Cadey chef, Cadey chef, cooking is a lot of fun!

Today is the first day of our 'home week' where we have made no plans to leave the house and I am organising the toys/clothes/cleaning the house thoroughly and starting to prepare work and things for the new 'school year'. Caden agreed to make a meal a day for us all this week. Miles also wanted to join in. 

Here is Caden putting chicken nuggets (proper ones) on a baking tray and getting the cup ready to measure the pasta out for the pan which they will both eat. 

Then he covers the pasta with water. Just enough, he learned that too much will use up too much energy to boil and be wasteful and that the pasta cooks by absorbing water so too little won't cook the pasta properly.

Miles is showing a lot of interest lately in the alphabet (hurrah) so I found a fab little program online with some big alphabet letters, he watched this and sang the songs for about half an hour. I have a feeling that he will start learning to read this year. 

Meanwhile, Caden was putting the chicken nuggets in the oven...

He learned which dials to turn and he has been learning about degrees celcius over the last year through life experiences at home so he turned it to 200 degrees. 

He then checked on the packet how long they had to be cooked for...

and set the time.

He is chopping cucumber wheels for himself and Miles. 

Blurry photo but he was so proud of his meal, he also chopped raw carrots up and mixed some tomato sauce into the pasta (his idea). They both really loved eating this meal. Caden had mixed seafood and Milesy had chicken nuggets. 

Caden really wanted to serve up the food himself. Miles made the dessert. I chopped the tops off strawberries and Miles divided between two bowls and plonked a yoghurt in the middle of the bowl.

Later (after washing up) I found Caden reading a book quietly to Miles. How awesome is that!? It was so sweet to see. 

Caden enjoyed making lunch so much that he wanted to make dinner too so off we went again later in the day. 

I am going with the easy stuff for him today so he chose a packet of savoury rice to make. It is brilliant for learning, we do measuring out, cups, grams (mg), millilitres, we do fractions and approximations, estimating. It is fantastic for the practical application of maths and they love it! Plus there is all the reading, learning new words and the fact that they are actually learning a valuable life skill. There are plenty of men who have zero cooking skills, Caden and Miles will not be falling into that category! 

Caden pours in the rice... and then checks the next instruction out. 

Meanwhile... Miles cracks an egg. He loves to do this and he is very careful with them. 

Caden chops veg. for the steamer. We talked about the boiling point of water and looked at how the steamer works with the boiling filament, the water reservoir and the vents for the steam to disseminate evenly throughout and cook the vegetables. We also talked about how the veggies retain their nutrients much better and don't lose them to boiling water. He topped and tailed runner beans and then chopped them up, same for the carrots and he cut up his first cauliflower. He learned that the leaves of the cauliflower are edible too but we save them for juicing and eat the florets. He said he only likes cauliflower florets to eat anyway (as most of us do). :)

Then they got some TV time in the evening and sat having their dinner whilst watching it. 

I am not having the iPad on still in the day time and I managed to get our toys sorted completely out today so the kids have a new lease of life with their 'new' found toys. They have been playing shops, with Lego and Happyland. It is so great to get all the pieces back together and get a bit more organised, I have really needed home time because we are out at events or things for the kids it seems ALL the time. I am almost looking forward to the cooler weather so things are based around home a bit more.