Little One Step: Paneer Pulao & other adventures in the kitchen

Little One Step: Paneer Pulao & other adventures in the kitchen: Friday night I was reading through Tarla Dalal's recipe book on Rice dishes & Chellu came to me to ask what I was reading. I told her my int...

Little One Step: Orange dosai anyone?

Little One Step: Orange dosai anyone?: Well the days of "Explorative Cooking" are back with a bang! "Explorative Cooking" is a new term that has been coined in our home to describ...

Papaya Ice-cream

Another one of Chellu inventions :
Squash the papaya in a mixie . Add sugar and freeze it. Cut it and stick it with tooth-picks! There goes your papaya ice-cream.

The Art Of Gift-Wrapping

 Gift-wrapping of lollipop. She put it in a tea bag and then tied it with pipe-cleaners with a covering of gift-wrapping paper. Then stuck flowers on the side.

                                             Gift-wrapping of mehendi cone. She used her rubber-bands to tie it.

Chellu's cooking pursuits have off late kicked off another interest too- gift wrapping..Actually its been an interest since a long time. Chellu has always gift-wrapped her presents for her friends' presents. Presents to me, to her dad..I think its more of her urge to put an artistic touch to everything. She likes to present things well.

But recently when she started to look she has also been gift-wrapping them especially the ones she keeps for her cousin sister Dhriti. Yesterday she gift wrapped a lollipop, mehendi cone & a chocolate all in the same time.

Choco-mix pouches. The one in the background is for her cousin where Chellu tied the satin ribbon like a bag handle & carried it happily across to her mama's house.

The interesting part is that a lot of these gift wrappings have happened with "trash". Grocery packaging, plastic wraps, chocolate wrappings , strings etc..They are stored in a box in the toy-room and have been used  very innovatively. This has made me realize that nothing can really be trash..its how we present it to our kids. So much art can happen with what we throw. And artists like Dominic Anthony who is a world-renowned Trash Artist have proven that trash can be a gr8 medium for art.


This one was prepared by Chellu in Mumbai from left over chart paper. She sprayed it paint from an old brush and then tied it with a thing piece of cloth from the left-overs of her grand-mom's stitching. In it was packed jewellery that Chellu had made for her cousin sister. This packaging like others was done by her all by herself with no input from me whatsoever.

Cantaloupe Ice-cream

When Joon had visited us last month he gave us an interesting recipe to make cantaloupe ice-cream. One scoops out the cantaloupe and then fills it with ice-cream. Then add your own yummy toppings like chocolate shavings, jellies, gems etc..

Chellu then came up with cantaloupe lollies with the pieces that were scooped out. By freezing it then sticking it with a tooth-pick to eat it.

Self-independency

 Our open kitchen policy is reaping some benefits offlate. The girls are starting to get more independent about meeting their own hunger needs. For the past few weeks itself I've been noticing both of them going to the kitchen and cutting their own stuff and spicing it up etc to eat without asking me.

Yesterday caught Kunju taking a banana and slicing it nicely to eat it for a mid-evening snack. Today while I had a hectic morning the girls played "catering catering" wherein Chellu would order her stuff and Kunju would deliver it in her scooter. I observed that they were together eating sliced cucmbers spiced with salt.

Explorative cooking visits our kitchen again

After a long long time explorative cooking is back with a bang. The girls mixed up besan, leaves & salt. Kunju chose to play with this mixture by pouring & re-pouring in all sorts of containers while Chellu prepared it as fish food . We then proceeded to play the deaf & dumb game where she comes to my house to sell "fish food" & im deaf & dumb & really stupid and don't understand a damn thing. She will try to explain each & everything like whats fish? animal? plant? thing , where it lives? water land? etc...basically arrive at whats in the container through a series of guesses. But by me writing what i think it could be and she reading it and choosing the right word. This way she read 92 words..Yes 92 words and all along was very much enjoying the game!! She seems to have taken a liking to this game and now that she can read much faster and much better the "guessing game" has also got more interesting!!

Dal-Dokhli

Chellu watched Dal-doklhi being made at the Kanekars'. Ever since she has been asking me if we can make it too. And finaly we did it today. Needless to say she with great enthu cut the pieces of chappatti and put it in the dal. The final dish turned out to be yum & both the girls enjoyed it very much. I also slowly starting to notice that Chellu seems to appreciate much any dish whose preparation she has pitched in!! I truly wonder if she would have otherwise eaten this dish with as much enthu had she not participated in it. Cause she dosen't like chappati and has refused to eat this Dal-Dokhli once before.Wonder if its all the anticipation of making it that led to it being so yummy??? ;))

Cooking At Hide-Out

On the first day of arrival at Hide-Out the girls got to watch Hemant doing a salad & salsa preparation workshop. Chellu as usual was mesmerized. The sisters along with Hemant's 2 yr old pitched in with cutting onions & other stuff. The onlookers were quite amazed & some even shocked that such young children can hold the knife so deftly without getting hurt. Nothing like watching the experts I guess!

Why This Blog?

A blog for a 6 yr old's cooking interests? Sounds crazy but its not so in our house. Shruthkirti aka Chellu has shown keen interest in cooking & everything related to it ever since she could sit and hold smntg in her hand. I still remember those NJ days when the only way she would allow me to cook was if she was given some veggies herself & a blunt butter knife. I would strap her down on her dinner seat and she would play/chop/experiment for hours. Her favorite place in the house was the kitchen. She would open all the racks & love playing with the utensils. Many a times I have found her toys in my kitchen racks. When she was old enuff to stand she would volunteer to empty the dish-washer for me.

That interest only kept increasing as she grew. Attta was an obsession for her ..she could easily do like 2-3 hrs of play with atta. Ever since we came back to India she has been showing a keen interest in participating in everyday cooking. So MANY days we have cut veggies together. Her dexterity with the ktichen knife is amazing. She cuts much better than me & can put me to shame with how beautifully thin her strawberry slices can be. And then she started to help more & more. Mixing the fermented idli dough, filling the idli plates , removing the cooked idli, washing the vessels, washing rice, cutting up steamed mootia pieces, making hand-pounded chutneys, pounding ginger-garlic paste ,churning butter, churning the besan buttermilk mix for kadhi etc...

She then went through a stage of explorative cooking where she wanted to make up her own stuff. She along with Kunju would mix up all sorts of weird stuff- spices from my masala dabba with dates syrup, juice  what-nots..But in the process she also tumbled upon some of her first recipes like juice ice, chocolate dahi & orange dosai!

For the past few months Chellu is back on the track of cooking for real. She loves cooking recipes from her cooking art book & also trying her own things. She even dreamt a recipe recently!! ( Potato balls ...)

Chelu's favorite movie is guess what? BAWARCHI!! The old Rajesh Khanna classic . She said she loves the way he cuts veggies..she must have watched it like 10 times atleast!!

Its a pleasure to watch her cook. Her whole aura is lighted up. One can make out her passion. She is in a different world enjoying every second , every detail of what she does. She is all charged up.. This blog is a testimony to that zest, enthusiasm & passion. After all this is the very reason why we Home-school. To let our children  find what seizes them, engulfs them & to experience what it is to indulge in one's passion..So whenever Chellu says " Amma I want to be a cooker when I become big" , its taken very seriously in this family !!! :)))

Experiencing Vegan Cooking

We had the golden oppurtunity to experience vegan cooking. Shammi called me over at his friend's place who is a vegan caterer. We cooked a lot of stuff together ..the girls pitched in with the cutting of veggies, grating, some dough mixing etc..They also watched quite a bit of cooking. Some of the interesting sidhes that were made that day were:

1. Home baked bread- Chellu was very excited about this . She's been asking for an oven since then. They found the bread braiding quite amusing.

2. Sabudana kheer 

3. Steam veggie curry

4. Salads & a few others.

I love this aspect of community cooking & getting observe others. Its not only about cooking but also a lot of listening skills & team work also get weaved in. Overall a great, enriching experiencing.

Cooking Day : A Fruit Salad, Fun With Lemons & Churning Butter

Today for most of the day we spent our time cooking. The  2nd maid didnt turn up and we started out cutting the veggies for the lunch. The girls started out with the salad cutting & Chellu soon came up with the idea of a fruit salad. She selected the fruits , got the pomegrante seeds out, cut green apple & grapes while Kunju peeled & cut the cucumber & along with her akka deseeded the cherries. Chellu experimented with the apple cutter & much to her amusement saw the cutter getting broken!
Next Chellu helped a little with cutting the greens but soon gave up since it was proving to be too hard.

In the afternoon I got out all the huge lemons from Hemant's farm and along with Ayush the girls juiced out @ 10-15 of them. The best part was they went @ our building & others  asking for juicers.  The girls cut the lemons & then the fun started- the 3 of them had a gala time juicing the lemons. They tried all the juicers they had borrowed..tried with diffn pressures, techniques , fought a bit about which one to use, tried along & together ...all sorts of stuff was seen!

After that Ayush left & the girls helped a little with churning butter out of cream. They did quite a bit initially but soon got cranky & bored since it takes an awfully long time.  I realized that this activity is great when they are called in during the very last stage when the butter is about to get separated ( had done this last time & it was a gr8 hit. But this time it kinda back-fired !!! ) Lessons learned and lots of fun had!

                                                  Fruit Salad with a sprinkling of chaat masala.