My Big Helper

It's no surprise that I spend lots of time in the kitchen on the weekends.  I have loved cooking for as long as I can remember.  My mom always told me that I started following recipes when I was pretty young.  She did the parts that pertained to fire or the oven, but the rest was up to me.  As I got older Mom was very supportive of my cooking endeavors and more than once allowed me to experiment on the family with new recipes.  Some were hits, others were definite misses.

I try to share my passion for cooking with my girls as well.  Brynne and Brooke always help in the kitchen and it's such a joy to show them new skills as they get older.  They have grown from simply following my instructions to reading recipes on their own.  Brynne even gets to use the "good knives" and it working on knife skills.

This weekend it was me and Tori at home.  The past few weeks she has become very inquisitve and independant. "I'll do it BY MYSELF." is her new motto.  Something else I head many times this weekend was, "Let me help you."  So I did.

She got to use her little toddler knife to cut up Velveeta (that I had already cut up) for chicken and rice.  She also got to brush the egg wash onto the loaf of french bread.  She was so proud of herself!

Sunday afternoon her ZeeZee stopped by for a visit.  We were all hanging out in the family room when Tori disappeared and got very quiet.  Anyone with a small child knows this is never a good thing.  When I called out to see what she was doing she yelled that she was doing the dishes.  Sure enough, she had pulled up her stool and was scrubbing away at the loaf pans I had soaking in the sink.  This was the best picture I could snap before I had to rescue my counter from being flooded.

I love my girls so much!  I'm so proud to be their Mom.