My Nine-Year-Old Chef

I am always encouraged with my kids cooking as they are learning a life skill.

Jerah has always loved cooking, and since I've been doing it so much this month with our "3 Moms, 3 Kitchens, 31 Days" adventure, she decided she'd join in on the fun.

So yesterday while I was teaching piano lessons, unbeknownst to me, she found a children's cookbook (Alpha-Bakery) we own that she'd looked through before, chose a recipe for pizza pockets, adapted it for a basic pizza, and made pizza on her own.

I did catch on to what she was doing before long, but the only help I offered her was to answer her question, "How do you beat flour?" I was baffled at the question so I looked at the recipe and then told her to keep reading because it said, "Beat the flour, milk, vegetable oil, baking soda, an salt in a bowl."

"Ah," she said. "I get it."

And then I left the kitchen and she finished the entire recipe completely on her own.

Her finished pizza isn't the prettiest thing in the world, but I was very impressed that she made every part of the pizza completely on her own, dough included. When it came time to eat the pizza, I was out of the house so I didn't get to taste it, but Jeff and the other kids said that it tasted very good.

I'm so proud of her. Not only is she learning a life skill but is doing it on her own!