FOOD MEMORIES!!!

Since the girls liked to get in the kitchen and help, I have quite a few pleasant memories of them helping.

When my older daughter was quite little she was interested in what I was doing in the kitchen. I remember this particular time she announced that she was "Sandra" and I was "Dianne". You wonder where she came up with this! There was a cooking TV program on during the week and the main person was named Dianne and her helper was Sandra, so she put this together and thought it appropriate in our case. She was about 3 1/2 or 4 years of age, if my memory is correct. She was adorable!

Another food memory was when our younger daughter came to me and asked me what I would like for her to bake for a Valentine gift to me. She gave me two choices, one choice was something easy and she could handle without much overseeing and the other choice was Cherry Turnovers.
Now she had never made any pastry items prior to this, so I told her to make the simpler thing.
She quickly said, "I want to make you Cherry Turnovers". Well, when she had her mind made up, it was "Cherry Turnovers". I was not to enter the kitchen to supervise, but just enjoy the finished product.

She got the recipe out and tried to follow it. I had gone through the kitchen a few times on my way to do something else, and was observing her with her creation. She was quite the perfectionist and was rolling and re-rolling the dough, to make it just "perfect". Of course, pie dough gets quite tough when you handle it that much, but she was putting "LOVE" in the recipe and that was important to her. I went over to her and said, "With all that tender loving care you are giving it, IT'S GOT TO BE GOOD!" I don't remember her age, but it was before she took "Baking Pastries" in 4-H. We ate her "special Cherry Turnovers" with grateful hearts and came away with very FOND memories.

Wisdom--"L O V E" sometimes comes when you least expect it and to not accept it graciously would "CRUSH" the giver. So let your little ones be creative! It's not that hard to clean up the kitchen when they so want to make something special for those they love. It's like when a child goes out in the yard and picks you a big beautiful bouquet of flowers (dandelions), one needs to admire the beauty of those so called flowers and appreciate such thoughtfulness on the child's part.