Cook with your children - Cookbook give away!

Yes, you read that correctly - I get to give away a cookbook!

Not this one though - this one is mine (though my children think it belongs to them.) And I have Yvette Garfield to thank for my book, the author of the Handstand Kids Italian Cookbook and the recently released Handstand Kids Mexican Cookbook. Which I get to give away to one of my readers!

So if you want to win, keep reading, and I'll let you know how, after I've told you a bit about this book.

Actually, it isn't just a kids cookbook, it is much more fun than that. First, it comes in a pizza box. Yes, I said a pizza box. With a chef's hat. The Mexican comes in a resealable Tortilla bag, and includes an oven mitt. Both books also include a fun way to be introduced not only to the food of a different culture, but also to the language.

The recipe for turning Sandwiches into Panini does not call for slicing bread, but instead pane, which is later needs to be brushed with olio (olive oil), and cooked on a media pentola, a medium saucepan, with a piccola pentola, a small saucepan, weighing it down. Both the English and Italian are included in each recipe, and my 9 year old, who made Panini sandwiches for his family for dinner earlier this week, actually asked me for the olio, when assembling his ingredients before cooking.

I have to add in that my 9 year old is not that interested in cooking. This time he put on the chef's hat and dug right in! His plan involved not only making Panini, but also making dessert, called Every Tummy Loves Tartufo, or chocolate dipped ice cream.

Not to be outdone by his brother, my 5 year old, who loves to help me cook, begged to be included, first turning Popcorn into Italian Popcorn, to go along with his brother's Panini sandwiches, and tonight making Foot-Long Garlic Bread. While he is too young to cook by himself the way his brother did, there were plenty of steps in both recipes that he could handle on his own.

Now my children stuck with 1 and 2 garlic clove recipes, recipes that did not require quite as much skill as say a 4 garlic clove recipe, such as the Torta al Cioccolato (a chocolate, hazelnut torte.) My oldest had a few difficulties following the recipes exactly, but mostly because of lack of experience - I had no problems understanding that he would have to refreeze his ice cream balls for an hour before he melted the chocolate, but he thought he had to melt the chocolate right after he put the balls into the freezer, unaware that it would harden up again before that hour was up.

Doesn't he look proud of his dessert? (Which he finished eating almost an hour ago, and has still not taken off the hat!)

I've just been told that we need to make the spaghetti and meatball recipe next, according to my youngest aspiring chef, who can't read yet, but is loving "reading" the book - and just told me that there is no way he would eat the Leaning Tower of Eggplant.

In letting me try out her book, Yvette has also offered me the chance to give away a signed copy of the Handstand Kids Mexican Cookbook, in celebration of cinco de Mayo. In it the five Handstand Kids, Felix, Izzy, Ari, Gabby and Marvin, will help introduce you and your kids to Mexican cooking (and language) in a fun way. And all you have to do is leave me a comment about your favorite thing to make with your children. Or maybe what your favorite thing was to make as a child (and with who!)

Just leave me a comment before Friday, May 16th. At that time, I will read all the comments to my chef's in training and have them pick their favorite story as the winner!

Time to come out of lurker mode, leave a comment and you could be having a blast cooking with your children (or nieces, nephews, neighborhood children, grandchildren, whomever!)




18 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ok Jenny- here's our story - Sabrina and I just learned how to make bread. We also make cakes and cookies. She has her own specialty, which is farmers casserole. We also make tacos, pasta sauce, strawberry smoothies and last, but not least, macaroni and cheese. Visit my blog to see her in action with the bread!

Anonymous said...

How fun! Although I much prefer the English. Bet kids will love this.

kamewh said...

We love Mexican food! My 3 1/2 year old loves to make tacos and he always helps me with Chicken Enchiladas! It would be fun to win this book so that we can get some new ideas of things to make.

My son's favorite meal of all to cook though is definitely homemade pizza. I roll out the crust for him and chop up the veggies but he puts all of the sauce and cheese and all of the toppings on the pizza. He loves telling daddy that he "cooked" the meal!

Thank you for the giveaway!!

Anonymous said...

Hi, while I don't have kids (yet) I love to bake with my nieces (ages 7 & 4). They'll call me up and ask when they can come over to bake something yummy, and we'll all have the greatest time making a mess and licking the chocolate-y bowls and beaters! The little one stands on a stepstool so she can help out with the pouring and mixing. They love to make cupcakes, cakes, cookies - they're two little cookie monsters (so am I actually!)
agordo@sympatico.ca

ababe28 said...

My eight year old loves to cook..and believe it or not, they are teaching them Spanish in 2nd grade!! She is actually great at both and I know she would LOVE to have this...
To the Boys...
Great Going..loved your pictures too! Manga! Chou!

Kari said...

As a child, my grandmother would make us "Indian Toast" not very pc I know, but that's what we called it! She'd put bread on a gas stove burner until it was burnt. Smother it with real butter. Just like camping outside, but in! She's gone now, and we have an electric range so I can't pass the tradition to my kids but I still recall the smell...yum.

My kids and I make so many great things.. My daughter is a vegetarian so we do a lot with legumes and veggie pizzas. Even the boys and husband get in on the action and everything is SO GOOD!!

Anonymous said...

I was teaching English in Korea, mostly to kids (Korean age 5-7). On my own initiative, I decided that once a month needed to have a cooking class. So I've made various things with varying number of kids of various ages. As the cooking became more popular, other classes asked to join mine when they knew it was a cooking class. When I go back to Korea, I will do this again at whatever school I'm at.

I've made cookies, salad, fruit salad, milkshakes, sandwiches, roasted pumpkin seeds and more with these kids, and it was always a blast.

My favourite time was actually a last-minute thing. I had two days warning that Arirang TV was going to come and tape my English class, and that it should be a special class. So I brought over my toaster oven, my mixing bowls and basically all my ingredients and cooking gear and we made cookies as a class in the TV studio on campus. The kids helped measure, mix and all. While the cookies were cooking, I brought them over to a side table and taught them to pipe smiley faces from icing. I made the icing ahead of time, and had disposable pastry bags, and they got to practise first on napkins while the cookies baked and cooled. Then they decorated their cookies with it. It was very messy, but it was also super cute, and the kids LOVED it. They even got their own aprons and chefs hats (the school actually had a whole bunch, and they even said English Cooking Class on them).

I'm always trying to think up other ideas for cooking classes, because they were not only super popular with the kids, but they were my favourite classes too!

I think that the cookies with icing were the best, though. I mean, how many kids get to learn how to pipe icing?

giz said...

Fact is stranger than fiction - my son always loved to experiment in the kitchen. He wanted to bake..out came the flour, sugar, eggs etc. I went to answer the phone and came back to find over 5 lbs of flour on the floor with footprints and handprints. He just wanted to leave his mark. Cleanup took 4 hours. Getting flour out of the grooves of the microwave is no fun.

Kat Bryan said...

I used to love decorating Christmas cookies with Gramma and helping Mom make homemade noodles. It sounds terrible now but all of us kids used to sneak the raw ones to eat.

Anonymous said...

Once upon a time there were 3 little girls who loved to bake with their grandma (true). Grandma loved to bake pies because everybody loved them and she won awards for them (true). Then one day an evil power ranger kidnapped one of the girls (false). So Grandma decided to bake pies to win her granddaughter back. She made 3 award winning pies and taught the girls to make little baby pies. "Not like that Colly" she'd say "you have to flute the edges like this" (true). They all rode flying snakes to the evil power ranger's castle. "Here are some pies in exchange for my little granddaughter" the grandmother offered. "Mmmmm those smell so good" said the evil power ranger "besides this kid is too much trouble". Many many years later, there are 3 little girls who love to bake pies with their mother. Now it's the mother that says "Not like that LuLu, you need to flute the edges like this". (true)And they all lived happily ever after.

Guess who

Patsyk said...

What a cool giveaway! My boys and I love to bake cookies together. If I don't have homemade cookies in the house, I get major complaints... so, out comes the cookie cookbook and all the ingredients. They help with measuring and dumping the ingredients into the mixing bowl. The cookies are usually odd shaped or huge, but that's ok since we always have fun making them together.

Megan said...

My daughter loves to help in the kitchen. It's usually some kind of cookie with chocolate. Our last great challange was a cookie brittle. That was fun to make and if you pick me, I'll share the recipe. You would love to make that cookie!!!

Anonymous said...

Bambam loves to help me with lots of things, but most especially his morning smoothies. His jobs are to peel the banana and dump handfuls of berries into the container. He also "helps" me to press the buttons on the blender.

He also loves to help me with anything that involves Melvin. That's our mixer. It's no Bob, but it does the trick.

== Bambam's mom

Anonymous said...

Although my baby is only 1 year old...his interested in cooking has not been established yet. Whenever my lil cousins and husband's nephews come over to the house, we all have a blast making chicken pepper jack quesadilla.

Cindy said...

I had the grandbabies over for awhile, they live 7 hours away. We did the homemade noodle thing. My daughter was so impressed, we had flour all over the babies, they had a ball!! She commented how I would NEVER have let her make such a mess when she was little. Making the noodles prompted grandpa to make them both rolling pins on his wood lathe so they could roll out cookie dough next time without arguing over who got to use the 'big' rolling pin!

amanda. said...

Well my little one is only 14 months old so he can't do much in the kitchen yet. Back when he was smaller and would fit in a Bumbo, I'd keep him on the counter with me while I baked and he would swing a whisk around. Now that he's kind of huge he sits next to me in a high chair and I explain everything I do while he swings that whisk around.

Not very exciting but I look forward to the days where I can have him stir things for me. Or turn on my mixer. Or taste things and actually let me know if it's any good.

Fruit tart said...

What fun!

My four girls love to be in the kitchen with me. I started baking on my own when I was about 7 yrs old. I vividly recall being about 8-9 yr old and making a recipe appropriately called 'Big Fat Cookies' -- made from a cake mix. We didn't have much counter space and the kitchen table was a constant pile of clutter and the cookies were quite large, so I had cooling racks stacked on top of every conceivable space. I baked them just before I went to bed and planned to take them to school the next day for a special event. I got up in the morning and my cookies were GONE! My dad had come in from the barn late and ate them all. He thought they must have been 'ruined' because they were so fat. I was crushed but it didn't slow down the baking.

My mom used to let me get cookbooks out of the library and we'd try a few recipes and the ones I liked best I wrote into a bound composition notebook. I lost that notebook while in college and miss it terribly.

Anonymous said...

When I was a little girl, my mother and I lived with my grandparents. Every Sunday everyone would go to church except for my aunt and I, since I was just 3 or so. While they were gone, we would mix up pancakes, homemade potato pancakes, applesauce, and other treats for Sunday brunch. I usually had stirring duties. I can still remember the sensation of the Bisquick mix wafting up into my noise as I stirred . . . I'd sneak bits of the mix when my aunt wasn't looking. As strange as it sounds, I liked the dry mix . . .