I'd teach my kid to cook if I had one. I have cats instead and they're not interested. But if you do have a kid, there are lots of ways to get them to do the cooking.
Nancy Leson tells me her son Nate just loves to fool around in the kitchen. And judging by the cupcakes pictured above he knows what he's doing. Then she astounded me but saying she had sent him to cooking camps.
Who knew there were cooking camps for kids? Everyone but me, apparently. So just to make sure she wasn't making this up, I Googled "cooking camps" and got 15,800,000 results. Go ahead and click it if you don't believe me. PCC also offers very reasonablecooking classesfor kids and adults.
I wasn't surprised to learn that even though she's a long time professional in the food biz, her 13-year-old son Nate already believes that he knows more about cooking than Mom. I was the same way at his age. The only difference being that in my case it was true. My mother was a wonderful woman but her signature dish was spaghetti fried in ketchup.
So do your kids like to cook? Do you cook with them? Nancy thinks Nate could hustle up a little dinner for her and her husband Mac every now and then. Seems reasonable to me.
"I'm not young enough to know everything."
– Oscar Wilde
“Food for Thought” is a weekly KPLU feature covering the world of food as well as the thinking that goes into it. The feature is published here and airs on KPLU 88.5 every Wednesday during Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
