Keeping Busy

Like most of the world right now, we are officially under a Stay-At-Home order, meaning we are not supposed to be out in the world for anything other than absolutely necessary.

This lock down and the tension surrounding it has effected all of us differently. My youngest daughter, Allison, is used to going to swim team 3 times a week. This is her happy place as well as her physical outlet. She has been very upset to give that up. However, in the last two weeks, she has poured all of that pent up energy into taking over the kitchen.

She has been making breakfast, lunch and dinner for the family as well as experimenting with baked goods. So, this week’s blog is all about her exploits in the kitchen.

Allison has always liked to cook, but with this down time, she has really kicked it into overdrive. I blame it on Gordon Ramsay. She started watching his various TV shows and was suddenly inspired.

Last week, she made us a beautiful Greek Salad with pan-grilled chicken. Allison has always loved salads and this one was delicious.

She chopped all the veggies, and prepped and cooked the chicken all on her own. She used that marvelous glass Salad Dressing Mixing Bottle we have to make homemade Greek salad dressing that was amazingly delicious. It was a lot of work, but well worth it.

Allison had really wanted to grill the chicken, but the grill hadn’t been cleaned and prepped for the grilling season yet. So, she agreed to wait until her dad could help her with that.

I have shared our favorite BBQ burger recipe on this blog before, but Allison wanted her first grilled hamburgers to be her own. After cleaning the grill and deck with Mitch, she mixed hamburgers by hand and set to grilling up our first burgers of the season.

Again, they were delicious. Through this experience, she learned how to maintain the grill as well as cook with it.

Then Friday rolled around, which is our traditional night for pizza and a movie. Allison insisted she wanted to make pizza from scratch – dough and all. So, using the directions on the back of the pack of Fast-Rising Yeast, she set to work making dough for two small pizzas. She topped half of each pizza to the liking of each member of the family.

Over the weekend, Allison decided to conquer Huli Huli Chicken, which is chicken Hawaiian style, accompanied by grilled pineapple.

To be completely honest, this is where my own nerves began to unravel. While Allison has been learning to cook and experiment in the kitchen, I have been learning to let go of control of my domain. I have been learning to let her do things the way she wants to, not the way I would do it.

Cutting a pineapple was nearly our undoing. While I have been cutting pineapple for years, it is an acquired skill for sure. I wanted to do it. I’m not going to lie. But I tried to talk Allison through it. You cut the bottom off, then turn the pineapple right side up again. Holding the crown of the pineapple, use a long, serrated knife to cut off the pokey green outer layer of the fruit, closely following the oval shape of the fruit. Then you cut off the crown and cut the pineapple flesh away from the hard inner core and cube to desired size.

Well, Allison did not want help, and following the pineapple shape is harder than it sounds. We lost some good pineapple along the way, but had enough for the recipe and some for snacking afterwards.

The chicken was great and it turns out grilled pineapple is really yummy. She grilled it on a cast iron grill pan, instead of the outside grill. Grilling the fruit brings out the sugar and adds a mildly smokey flavor.

This week, her ambitions grew even higher. Monday was an entire Mexican theme, starting with breakfast burritos. We only had uncooked tortillas, so she cooked the tortillas, eggs and some bacon, then filled each burrito for each person’s tastes.

Lunch was vegetarian, with Zesty Cauliflower Rice. She followed a recipe she found online, then added extra spice with Sriracha sauce at the end of cooking.

Dinner was going to be beef enchiladas, but then we discovered we didn’t have enchilada sauce on hand. So what did Allison do? She made enchilada sauce from scratch.

The next day, Allison decided she wanted to invite Mimi and Papa for dinner, which was homemade General Tso’s Chicken and rice. Allison also wanted to bake a cake for dessert – a 3 layer cake, no less. This is something I haven’t even done.

She found a recipe for a 3 layer cake and buttercream frosting online again. This cake had two flavors of cake and frosting. No simple cake would do.

The cake mix got a little complicated, but Allison managed it. I admit I went a little Gordon during this phase. Some yelling may have happened, but no pan throwing or swearing occurred. There were too many bowls in play and at one point we weren’t sure what had been mixed in where.

The middle layer of the cake was vanilla, the top and bottom layer were chocolate with a bit of coffee mixed in. The texture of this cake was more of a pound cake, rich with butter and sour cream. The layers baked very well and each one popped right out of the pan nice and evenly. No lopsided cakes here.

Then the frosting was made. That process went more smoothly. Allison saved 1/3 of the frosting as vanilla, and 2/3 was turned into a yummy mocha frosting.

Frosting the cake was another matter all together. I handicapped her process a bit, as I am not a professional baker and do not have a great platform for frosting, etc. I told her repeatedly that she was doing great, but she is a perfectionist and was not pleased with the end result. I still think it was pretty impressive. She embellished it with a fruit topping, taking it up another notch.

All in all, I have been very impressed with Allison’s skills in the kitchen. I cannot share a specific recipe with you, as her system is definitely a unique one. She copies the recipe from the computer onto Post It notes and sticks them into a notebook. When she is ready to cook, she pulls the Post Its out and sticks them to the cupboard. We have discussed that this may not be the most efficient process, but she will work on that.

Allison is also learning to do the dishes, but I have stepped in to help with that quite a bit. Cleaning as you go is also an acquired skill, as is mastering the timing of meals.

These skills will come with time, and I am sure it will not be long before she surpasses her mama in the kitchen. Right now, we are working on co-existing in the same tiny space.

So for everyone sharing their kitchens during this quarantine, keep up the good fight. This time will pass soon enough and the skills your kids learn around the house are just as valuable as the class time they are missing.