Cooking with children

I swear, moms with small children deserve a special place in heaven for cooking with those same children.  First they want to help.  Then they're tired of helping.  Then they want to help more, but since they have to wait for the next step, they start getting into everything that you're trying to work with.  Then they're bored again and get their own project out (which makes a huge mess).  Then they help some more.  Then they get bored with their first project and get out another project that you say they'll have to wait for until you're done but they spread the whole thing out "while they wait".  Then you still have to clean up the mess from the cooking and all of their messes as well.

That was pretty much our day today.  Plus a trip to Trader Joe's, lunch, a separate trip to the library, some reading, picking up Peter from the bus stop and more reading - all before we actually got to eat what we made.

I had been planning for a while to make cheeseburger buns, but they take some time to make the dough, let it rise and roll it all out.  Today was the only day I found that we'd have time at home to do all of that.

First, Grady started out helping.  He mixed up the eggs and oil, but when he got tired he just dropped the whisk into the bowl so it was covered in goo.  Then he decided he wasn't done so he fished it out again.  But since it was covered in goo he tried to hand it to me so I could do something with it.  I refused to take it until he was totally done with it, so he mixed some more and then dropped it back into the bowl.

While he washed up after that bit of helping, I mixed everything else together until he came back to help with the flour.  He stirred for a minute but then decided to collect the scraps of who knows what on the counter and put them into a measuring spoon.  I caught him before he dumped the spoon into my mixing bowl, but then he dumps it into the measuring cup I was still using.  More washing up followed for him.

After the dough finished rising, Grady had to help roll it out.  Who knows how the grease shield was helping him, but obviously it was very necessary to the process.

The rolling was followed by cutting out squares of dough and filling them, which he helped with for a little while.  Instead of buns, we ended up with a few tacos.  Then he got bored again, so while I finished everything he decided to open his own diner.

At one point, the diner only had a few mixing bowls and some bowling pins.  It expanded pretty quickly into a cake plate with pistachios covered with a glass bowl, a wok, a bunch of bread and pie pans, a couple cupcake holders and cooling racks and a whole bunch of stirring accessories.  Interestingly enough, when he came into the kitchen asking for the bacon cooker, I told him he had to put away the other stuff before he could have it.  He put everything away without a fight, got out the bacon cooker and then immediately decided the grease shield was much more interesting and carried that one around for a while.

The cheeseburger buns were mostly a hit, even if they're a total time-sucker to make.  No complaints although Grady wasn't all that hungry for his.  Luckily, these should last quite a few days.