It's Monday Which Means Its My Son's Turn to Cook - Sweet Shoppe Mom

Cooking healthy and delicious meals for my family is very important to me. I’m also a foodie and its makes me so happy that I’m raising my son to be a foodie. He’s 8 and loves to taste test different kinds of vinegars, requests Marcona almonds (not just almonds) and can use a piping bag.

He asked if he could cook dinner one night a week so we decided he would be in charge on Monday’s dinner. He picks the menu, writes the grocery lists, preps and cooks the food. We started this at the beginning of September and its been a great experience for both of us.

Why have your kids learn to cook?

Important life skill
Teaches nutrition
Teaches math skillls
Great reading (the recipe) and writing (the grocery list) practice
Encourages them to explore new foods
Teaches food and kitchen safety skills

Bs night to make dinner! Chef salad on the menu. My son has asked to make dinner once a week. He started with chef salad because no cooking was involved. He made the shopping list, chop and prepared the presentation. He was so proud #cookingkids #lovemybo

Week 1 – Chef Salad

My son was quite smart and chose Chef Salad as his first meal because no cooking was involved – he said he wanted to out simple. The salad was a great knife skills learning experience.

Because of food allergies and food preferences the salad was served as a build your own salad and he had fun with the presentation.

Chef Salad (clean, chop and plate all ingredients)

lettuce
carrots
cucumber
croutons
jack cheese
cheddar cheese
ham
turkey
Ranch Dressing, Newman’s Own

Week 2 – Pork, Cashew, and Green Bean Stir-fry

This is one of my son’s favorite meals that I cook – he loves the flavors and that the pork is so tender. Because of a possible nut allergy he’s always had it with peanuts instead of the cashews. We usually leave the nuts out when we cook it and sprinkle on top when served – this way each of us can choose peanuts or cashews.

Recipe is from Cooking Light Magazine

Week 3 – Bacon Burgers

I have a few cookbooks for kids and my son picked out Bacon Burgers from Eat Like a Dinosaur
(its a Paleo cookbook). For a side he wanted to make onion rings – we love Alexia Multigrain Onion Rings.

It's a Paleo dish but for tonight we're using buns and having fries. Slowly transitioning to Paleo #eatlikeadinosaur

Review – this was a brand new recipe for our family and YUM! These were so good – lots of flavor and juicy.

*we don’t eat Paleo (obviously) but I cook a lot from Paleo cookbooks because of my dairy allergy and I’m working towards more of a Paleo based diet. Often my meal will be Paleo and my family will have a side such as paste, rice or bread.

Week 4 – Paleo Chicken Nuggets

There are a lot of different Paleo chicken nugget recipes – most use almond flour or coconut flour for the breading and then fry in coconut oil or ghee. We went with coconut flour and cooked in coconut oil. We did use an egg substitute instead of egg for the batter (I have an egg allergy). These were good but still need some tweaking to make them great. Also we should have cooked them at a higher heat but I was a bit nervous with my son frying them so I turned down the heat a bit.

We’re going to try again tweaking the recipe a bit – we’ll share when we have it perfected.

What’s on the menu for October? stay tuned… To see weekly updates our cooking with kids experience follow me on Instagram or Facebook.

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