The Baker

Little Baker

The little baker helping to make cookies by her request today.

Making Jam

The kids and I had fun making some peach jam out of some of the peach bounty from last week.  They were good helpers in the process and we ended up with some yummy jam sweetened with apple juice concentrate.  We used some of the jars to give to neighbors, since it has been a little loud at our house with demo noise this week.

Little Sous Chefs

Alex and Julia both love to help in the kitchen.  The other night I was making a mushroom sauce and they were very excited to help cut up all of the mushrooms.  Julia was cutting them in half and then passing them along to Alex to chop them into smaller pieces.  Quite the fun assembly line.  They did a great job and were very proud of their work!

Working in the Kitchen

On Friday, we decided to make an afternoon treat---banana bread!  My kitchen helpers and I mashed up some bananas and measured out some ingredients and then sampled the finished product.  As you can see, Julia has inherited the kitchen stand, but it is still a bit big for her, so the box from our new fan fit perfectly and she fits perfectly inside of that!

Happy Birthday, Julia Child!

 Look at those knife skills!

 Alex cut up all of the strawberries for our crepes last night.

 His "chef face".

 Mini sous chef in a box.  We needed a way for her to be a bit more enclosed in the kitchen stand and a box did the trick.  

Taste testing the strawberries.

This week would have been Julia Child's 100th birthday.  Just think of all of the inspiration she has provided to people everywhere, to get into the kitchen and cook.  In honor of her birthday, we made crepes last night.  Coincidentally, Alex earned the last ticket towards his kitchen knife yesterday too, so he proudly broke in the new knife, by cutting up all of the strawberries and peaches for the crepes.  He did a great job and was careful to keep his fingers out of the way.  We enjoyed some savory crepes with chicken, shallots, spinach, fresh grape tomatoes, oregano and feta cheese and then some sweet ones with strawberries and nectarines with honey sweetened goat cheese.  They were gobbled up!