Kids 1st Homestead Recipes Deborah Olsen of Grace Garden And Homestead 2016 All rights reserved. No portion of this booklet may be reproduced or transmitted in any form without the expressed written permission of the author. As the purchaser of this ebooklet, you may copy this booklet or parts of it for your personal use only. All other reproduction is strictly prohibited and protected under copyright law. To purchase additional copies, please write to: gracegardenandhomestead@gmail.com
Why Teach Your Children To Cook So Early? There are a multitude of reasons to get your child cooking in the kitchen early especially if you live on a homestead. Children who grow their own gardens tend to take joy in their healthy, homegrown food. They eat more fruits and vegetables on average than children who don t. The same can be said of kids who help to prepare their own meals. What happens when kids not only grow their own food, but also help to prepare it in the kitchen? They become lifelong lovers of healthy and wholesome foods. Who wouldn t want their child to crave fresh carrot sticks at lunch or green beans right off the vines? If you want to keep your kids safe in the homestead kitchen, then intervention starts early. The easiest way to keep children safe is to educate them, and get them involved in the kitchen work as early and responsibly as possible. Practicing safe prepping and cooking techniques as a young child under close adult supervision leads to safe and confident children in the kitchen later in their maturity. Your children will be prepared to feed themselves and their future family when they leave the nest because they have had a lifetime of safe practice. Let s take a minute to pause here and talk about schedules homestead schedules to be more specific. As a parent, you also run the double and triple duty of being responsible for gardens and animals. Imagine for a minute you need to finish a chore and come into the house later than normal. Your mind is preoccupied with, What can I make for dinner that s really fast? and as you walk in the kitchen you find that your 16 year old has prepared a couple pizzas, and the 7 year old is just putting the finishing touches on a salad. Sound too good to be true? Not if your children are used to helping in the kitchen and have been set up with the tools they need for success.
Kids 1st Homestead Recipes Kid s 1 st Homestead Recipes is a short guide to give you ideas of where that starts, use your family s pre-existing recipes, and get those kids involved. It s written specifically with a homestead kitchen in mind. What s in a homestead kitchen? It s full of fresh produce grown and foraged locally. It s full of high protein eggs straight from the coop. It contains pre-made mixes made from healthy ingredients in lieu of the boxed stuff. It s full of home preserved foods foods that have been carefully canned, frozen, fermented, and dehydrated. Very often, homemade bread is made fresh weekly, if not more often. Some of these ideas can be used with the very young, and very inexperienced. Others will need a parent to assist. All should be supervised, and I do not recommend letting any small child practice any of these without adult supervision. Common techniques that will need to be taught and assisted with to master all of the suggestions in this booklet include: Basic stove safety including how to stir or touch foods in a pot or pan without getting burned. Peeling produce Chopping/cutting produce Cracking eggs Plugging in and turning on appliances Look over the categories and make of list of where you can start with your child. Overall, have fun, and enjoy teaching your child as he/she enjoys learning from you and building confidence.
Eggs Many homesteads have chickens which means they have eggs lots of eggs. With such an abundance of eggs, it makes sense that kids could get the repeated experience of cooking with them over and over. Skills to master for cooking eggs include: cracking eggs, basic stove-top safety to keep the child from getting burned, lifting utensils in/out of boiling water, and basic understanding of how raw eggs are not suitable for consumption. Scrambled eggs Practice cracking eggs open with your children. Start by having him crack one at a time into a small bowl and then moving it into the larger bowl if no shells fell into the edible part. If your child is still not able to manipulate the cracking of an egg, crack them for him, but let him do the mixing, stirring, and possibly even pouring of the egg mixture into the pan. Let him stir the eggs around as much as he wants. This is an excellent lesson in mixing, as it won t hurt anything for the eggs to be over- or under-mixed. Let your child pour a small amount of milk, whey, or cream into the scrambled eggs mixture if you include this in your family recipe. If you like cheese on the top of your eggs, carefully show your child how much is needed and how to sprinkle it on. Omelets Once your child has the hang of scrambled eggs, try letting him put your favorite additives (like pre-cubed ham, onions, or peppers) into the omelet, or cheese on top.
Be prepared for the first few omelets to come out looking like scrambled eggs with extra ingredients rather than a perfectly folded entrée. Hard boiled eggs Help your child by filling a large pot of water and placing it on the burner for him. Use this time to remind your child how hot the water will get and how careful he must be. Help your child to carefully lower each egg into the water with a slotted spoon. After all the eggs are in the water, help your child to turn on your heat source. Once boiling, help your child to time the eggs. If you are cooking on a pre-heated wood stove in which the entire surface is hot, help your child to lower the eggs into the pan before it s on the stove, and then move it to the stove yourself. Set the time to your family s preference. I have friends who only boil their eggs for 10 minutes. I boil mine for 20 minutes. I encourage you to do your own research on safe egg handling and cooking. Once your eggs are done, assist the child to turn the heat source off, or remove the pan to a protective surface to let it cool. Once cooled, assist your child to slowly and carefully remove the hard boiled eggs with the same slotted spoon and into a safe place to cool. After they have cooled and dried, beam with pride as your child moves the eggs completely by himself to a specially marked egg carton. French toast I suggest a parent cut up a loaf of bread before starting this adventure. Assist your child to crack eggs as per above scrambled eggs guide (above). Use your own family s mixture for the dip, or use ours: 2 loaves homemade bread 12-18 eggs
¼ cup milk Dash of cinnamon Let your child mix, pour milk/whey/cream, and lightly sprinkle cinnamon or other seasonings as desired. When your child is close to having the French toast mixture ready, prepare your pan by lightly coating it with butter. (Yes, do this part yourself.) Model the first bread dipping, making sure to emphasize that you must move a bit quickly for the process to work. If your child doesn t understand he must move quickly, he will likely move slowly and the bread will become soggy. With a fork, and a second piece of bread close, dip your bread in the egg mixture, use the fork to quickly submerge it, turn it over, and submerge it again. Use your second piece of bread as your catch, which you will hold under the now-dipped piece as you move the bread to the pan. This will keep raw egg from dripping off onto your counter or cooking surface. Use the piece of bread that just served as a catch for the next piece of toast. After each piece, ask your child if he is ready to try. Once he is, let him run the main piece of bread. I suggest the adult runs the catch piece until the child has done this several times (over several meals), and is well coordinated. Emphasize to your child that each piece of toast is ready to flip over once it easily moves around the pan. Teach him to flip the pieces when you think he is coordinated enough. While each batch of toast is cooking, and the previous batch has cooled a bit, assist your child to put a small pad of butter between each piece of cooked toast. Continue dipping and cooking until your desired amount is reached, or you run out of bread. More eggs can always be mixed if you have them. If you have egg mixture left over, let your child cook this as he would scrambled eggs (see above).
Salads Every family has a favorite salad recipe. Consider what yours is. If you like a lot of additives that must be cut up with a knife, consider having them already cut up for your child until you have taught her to safely use a knife. Here are some suggestions: Green salad Gather the ingredients your family likes for green salads. ingredients include lettuce, cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, and carrots. Common If your child cannot already use a knife, let her tear the lettuce into small pieces, and then add the pieces to the salad bowl. Consider growing/purchasing small cherry tomatoes that may be added whole, or only cut in half, as cutting regular-sized tomatoes is not really a beginner s task. If regular-sized tomatoes are all you have available, go ahead and cut them up for your child, but make sure to let her add them to the bowl. Cucumbers may be peeled by a child who is taught to carefully use a peeler, and cut by one who has been taught to carefully use a knife. If your child cannot do these tasks yet, you may need to help them with this task (or do it for her). Just make sure to let her add them to the bowl. Carrots can be either cut, or grated with a grater. Pick tasks appropriate for what you have taught your child and what she can safely do. Our family also enjoys small pieces of cheese (sometimes grated), as well as chopped olives. Olives are bought chopped, and all that is needed is for the child to open the can, drain the liquid, and pour them over the top of the salad.
Spinach salad When spinach is in season, it is served more often than any other salad in our home. It s one of the easiest (and tastiest) salads kids can make. You will need spinach, slivered almonds, and dried cranberries. Try to use baby spinach if possible as these leaves are often small enough to use whole. If using regular spinach, you may need to cut the leaves up into bitesized pieces for her. I prefer not to tear spinach unless we re going to eat it right away, as it can cause the newly-torn edges to turn black if it s allowed to sit this way. Almonds can be purchased already slivered (often in bulk), or a food processor can be used to cut them coarsely. You ll need to decide according to your own child s maturity, skill level, and the type of food processor you have if this is a safe task for your child, or if you ll have to do it for her. Dried cranberries are ready to go in just as they are. We like to top this with ranch dressing, made with homemade ranch mix and mayonnaise that are added together in a quart jar and a child then can shake.
Slow Cooker Meals Slow cooker meals are a favorite of busy moms (and dads) everywhere. Most of them are quick, easy, and make for full lunches and dinners. What kid wouldn t be proud to make the family dinner? Sausage and potatoes Add your favorite sausage to a small slow cooker, and put about half an inch of water in the bottom. (If you don t make your own sausage, this can be bought in a store. These are the larger link sausage packages, not breakfast links.) We use the smallest sized slow cooker for this, and can fit 6 links (2 in each level) in. After your sausage is in, assist the child to safely plug-in the slow cooker, and turn it to low. Cook your sausage for 6 hours. In the last hour before your sausage is done, teach or assist your child to peel potatoes and cut them up if taught to use a knife. Help your child by filling a large pot with water and bringing to a boil. Boil potatoes until they are done. After your sausage are done, remove them from their heat. When they are cool enough to handle, you may remove the casing from your sausage links, and let your child cut them up. Without the casing, they can be cut up with a dull butter knife rather easily. If you wish not to remove the casing (it s edible), then cut the sausage up for your child. Let your child add the sausage to the potatoes and stir together. Our family prefers one sausage to each potato, and since we personally season our sausage, we don t add any seasoning when adding the potatoes and sausage together. Since this recipe is only two ingredients, it s a favorite of most of my beginning cookers to prepare.
Ground turkey casserole Help your child to put about a pound of ground turkey (or sausage) in the bottom of a slow cooker, and let her break it up. Next, have her pour 1 package of dry noodle soup mix in, along with a handful of wild rice (or a 6 oz. box). Let her add a handful of slivered almonds, and measure out 4 cups of water that will also be added to the cooker. If she has been taught to use a knife, have her slowly chop up 3 stalks of celery and add it to the mixture. Otherwise, assist her or do it for her, but allow her to be the one to add the celery. Let her stir it together. It doesn t need to be pretty, or even that well stirred. This dish will cook nicely whether it s well stirred or poorly stirred. Help her to safely plug in the slow cooker, and let her set it to low and time it for 7-9 hours (or 3-4 hours on high).
Soups Soups can be easy to make if using pre-cut or dried ingredients. They can also be an absolute no-no for small children if nothing is prepared, and the ingredients desired must all be chopped up. Although we do make soups by all of these means, I love to have pints and quarts of dehydrated ingredients on hand just for this. Likewise, I will also have prepackages of large family soups already dried and stored in half-gallon mason jars. This way, a child can carefully pour all these ingredients into a large stock pot for dinner. As the stock pot is usually too large for a child to lift, I often fill the water myself. Only a few ingredients are needed to add near the end. Dehydrated Soups Consider what types of soups your family enjoys eating, and ask yourself if you can used dehydrated ingredients to make these. Children are more likely to feel pride in a soup that they made by pouring in dehydrated ingredients, than watching their parent chop everything up first and just putting the ingredients in this way. When using dehydrated ingredients in your soups, remember that slow cooking (either on a cooler burner of your woodstove, or in an actual slow cooker) is the best way to prepare these. If you re going to want to cook your soups fast on a range, you ll need to rehydrate and then drain all your ingredients before preparing them on the stove. Listed below are some of our family favorites, to get your creative juices flowing. Chicken Noodle Soup Although no chicken noodle soup is as good as using fresh ingredients, the dehydrated version is still quite tasty. Your family s ingredients are probably a bit different, but I ll list ours to get you going.
We use the following dehydrated ingredients: carrots, celery, onion, and herbs. If I pre-mix these in a mason jar, I often add dehydrated chicken as well. If we are mixing these on the spot, I generally use fresh (or previously frozen) chicken. Assist your child to add all your favorite dehydrated ingredients to the stock pot. If you are using non-dehydrated chicken, cube this up yourself and add at the beginning of your cook time. Cook on low all day. Twenty minutes before serving time, have him add noodles, and assist with the seasoning. We find that seasoning early in the process means we can t taste any seasonings. Adding them at the end means we only add a little bit, and it really brings out the taste. We prefer to season with lemon pepper, but have also used salt and pepper, or garlic salt. Elk Stew: Dehydrated onions, carrots and green beans are easily added to this base. Occasionally if I premix this, I will add dehydrated elk, and hash brown styled potatoes as they make a good thickener. Assist your child to add the dehydrated ingredients to the pot. If using fresh (or previously frozen) elk meat, cube this up yourself and add at the beginning of your time. Also assist with the water. Have your child measure and add barley 4 hours before you plan to serve this. If you have not added dehydrated potatoes, assist your child to peel potatoes beginning an hour before you plan to serve your soup. We like the potatoes cut small, so I generally do this myself or have an older child do it. Add your potatoes half an hour before you plan to serve your soup.
Pre-Mixes Chances are pretty good your child can help you measure and mix any premix that you are already making and keeping in your pantry. you. Do you mix your own salad dressings? Teach your child to measure and help In our house, we make sure that the young kids wear some type of cloth or bandana around their nose/mouth area, to keep from breathing all over the mixes. For some reason, our kids like to get their faces really close when they are mixing. You ve probably already established which pre-mixes you keep in your pantry, but I ll briefly give you some examples we keep in ours to help you tap into your own creativity: Ranch mixes o One large jar full of this in the pantry has so many uses. We use this to make salad dressing, vegetable dip, as a main ingredient in breading, and to flavor dehydrated vegetables (including making potato chips). Multipurpose baking mix o The link above is to the large batch our family makes. We ll keep this in gallon bags, and 4 bags will fill a square plastic bucket in our storage pantry. o We use this to make pancakes, waffles, and short cakes as well as other baked goods. Onion soup mix o I think every family has a slightly different onion soup recipe. Rarely do we actually use it to make onion soup. Mostly we use it for baking. Cereals o If you make your own cereals, you ll wonder why you didn t have your child helping you measure and mix these earlier.
The Possibilities Are Endless As you can see, once you begin to really sit down and start to list the things your child can help you with, you will likely start to think of other things to add to your own list. If your child can pick up a measuring cup, and dump it in a bowl, she s ready to start helping in the kitchen. One day, she ll start doing the measuring. With time, she ll be peeling vegetables, and even making easy cuts to the foods you ll be preparing. Before you know it, your child will mature and so will her skills. In time, you ll walk in the door and she ll ask what she can make you for dinner. You ll beam with pride knowing one day she won t shy away from preparing healthy and wholesome foods for her own family because she has learned the basics of safe cooking early in her life.
About The Author Deborah is the Farmer s Wife behind Grace Garden And Homestead, a site where she shares the journey of life with The Farmer, and their large family. Living in a remote part of the Rocky Mountains, they raise their family as selfsufficiently as possible and strive to serve the country by growing the healthiest foods they can as proud family farmers. The family farm is the land homesteaded to their ancestors during the original Homestead Act, and they take great responsibility to take care of their land with the highest level of stewardship that they can. Follow along on their journey via Facebook, or sign-up for emails for farm updates and tips to enhance your own garden and homestead journey.