Busy Little Hands... Making Memories

Wondering how to get the kids involved in the kitchen with food prep?  I love to have my great niece over each summer for a few days and she always asks if we are gonna make those white things with the mushy center.  I know that she means deviled eggs and she actually remembered the name this year.  So...without further ado, I am going to show you just a few things that your kiddos, grandchildren, or in my case...great niece can help out with in the kitchen.

I take the boiled eggs and peel them, then slice in half and dump all the insides into a large zip style bag.  While I am doing this, the child gets out the mustard, mayo, salt and pepper.  I zip all the fixing in the bag and hand it over to the child.

After everything is all mushed up really good and creamy, I get the bag back.  (And in this case the child got the camera to take my picture.  She gets this talent from her gram!)  I show her how to push everything to one bottom corner of the bag, push back from the corner just a bit and snip it off with kitchen scissors, and then I am ready to fill the eggs.  No messy cleanup, toss the bag into the trash!

Then, we enjoyed our eggs!!!  I thought that she did rather well with the camera!

Next on the list are some hot dogs and pasta.  I saw a picture of this online somewhere and thought, Oh My Gosh!!!  Kids would love to make these!  And she did.  

Take your hot dogs out of the package and cut them into thirds, take your long spaghetti out of the bag and break some in half.  Then proceed to let the child poke the spaghetti through the hot dogs, if they break...no big deal.  There is no particular angle or count to do, just get'em done.

Then, drop them into boiling water until both are cooked completely.  You can serve with a sauce or ketchup or whatever.  She ate hers just as you see them below, I think she had a lot of fun with this one.

The last thing that we did were our microwaveable S'mores.  Take your 1/2 of graham cracker and lay the chocolate on top and then top with one marshmallow.  The one in the picture has two marshmallows, cause I was not using the jumbo ones.  I should have still just used one, she loved it anyway.  Oh, on a side note, they do make marshmallows in small flat squares just for this purpose now, found them at WalMart this week.  Only cook it in the microwave for about 10 seconds, the chocolate will keep melting after you take it out and put the top cracker on.

Took her a few minutes to figure out how to pick it up.  But, as you can tell in the next photo, she loved it!

We enjoyed these so much that we made little kits.  These are great for teachers, friends, community helpers, or whoever.  Cause we all need "Smore friends like you"...

I am headed out on Monday to So.Korea with my husband.  Our daughter moved there six months ago to teach English in one of their schools for a year.  So, when I get back, the blog might just be full of our experiences abroad for a post or two.  Take care, stay cool in this heat (110 here!), and I will be back in a couple weeks or so.

Classes are listed on my website now...www.picturetrail.com/tinkartist   Email me if you are interested in taking a class.   giftofgabsave@hotmail.com