My Novice Chef

If you know me, you know that I like to cook. I started cooking with my mom when I was a little girl. Some of my best memories are of the two of us in the kitchen, making brownies, cookies, cakes, candies, and sometimes making dinner. I'm not sure if I usually just helped with the sweet stuff, or if that's just what I remember most because that's what I liked best. I remember how proud I felt that the things we made were always "from scratch". No box mixes allowed in my mom's pantry!! And of course I remember always getting to lick the spoon. Yummmmmm!

Cooking with my own daughter has been one of the things I have looked forward to since I found out I was having a girl. Princess started cooking with me as soon as she could hold a spoon in her hand. She would sit on top of the counter with a bowl between her legs and mix the ingredients. Of course, we always end up with a big mess on the counter and often on the floor, but that's just part of the fun as far as I'm concerned. My goal is to instill in my girls a love for cooking, but even if I can't do that, I hope they will at least have some great memories of us in the kitchen.

About a month ago, Princess and Nana and I saw "The Princess and the Frog". It's a really cute new Disney movie set in New Orleans. The main character, Tiana, loves to cook, so of course Disney put out a cookbook for kids called "Tiana's Cookbook". I saw it in Target and thought it would be a great gift for Princess.

The recipes are all cajun or southern, and the food in the pictures looks delicious! Princess told me that she wanted to cook something from her book this weekend, so tonight we tried out our first recipe, Cal's Chicken and Biscuits.
It was fantastic!! And Princess was a great cook. I cut the onion and celery and measured most of the ingredients, and she did the rest. She stirred everything in the pot over the stove, and she mixed and kneaded and patted and cut out the biscuits all by herself. She really did an excellent job. And she was so proud of herself when we pulled it out of the oven!

She agreed to make it again in a few weeks for our family night dinner with Nana and Pop and Aunt Ash. I know they will be as impressed as we are!