Cooking Up Kitchen Memories with the Kids
By Debra Sansing Woods

When my oldest daughter was just a baby, I enjoyed few activities more than sitting in the rocking chair with her snuggled in my arms. As we rocked back and forth, I soaked in her newborn beauty and contemplated the possibilities for our future together.

I imagined that we would spend many weekends camping deep within the woods of the Texas Hill Country. I also looked forward to sharing my passion for good books with her and hoped that she would someday come to love Jane Eyre and other admirable literary heroines as much as I did.

And, truth be told, many of my dreams for our special time together centered right on the heart of our home — the kitchen.

My early visions of our shared mother-daughter time in the kitchen were very much like the scenes one finds when turning the pages of a Victorian storybook — all soft and glowing and warm and inviting in ambience. In my imagination, my patience is, of course, endless, and it's clear that my daughter and I are filled with nothing but homespun cheer as we work together in harmony to create the most amazing kitchen concoctions any mother and daughter anywhere could possibly produce.

Those dreamy kids-in-the-kitchen-visions were certainly heartfelt but, in retrospect, perhaps a bit naïve. If you stop by my house these days, four kids later, you'll discover that the family baking scenes in my kitchen rarely, if ever, match my early imaginings. I've found the realities of cooking and baking with young children to be far less orderly and much more adventure-filled than I ever could have imagined all those years ago. Such shared time is never boring and we definitely make some memories, sweet memories to be sure, but some remarkably messy memories as well.

Thankfully, over the years, I've learned to revise my expectations for mother-child baking time to something approaching reasonable.

The Cooking Show

Opportunities for revising expectations about cooking and baking time with my children came early on in my parenting life. Around the time my oldest daughter turned three, I was sure she was ready to spend some real time in the kitchen with me. However, and much to my disappointment, I quickly discovered that she wasn't the least bit interested in spending much time in the kitchen at all.

If I had invited her to go rock collecting or to play dress-up, she would have jumped at the opportunity (and we certainly did much of both of those). In contrast, she found the idea of baking or cooking with mom to be utterly uninspiring.

Even so, I was sure that she would enjoy some baking time with me if only I could find a way to get her into the kitchen. It was clear that a simple invitation wasn't going to do it, and since I didn't feel comfortable forcing her into the kitchen to cook or bake against her will just to satisfy my visions of family life, I determined to find another approach.

Reminding myself that she usually jumped at any opportunity to perform (she was quite a tap dancer, skit performer and general ham back then, still is a performer and general ham), I came up with the idea that we could pretend to have our own cooking show on television.

In preparation for our first show, I located a terrific banana-nut-bread recipe and gathered all the necessary ingredients — from unbleached white flour to pecans —- onto the countertop by the mixer. I then announced my “cooking show” idea to my daughter and invited her to participate. She was thrilled with the thought of having her own cooking show, even though she was well aware that it would be broadcast to a pretend viewing audience.

Things went well during the first few minutes of "air time" until I discovered that my daughter found recipe instructions entirely too restrictive and measuring spoons and cups uncomfortably confining. In her favor, she was an especially confident, if inexperienced and unusually creative, cook. She was absolutely certain that if we just tossed various ingredients into the mixing bowl according to whim and inspiration, we were sure to come up with something visually appealing and truly tasty.

I must confess that I didn't share her confidence or free spirit when it came to baking, so I never addressed our imaginary audience without keeping one eye on her just in case she attempted to toss in, say, an unexpected half-cup of baking powder.

Lasting Results

Our “cooking program” continued to run for several months and with some real success, I might say. The producer's goals were met: My daughter had become interested in creating cookies, cakes and other delicious kitchen concoctions with me. She continued to resist recipe instructions and measuring cups — but thankfully less and less so with the passage of time.

This daughter has, over the years, through much trial and error, developed her own generally successful cooking and baking style. She's famous in our family for her surprising use of ingredients to give her dishes and baked goods a sometimes distinctive and, at other times, mysterious flair. I'll never forget the time she made scrambled eggs for me (they were tasty but definitely unlike any eggs I had ever tasted before), and asked if I would like to guess the secret ingredient. There was a hint of something familiar, but after several attempts, I couldn't quite identify what exactly the special ingredient was.

My daughter proudly informed me, smile on her face, that she had whisked in what I found to be a surprisingly large volume of Ranch Dressing just before scrambling the eggs. I finished my eggs that day, but must admit that, to be the best of my knowledge, I have never again consumed quite so much Ranch Dressing in any dish (salads included) I’ve eaten.

Ever the dreamy-eyed mother, I had always envisioned that as our family grew, our special time in the kitchen would only get better. One thing I've learned for sure is that more kids in the kitchen equals more adventure in the kitchen. I've also learned, and gratefully I might add, that a good mother of five does not have to have all five of her kids in the kitchen at the same time. In fact, it's generally best that she not have more than one or two children in the kitchen at any one time if she wants to keep her wits about her.

As I think back over the years, I can recall many memorable moments in the kitchen with each of my children — teaching one to make my favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe, helping another to prepare the pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving dinner, and yet another to make a simple but tasty chicken dish, and so on. I even have fond memories of my littlest one, when he was almost two, “helping out” in the kitchen. I can't help but laugh when I think of the times I spied him reaching his little hand into the mixing bowl to sneak a fistful of cookie dough when he was sure no one was looking.

Every mother I know has stories to tell of cooking or baking in the kitchen with her kids. These stories don't usually match a mother's early imaginings — especially when it comes to the amazing messes made. Nevertheless, if my experiences and the experiences of my mothering friends are any indication, a mother’s memories of being in the kitchen with her kids are sometimes sweeter, generally more meaningful, and oftentimes funnier than any kitchen memories a mom might cook or bake up on her own.