Little Chefs

My kids love to watch Giada. And they really pay attention. We always talk about the ingredients and they like to divide up the jobs into what they would each do if we were cooking the same dishes. We have cooked several of her dishes together before but always one at a time. So we were all really excited when Giada did a cooking show with little ones in her "Kidz Kitchen" Episode. We decided we would make the exact same 3 course dinner.

We went to the grocery store and found all the ingredients on our list. We started with the granola bars first and its a good thing we did. We needed the snack to see us through the rest of the dinner making process! Here is the recipe if you'd like to try it:


Next we prepped everything for the Macaroni and Cheese cupcakes which involved the kids playing for a bit while I washed and chopped and diced and shredded and cooked the pasta and ground turkey. Finally, the ingredients were ready and the kids could go to work filling their muffin tins.


This was a huge hit. And although the prep work was quite intensive, we will be doing this dish a lot. This made Delaney (3 1/2) love tomatoes which she has never liked before. This in itself was worth the effort. I loved the crunchy exterior that the bread crumbs made and it was a great twist on Macaroni and Cheese without all the butter and cream. Here is the recipe!

Finally, we ended our meal with Raspberry Ice Cream Sodas. The recipe can be found here.


The meal was success. The kids loved making it and eating it. It took us 3 hours and that doesn't include the shopping. Next time we will probably go back to making one dish and letting that be it instead of trying for three courses like this! You will not be surprised when I say, Giada made it look so easy and quick and surely her kitchen sink has never looked like this before:


I do not dare show you the rest of the mess. Yes, there is more, a lot more. Obviously, Giada has a few prep cooks and one or maybe two, helpers in the clean up department.