The Littlest Chef

Today was the last day of cooking camp. Over the course of the week Blanden made homemade hummus and baked pita chips, bagels and butter, granola and aqua fresca, and fish sticks and tartar sauce, which he liked -- who knew?! He has never had fish sticks before, and perhaps we'll make them again for him sometime. Monday's pasta was definitely the favorite, both to make and to eat, but overall he had fun experimenting.

Each day the children also made a craft. These included painting an invitation for the end-of-the-week party, painting a wooden spoon, decorating napkins, decorating an envelope for our recipes, and the favorite: decorating an apron, so now Blanden has his very own.

Here he is showing off and eating his homemade, hand-decorated bagels. He also discovered that he likes sunflower seeds and pepitas, both optional bagel toppings.

Feeling inspired, one night we made pizza. In addition to macaroni, or really any pasta, it is one of Blanden's favorite foods. Besides the standard sauce and mozarella cheese, he added black olives (half of which he ate before putting them on) and feta cheese (he's a fan of Mediterranean fare). He even tried a few artichokes but decided not to put them on his pizza.

Blanden was by far the youngest in the group.

When he was actually cooking, he really enjoyed it.

However, for a two-year-old, there were huge chunks of restless down time, time spent explaining the process to the older children or waiting while they took turns pouring and mixing. Thus Blanden spent most of his time running around and playing with a ball. But that made him happy. Each day I'd ask him if he wanted to go home early and he'd say no; he liked being around the other children. So we would pop into the kitchen to do a quick task when it was his turn, then play some more.

Today Grammy and Little Brother Ellis joined us for our end-of-the-week party. Ellis was a big hit, and Blanden enjoyed showing him off to his classmates.

Here is Ellis, taking it all in.

And here is Blanden and Grammy -- Grammy got to see firsthand what it was all about.

Here is Blanden tasting his homemade granola, which he knew he would like, because we make granola at home. He calls it "Mommy's cereal" and he always wants a bite, sometimes his own bowl.

At the end of the class, each child was presented a certificate-of-completion and the collection of the recipes. Blanden got a big round of applause for being the littlest chef and for making it through the week. It turns out this particular class and the mixed age group wasn't entirely appropriate for a toddler after all. Unprompted, the owner recognized this and earlier this week she stopped by to apologize for that, thanked us for giving it a try, and gave Blanden a gift certificate to register for a parent/tot-only (2-4 year-olds) five-week session (a one-hour class one day a week for five weeks) for free. Sounds like a great plan! We'll save our certificate for now, but stay tuned for further culinary tales of Chef Blanden a few more months down the road.

And here's a little family photo from our dinner out last night.