those special summers. I know we've made lifelong memories.

We covered an amazing amount of ground with our cooking activities. I think I'll mostly list what we made and not add a lot of details just in interest of length.

Yesterday, I finished printing all of our recipes and compiling them in a cool recipe book, one for each kid, with built-in stand and plastic page covers, so they can look at the recipes while cooking and keep them clean. I forgot to take pictures of the books before delivering them to the kids. Ah well, never mind, here's some of what we did this summer:

Basics: We learned about reading recipes, using knives safely (and which knives to use for various purposes), how to measure ingredients (how double or half ingredients and some substitutions), cooking organization beforehand and cleanup after. We learned about baking and broiling in the oven, and cooking on top of the stove. We learned how to use food processor and various kitchen tools and utensils. We learned saute skills and how to chop onions and garlic and herbs, which was the start of many of our recipes.

Sandwiches: We began with a week of all different types of sandwiches with different types of breads, fillings, toppings, sauces. We toasted in the toaster and under the broiler. Survival food for kids away at college, right?

Sauces: We made homemade spaghetti sauce and homemade teriyaki sauce. The spaghetti sauce was used both for spaghetti dinner, and leftovers were frozen and used for meatballs subs and pizza sauce later on.

Meats: We made homemade meatballs (used in both our spaghetti dinner and meatball subs). Also fried chicken, teriyaki chicken (with our homemade sauce), Sloppy Joes, and oven-baked bacon.

Eggs: We learned how to crack an egg without shells. By the end of summer, the boys were highly confident in egg cracking. We cooked eggs three ways: scrambled, over easy (served with toast soldiers), and perfect hard boiled (and we learned to peel hard-cooked eggs).

Potatoes: We cooked a variety of different types of potatoes. Boiled (parsleyed new potatoes with skins on), mashed, baked, fried. We even made a batch of potato chips.

Vegetables: In addition to potatoes, we learned how to wash, peel (or not) and cut up various types of veggies and a variety of ways of cooking; including steaming, frying, baking, boiling. We made perfect rice which was served with our teriyaki chicken. 

Breads: We made homemade bread, which was really fun for the boys and was a highlight of our activities. The guys produced some amazingly perfect loaves which we all enjoyed. With the same bread dough, we also made cinnamon rolls, dinner rolls, hamburger buns, pigs in blankets (with smoky sausages), and even some cinnamon twists with leftover dough. We made honey butter for the hot bread right out of the oven. I almost forgot to mention banana bread, too.

I managed to get a good picture of the bread while distorting the kids. Oops!

 Desserts: We made Apple Betty, which was simple except for some extensive manual peeling of apples with paring knives. I didn't realize I had three paring knives. We also made a six-layer rainbow cake. We used a cake mix for our cake as we were focusing on the design, coloring, and assembly. It took two white cake mixes, each divided into thirds and colored before baking. We assembled with icing we had purchased. The one mistake we made was to try putting some raspberry filling between some of the layers, which caused the layers to slide due to the weight of layer above. But with some fast-thinking and chilling, we got it to stay. What a triumph!

Combo Foods: Under the category of breads, we also made pizza dough, and then added various toppings of the kids' choice to make dinner for their parents. We made shepherd's pie using our mashed potato and sloppy joe's recipes and adding veggies and baking.  We cooked perfect pastas incorporating some of the other items. We made mac and cheese, spaghetti, Afredo chicken, maybe others I don't recall.

Mac n Cheese

I think that covers it. I may have forgotten something. But clearly, our summer was very busy -- especially considering they were on vacation for a couple of weeks and I was out of commission for a few days for eye surgery. We all felt really satisfied with our efforts. I wish I had taken more pictures. But no matter, we made memories.