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Recipes for fun
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Cooking has all the ingredients to keep kids engaged during holidays. And they can even eat the results
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PHOTO: AFP
BUDDING CHEFS Cooking can be a happy pastime for kids
Holidays? Get the kids to cook! All that mess and cleaning-up is seriously worth it, if it keeps you from roaring “get off my computer, NOW!”
About a week ago, I decided that I needed to seriously work on my mum-ratings.
It had, unfortunately, hit an all time low… I was there, in the hall of shame, among mums who happily neglect their own flesh and blood, mums who ruthlessly farm their little waifs out to work, among excessively mean, cruel step-mums… And all this fuss because I issued a few “sensible” diktats at the start of the holidays…
“My mum says we must go downstairs and play hopscotch.”
But how unfair is this, really? The weather has been consistently lousy, the apartment is ridiculously tiny, and during term-breaks, I usually end up with a couple of pop-music crazy kids — one my own, the other typically borrowed for a play-date from a grateful full-time-working mum!
HOW, I ask you, am I expected to go about my daily activities with…that…that drivel that passes off as music ricocheting off the walls? “My mum says we can play hide-and-seek, but we mustn’t hide inside the fridge/bathtub/cupboards”.
Naturally, I shoo them away. And they, sigh, get their own back by rating mums and ranking me with alongside those “unfun, uncool” types. Any surprise, then, that I was frantically browsing ‘fun things to do with your kids during school vacations’?
Typical of all searches, I came up with no less than a million results in about 0.21 seconds.
Many were written by kind people with good intentions and they would’ve worked very well if I’d lived in Utopia (where, am fairly sure, kids are never heard, only seen, and when they speak-up, it’s only to meekly say ‘yes, mamma’). Discarding all the suggestions that were — too expensive, too much hard-work, too weird — I zeroed in on cooking!
Milk + sugar + flour = big mess (and loads of fun!)
Interesting activity
Cooking has all the ingredients for an interesting afternoon; it grabs the kids’ attention, it keeps them busy, and best of all, they can eat the results for lunch. It was only a question of choosing a recipe, and we were set!
But, bah, the ‘perfect’ recipe wasn’t all that easy to find. I wanted something vaguely healthy, that involved no baking (I can’t bake, sorry), no eggs (I can’t stand them, sorry), and did not entail a trip to the supermarket in the freezing rain. After much deliberation, we boiled down on a simple potato-sandwich.
Yes, yes, I can see your sneer, I can hear you snort and go ‘what sort of recipe is that?’ but let me tell you it worked! Oh, how it worked!
The kids – kitted out smartly in starched aprons — got to peel and mash the pressure-cooked potatoes, they tossed in the spices (key word here – moderation) — a couple of pinches each of ground cumin, coriander, chilli and amchur powder and some salt.
They then placed the “gooey thingy” inside decrusted bread slices (the crusts were gratefully devoured by our resident pigeons), flattened it down with rolling pins and toasted them on a pan with a small knob with butter.
Voila, aloo-sandwiches, that they could then decorate with lots of ketchup and eat with pride! And me?
Well, my mum ratings are currently so high, I can (perhaps) get away with lots of ‘get off my computer, NOW!’
APARNA KARTHIKEYAN
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Metro Plus
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