Life is interesting in how nothing ever truly remains the
same. The status quo continues to change all of the time. New developments lead
us to grow and change in ways we never thought possible. Old friends drift
apart and new bonds are created. I could go on and on and it would probably
border on becoming semi-poetic (as well as semi-depressing). Therefore, I'll
shift focus a little bit and approach things from this point of view: Do you have any hobbies?
It's an interesting question if you think about it. Going
back to my original thought, hobbies tend to change. Mine have for sure since I
became a stay-at-home dad. I used to be more apt to embrace endless hours of
video games and Netflix viewing. Now, I find myself with different hobbies like
blogging or reading books more often. Oh, and there's one new one that has
become commonplace: cooking.
Cooking hasn't always been something I embraced. During my
pre-married life, my idea of cooking was putting a frozen pizza in the oven or
microwaving a TV dinner. If I was really ambitious, I might even scramble an
egg. Now, there's rarely a day that goes by where I'm not cooking a meal.
What's interesting though is how through the process of seeing me cook so
often, Ellie has now decided that she wants cooking to be her hobby as well.
Therefore, like any good parent, I strive to encourage that all in the hope
that someday when she's a teenager, I'll never have to cook again. Muhaha.
Step 1 of my master plan commenced on Friday. The objective
was simple enough. We were going to make muffins. Actually, the evil plan of
making muffins with Ellie was brought about mostly by accident. The night
before, Bethany had sent me to the store to grab some packages of muffin mix so
that she could back muffins to take to work the next day. Unfortunately for
her, I'm easily confused when it comes to the quantity of something that I should
procure. Therefore, I returned home with a smile on my face and enough mix for
24 muffins. As she only needed 12, Bethany suggested I bake a batch with Ellie
on Friday morning.
As soon as Ethan went down for his morning nap on Friday,
Ellie and I made our way to the kitchen for Operation Muffin. She pulled a
chair up to the counter and watched carefully as I opened the bag of muffin
mix. I then handed the bag to her and watched her gleefully pour it into a
waiting bowl. Next, I grabbed a gallon of milk from the refrigerator, carefully
measured out the appropriate amount, and Ellie poured it into the bowl. Then,
after mixing everything together quite well, I carefully measured out the
appropriate amount of muffin batter for Ellie to pour into each tin. Before we
knew it, our muffins were in the oven and baking to perfection.
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| Look at that excited little girl! |
Muffins aren't the only thing I'm capable of teaching Ellie
to make though. Our next cooking lesson took place today as Ellie and I tackled
Chicken Parmesan. This is actually a pretty common meal in our household.
However, Ellie generally hasn't been allowed to help with the prep. That
changed today. First, I cracked three eggs into a bowl and whisked them until
smooth. Then, I measured out all of our dry ingredients and gave them to Ellie
to pour into a different bowl and mix together. This is where things got a
little messy.
I took a piece of chicken and dipped it into the egg, making
sure to cover it on each side. Then, I moved the chicken to our bowl of dry
ingredients, rolling it several times to make sure it was well-breaded. After
that, I repeated both steps before placing the chicken on a cookie sheet. After
a few more example pieces, it was time for Ellie to have a turn. As she placed
her first piece of chicken in the egg mixture, I watched her face crinkle
slightly at the feel of the egg on her fingers. It didn't faze her for long
though as she then moved it right into the breading and repeated as necessary.
By the time we were all said and done, Ellie had proudly breaded five or six
pieces of chicken. What was even more impressive was that one couldn't even
tell the difference between her chicken pieces and mine. Further proof that my
master plan is coming along quite nicely.
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| MMM, chicken. And yes, Ellie is still in her pajamas. She really wanted a jammie day! |
Wow, this was a really interesting blog. I started with this
nice, sweet little paragraph about the changing nature of life and transitioned
into an evil plan about training my daughter to do all of our cooking. I could
probably rewrite that first paragraph to make everything more cohesive.
However, I really don't want to and therefore, I'm not going to. Everyone's
just going to have to be ok with that, ok? #DaddyWrite
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