Tag Archives: cooking

That’s using my noodle?

“Fine, if you’re not going to eat what I cook, then you cook!”

Just kidding: Things haven’t gotten that drastic on the homefront where I’d tell Tillie to fix her own meals.

She’s only 6, and I’m sure there are some laws out there that would prevent me from doing that.

But I did have one of those brilliant/common-sense ideas: Why not have her help me make a dish? And for this particular experiment of mine, I figured I’d start out with something that’s going to involve multiple steps to keep her engaged.

Something like… lasagna!

Something… she’s only eaten six bites of in her life and didn’t like.

What can I say? I like a challenge.

We got her to try some a couple of years ago after she had this brief exposure to that lasagna-loving cat Garfield. The lasagna to her didn’t taste as good as the world’s laziest cartoon animal made it out to be, and she was done with it—and Garfield—shortly thereafter.

But this time would be different, I thought, because she was going to be doing a lot of the prep work and cooking.

First, I had her cut up the zucchini to go in the sauce. After that was chopped, we put it in with the orange peppers I had sauteeing, then she kept those two cooking. I relieved her and had her cut up some portabella mushrooms to go with the peppers and zucchini. We threw those in and she went back to stirring.

(Don’t worry: Safety measures were taken with the cutting and cooking!)

After I browned some ground turkey in a separate pan, I combined it with Tillie’s veggie saute, then dumped the sauce over it for her to keep stirring, as seen here:

tilliestirsI let her sample it, telling her chefs always need to taste their food. Some got on her apron and she had a line for me, saying that shows you’re a good cook when your apron gets dirty (a little nugget of wisdom from mom).

When the sauce was done, we got our spinach-ricotta combo going. I showed her how you can squeeze the ricotta out of the container and let it plop into the bowl: fun times for the kid set. We put some spinach in with the cheese, then came the part Tillie was a little nervous about: cracking an egg into the bowl. She did it like a pro and ran off to tell her mom, full of pride.

So we got the sauce done. We got the ricotta done. Final steps, layering it all up lasagna-style. And since she’d done so much in the process, I wasn’t going to hold her back on this. We each did half, no simple feat. It went in the oven for the requisite 45 minutes or so and it came out looking like this:

thelasagnaWhile that was resting, I made some garlic bread and also worked on my backup plan: just some regular spaghetti sauce and noodles in case the lasagna was a no-go. I didn’t want to have a fallback, but I also wanted her to have a full meal in her belly. She can easily fill up on garlic bread if you let her.

When it came to serving up the food, I cut her a small chunk of the lasagna and dished it up with a piece of bread. Tillie had no idea about the extra food, which I didn’t want to spring on her until she was absolutely out on the lasagna.

I kept talking it up, like “You made this: this is going to be awesome!” and other such platitudes to try to get her excited about it. But actions speak louder than words and it was eventually time for her to taste it.

She took a bite and very politely said:

“I don’t really care for it.”

There were mushrooms; she doesn’t dig those. She bit a crunchy-after-baking noodle; thought she was going to break a tooth. There was the mushy ricotta and melty mozzarella.

In other words, there was a lot going on.

I’ll give Tillie credit, though: She got down a few more bites before she was completely out. I told her there was spaghetti and she downed a plate of that. As for the lasagna, which she worked so much on, she didn’t completely pan it:

tilliebiteI won’t try it again anytime soon, though. But I will let her help me out more: She had a lot of fun making the food and I had a lot of fun working in the kitchen with her. Tillie assists Nancy with baking a lot, but all I’ve ever had her do is roll out pizza dough with me. She’s more than just a dough-roller; maybe she could have a future in lasagna-making.

Eating it, on the other hand…

Simply the best? Well…

It started on the bus ride home from school:

“Ewww, I don’t want to eat ribs from a pig.”

And just like that, the battle was on.

Hey all, I’m back again with details on my next attempt to broaden Tillie’s food horizons. And this time, I thought I’d try something simple, like barbecue ribs.

But not just any ribs. Oh no, as the title of the recipe says, these are the Best-Ever Barbecued Ribs. With a name like that, how could anything possibly go wrong?

They didn’t for friends of ours, who introduced these meat sticks of heaven to us last summer. We’d been out to there place in Connecticut for the weekend, where they fed us quite wonderfully from the moment we got there. And on the last night, they dropped these on us, proving that there’s some real merit to that whole “save the best for last” saying.

I’m not going to go into too much detail about that magical night, but it was a revelation. And our friends spoke of the recipe itself in such awe-inspiring, mouthwatering platitudes: “First, you cook the ribs till they’re falling off the bone–three days in advance.” What, that’s crazy! “Then, you throw them on the grill for a few minutes to bring them back to life.” Huh, this is wild! (Those in-between-the-quotes phrases are the thoughts I had while they were talking and I was eating.)

I tried to replicate those ribs a couple of times, but had suffered a couple of missteps when it came to reserving the fat from the pre-cooking. Yes, you read that right: You hold on to the fat and use it later.

I know, crazy!

Anyway, this time, my fat was secure and ready to be put to use on those ribs.

I just had to get Tillie on board.

We got home and I went to work while she hung out with her mom. I fired up the grill and threw on the ribs, and put some broccoli to steam as well for the veggie component.

The ribs are going good, coming back to life, then I covered the slab in Sweet Baby Ray’s Honey Chipotle Barbecue Sauce, a nice touch, I thought. (And here’s where you’ll want to put your virtual bookmark for a big clue on how dinner turned out.)

I bring the best barbecued ribs ever into the house, de-bone one of them for Tillie and put on her plate with broccoli. Nancy fixes herself a plate and she joins Tillie at the table. I break out some leftover macaroni and cheese to warm up for me as a side, put the finishing touches on my plate and get ready to join them when I hear in that soft, almost-whiny, I tasted it but no dice tone:

“I don’t like the ribs.”

All before I even made my way to the table.

Then Nancy’s getting the hummus (the store kind, not our homemade version) for Tillie to dip her broccoli in. When I get to the table and ask what’s going on, Tillie says the ribs taste kind of sweet, kind of spicy, which basically meant that wasn’t doing it for her.

Darn you, Sweet Baby Ray!

Well, actually, darn me for not leaving a rib or two untouched, which I thought of initially, but forgot to do. Tillie ends up eating carrots and broccoli with hummus, and I’m left to think, what if?

I will make this again: After all, they are the best barbecued ribs ever. I’m sure after this, though, for Tillie, they might make their way to maybe-they’re-OK status, but I’ll take it!