Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Day 25, May 25...Can We Make It? Yes, We Can...Today is Daughter Day..

Well, the ingredients for my Tuesdays with Dorie are ready to go...now I have to mix and freeze--It's Coconut Banana Ice Cream Pie, and I'll be back to blog it, but here's an interim post.

One of the results of me cooking professionally has been that my kids have been exposed to a lot more ...unusual, shall we say, foods than many of their friends. That's not to say we don't have some scrounging nights, when Cheerios seem to be the best choice of all. But there's always something new to think about.

And they've been curious. My daughter has sat with me for meals at bars in NYC (Oh, do check out this post about lunch at The Modern at MoMA in NYC. I confess to letting her be mildly mislead about sweetbreads. This year when we visited she thoroughly enjoyed wild mushroom soup...) and she's been to some disastrous PR dinners as my date, too (those shall go unnamed)...My son made a video for Bobby Flay's Grill It (I was so certain he'd get on! He's adorable--but I can't find the link. Rats..)..and now and then my daughter takes over the kitchen.

Her skills have produced wild onion soup from my (organic) back yard when we lived in Kentucky--she pulled up every chive she could find, added water, heated it the microwave and...I ate it...Mmmmm. Then when I became food editor at Florida Table,  getting home after she did now and then, I once came home to a full dinner, elegantly plated (she had been to a food photo shoot or two by then), table set, water poured into a lovely wine glass AND homemade chocolate ice cream (she made chocolate milk and froze it in the Cuisinart Ice cream maker, the insert of which is always ready to go in the freezer).

So it was no surprise when she got home yesterday determined to make churros for her Spanish class at school. She found the recipe. She mixed it up, scalding the milk, adding butter, eggs, flour. Getting out the little Fry Daddy I have, heating it, experimenting with the pastry bag and star tips (we didn't have one big enough), finally deciding to spoon the batter into the oil. She even decided simple cinnamon sugar wasn't enough. She had cinnamon nutmeg sugar...And off to school she went. (She even cleaned up pretty well...Not great, but she's getting there..)

So Bryn? If she doesn't make it big as a singer? Her fallback plan is to be a chef. Not a bad plan.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

You should be so proud of your daughter. She's learning life lessons by being in the kitchen. IMO cooking is a necessary skill we should all have