I love cooking; though being able to do it on my own is a luxury I rarely have. As a child I only remember having to make crumble. (Now I make mean pastry.) I’m not sure why I didn’t do more? My sister did. I don’t like to ask for things, so maybe I never asked to help. Or I kept refusing to help and my Mum stopped asking. As I got older I did feel a bit left out, that my sister was often asked to help and I wasn’t. That is maybe a reminder to me that as my children grow I should keep asking if they want to help with things. As I might remember an absolute denial that they don’t, or don’t mean anymore.

It was only when I went to University that I started cooking, and I remember ringing home for recipes a few times. And that was when I started my cookery book collection. Which continues to grow. Faster than I can cook from them! They are lovely just to look through, and the children try to eat the food on all the pictures which is amusing. Though also frustrating when I then cook whatever they’ve requested, only for them to refuse to eat it. Children heh!

They do both like helping me, especially starry girl. So I’ve got a pair of avocado knives for them to use in the kitchen. These are silicone serrated knifes that can cut most softish things, but won’t cut your fingers. You can get special children’s knifes that seem to me to be almost identical (except these also have a scoopy bit too to get your avocado out of the skin). And they can cut things like mushrooms, green beans, peppers, etc. It’s really nice to be able to cook with them, although in our kitchen we do often run out of surface space! And it’s nice to be able to do savoury stuff, as too many of the “cook with children” books are full of cake and biscuit recipes. Not that I’m complaining about cooking cakes and biscuits, but variety is good. As we keep telling them “It’s important to eat a range of different types of food”, and it’s also important to learn how to cook a range of different types of things. So hopefully they will both continue to help out as they get older.