It’s always been my plan to have the Ankle BIters cook a meal a week each as they become old enough. It gives me a break, is a valid sharing of chores and teaches them an invaluable skill. With that end in mind, I’ve been checking out children’s cookbooks pretty much since Son and Heir was conceived. There’s some real tripe out there.

I did find one I liked late last year and bought a copy for a nephew for Christmas. This weekend in Sydney, I found a nice clean second hand copy of the same cook book for $5 at Rozelle Market (and a divine pair of Italian leather boots but that’s another story for another day). Cool Kids Cook by Donna Hay. It’s bright and colourful and well laid out. It has great variety of savoury and sweet recipes. It even has a sheet of stickers at the back. Lot’s of Ankle Biter appeal. Lots of nutritionally sound meals. Enough sweet stuff to keep the Ankle Biters interested.

cool kids cook

My Ankle Biters cooked their first meal from it tonight. Shepherd’s Pie. We varied the recipe a little, adding lots of veg to the met and cooking the meat sauce in the thermomix. The thermomix is great for kid cooking. Much safer than a stovetop. It also excuses the roughness of Son and Heir’s cutting with his kiddie kutter knife. Its amazing how mnay of the tasks involved they can do themselves now. I really didn’t have to do much more than supervise for much of the time.

Dinner was most successful and plans have been made for weekend spacemen eggs for breakfast and chicken noodle soup for lunch.