Cookbooks for kids
Have you successfully encouraged your children to cook? If you used any books along the way, which worked and which didn't?
How do we get children interested in cooking? The most obvious way is to let them help out, which involves messy fun and generally produces stuff which takes a heroic effort on your part to eat. More rewarding, perhaps, is to wait until they're old enough to play a useful part in cooking. Rose Prince, in Kitchenella, tells of a mother who made her children "work" in the kitchen and who had exacting standards. My mother was similar. We had fun, but I had to learn properly (I remember once spending hours peeling grapes) and if something hadn't quite worked, I would be told; a blancmange "everyone ate out of politeness" stands out in my memory.
Helen Nathan believes that getting children to enjoy baking is the route to getting them interested in cooking as a whole. In her Flossie Crums series, the third of which will be out this summer, she's created a cookery / story book hybrid. The stories are about Flossie, who loves baking, and the fairies who live in her garden. The fairy theme, the cupcakes and cookies make them quite girly (my step-daughter loves them), but the introduction of a slapdash and messy brother character in the second book will no doubt have made them more appealing to boys.
I recently discovered two more outstanding publications which teach in a fun and interesting way. The first is a book born of the website for children's magazine Anorak called Food is Fun. It's a beautifully designed and very well constructed mishmash a cross between a scrapbook and an old-fashioned annual. It ! contains activities (word searches, dot-the-dots, carrots to cut out and dress), fun and informative profiles of different fruit and vegetables ("I'm not a maniac, I'm a celeriac!") and recipes based on author Cathy Olmedillas' childhood jottings. The other is an American magazine designed for children, called Ingredient. The latest issue has a "how to" on baking bread, a science piece on yeast, a historical piece about peanuts as well as recipes, activities and quizzes. I would have loved either as a child.
If you have already managed to get your child interested in food, or at least in experimenting, there are two older titles which I think are particularly good. The first is The River Cottage Family Cookbook which I have bought for several people. As well as some very good recipes, there are little projects, such as making butter in a jam jar. The other takes cooking with children to a whole new level. Heston Blumenthal's Family Food is very wordy, but not without reason it contains serious explanations, tips on what to get children to help with, and thorough recipes. This isn't the book to use if you like to cut corners.
One of the best ways to excite children about cooking is to start from an existing interest. Most children love fiction in some form or another, and there are plenty of books which tie the two together. Some of the best involve anthropomorphised animals think of Arabella Boxer's Wind in the Willows cookery book or, more recently, the cookery book based on the Brian Jacq! ues' Red wall series. (Some lovely food-related passages from the series are excerpted here by Alison Flood.)
There's pretty much a food tie-in for every taste. Most gore-loving children love Roald Dahl's Revolting Recipes or the Shrek Cookbook (think "worm stir-fry, beetle juice ripple and swamp rat kebabs").
One I would have loved as a child is last year's Moomin Cookbook. However, what really excited me were the wonderful descriptions of fully stocked pantries, preserving and baking in North American children's classics, and I would have loved cookery books based on them.
Searching now, I haven't found cookery books for Little Women or Susan Coolidge's Katy Books, but there is an Anne of Green Gables one, and even better, a brilliant Little House Cookbook which MsMarmiteLover (another fan of old fashioned and homely North American food) used as inspiration for a Thanksgiving meal.
Have you had much success getting your children into the kitchen? Have you used any books along the way and if so, which worked, and which didn't?
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