Photo: William Dickey; Styling: Rose Nguyen

Sometimes family schedules can make family cooking challenging. After school-practices, appointments, games…it can be difficult to prepare and eat a family meal together.  This doesn’t mean, however, that we can’t squeeze in some time in the kitchen having fun. With a little planning, the week can present itself an hour or two. We have three ideas for you and your kids spend that free time and they all involve fun together in the kitchen.

Idea 1:
Baking - When most people think about cooking with their kids, they think of baking, at least that’s my perception. The reason is because making cookies from scratch or mixing up or decorating cupcakes is a simple way to get the kids in the kitchen with you.

Here are some baking together tips:

• Take some time with the kiddies to pick out a specific recipe that you want to bake together
• Prepare the shopping list together as well, first checking the cupboards for what you already have, and then going to purchase the rest
• Plan the date and time you’re going to have your baking adventure and make sure there are no other distractions.
• Enjoy your baked creation together and share with others in the family that didn’t help!

Idea 2:
Food Related Experiments – If you have kids that are interested in science, or even just doing experiments with food, you can probably get them in the kitchen cooking and learning with a Science Experiment You Can Eat. We’ve made up our own experiments, some of them not so edible, but with this book by Vicki Cobb, you can investigate things from Suspensions, Colloids and Emulsions to Microbes and Enzymes. Each experiment has an edible component and an observation section to help summarize what you learned.

Idea 3:
Preparing Special Meals – By special meals, I mean things like Mom, Dad, Brother or Sister’s birthday, or maybe just because it’s Friday.  Any day can be a special day if everyone involved decides it is. By planning a special meal day and building up anticipation, everyone will be excited when the day actually arrives. Alex, Soph and I like to do party nights when we make snacky super items together, then spread out a blanket in the living room and eat picnic style while we watch a movie, or something on Netflix.

Here are some tips for planning your ‘special meal’ night:

• Pick the special day or event together. If it’s for a family member’s birthday, you can surprise them or include them. If you do include them, you can always plan a surprise part of the meal (like cake) that you make separately.
• Have everyone decide  ahead of time what they will be working on…who’s cutting veggies, who’s preparing marinades, who’s stirring and who’s pouring. It may seem like a lot of upfront work, but it will pay off with a smooth running kitchen.
• Don’t stop at the food, why not decorate up the table to match a theme?  Placemats and name cards can be made in advance, or you can just break out the picnic blanket and eat off of paper plates–whatever you decide.

We hope one of these ideas inspires you to set aside a few hours in the coming weeks to have some fun as a family, cooking up some tasty treats.

Happy Family Cooking Everyone,

Kelly, Alex and Sophia

P.S. Don’t forget to sign-up for our email list so you get your weekly recap of all or our ideas and the show!

A couple of weeks ago, Alex, Soph and I tried one of our Kitchen Chemistry Experiments–we made our very own fresh mozzarella cheese. Both of the kids love science, and learning about making cheese seemed right up their alley…plus I’ve always thought it would be fun to try. I was right, it is fun. But, beware, it’s kind of addicting too. Maybe I’m just a perfectionist, but I can’t stop trying to get each batch a little more perfect. Luckily, Sophia is a fresh mozzarella eating monster, she just scarf’s it right up

If it’s something you’ve wanted to try, you definitely should. You’ll see just how easy it is in this episode. If you want more detail on exactly what we did, check out our Kitchen Chemistry: Making Mozzarella post.

Happy Cheese-making everyone!

Oh, and don’t forget to give us a follow over on Twitter or maybe fan us on Facebook, we like to keep in touch with our viewers

We love science, and since cooking can and does involve science, we end up doing lots of kitchen experiments–sometimes they involve food, sometimes just mixing stuff together to see what happens This week, though, we’ve had a focus on cheese-making, mozzarella cheese-making to be specific.

Before we made our first attempt, I did lots of research online. Mainly because two of the ingredients you need (Rennet, Citric Acid) are a bit challenging to find in a local store. In order to get my hands on the rennet, I spoke with the cheese department at Lund’s in NE Minneapolis. They sent me to the Lunds in Uptown, where I bought two boxes so I had plenty to work with. Citric acid, which I thought wouldn’t be that difficult to find, well, I never actually found any. I ended up using lemon juice (despite some recommendations not too). After the first batch, I found some ‘Fruit Fresh’ which contains citric acid & absorbic acid, both of which I had read were acceptable. (NOTE: you can get these ingredients online from a variety of places, I’d recommend one, but I didn’t order it online. If you have a source, please share!)

Anyway, we’ll share more of the details on each specific batch on February 27 when we post our experience on Two Kids Cooking TV. But, in the meantime, if you want to try you’re own, here’s the main recipe I followed:

How to Make Great Fresh Mozzarella Cheese at the Instructables website…it is step-by-step and easy to follow.

I also had some questions answered The New England Cheesemaking Supply Company.

My advice:
-lemon juice does work (I used about 1/8 to 1/4 cup)
-If you use tap water, boil and cool it first–it does kill the rennet if you don’t
-do Not over stretch it, it gets really dense if you do.

Again, we taped our second try and will be sharing it on the show in a couple weeks, so if you want to see how we did it, make sure to get on our mailing list, follow us on Twitter or Facebook or subscribe to our feed.

Every year my dad grows a huge garden that results in lots and lots of produce.  I do mean ‘lots and lots’–although he lives alone, he usually has at least 20 pepper plants in multiple color and heat varieties, at least that many tomato plants, rows of carrot, potatoes and onions and the list goes on.

What this means to us, his children and grandchildren (and neighbors and friends) is homegrown, fresh vegetables for the taking. But, since we also live 3 1/2 hours away from my dad, it means we get the veggies in bulk and need to figure out how to preserve and/or consume them quickly. Last week my sister, a.k.a. Aunt Dani, came home from a visit to my dad’s with several pounds of potatoes–I thought this would be the perfect time for us to try making gnocchi.

I’ve wanted to try making gnocchi for a while. The kids and I make fresh pasta all the time, and gnocchi is just potatoes and flour really, so how hard could it be, right? Well if you see the pictures on this page, you know that I totally misjudged the whole process. I mean it wasn’t actually hard to make them, but apparently we did not do it right…

Although Sophia did help me form the gnocchi, I did most of the work myself. It was kind of a hot, humid day anyway, and boiling and ricing potatoes just wasn’t high on the list of fun things to do for the kids. I used a recipe from “How to Cook Everything,” by Mark Bittman (love that book!). I followed all the steps and even test boiled a couple to make sure I had enough flour.

I did not have enough flour–at least that’s why I believe the boiled gnocchi turned out like a pile of slimey, potatoey goo. Or, maybe it’s because I froze them and didn’t cook them ’til the next day. I boiled the water and then threw them all in, which brought the water temp down to non-boiling. Aunt Dani believes it’s the later, but also thinks we’re insane for making our own gnocchi. Don’t get me wrong, she loves to cook too and is good at it, but her words were something like, “you can buy frozen gnocchi for like $1 at the store, why make your own?”

Well, here’s why the kids and I tried making our own gnocchi and why we will try again: trying out new things is fun. Perfecting them is even more fun. Every time we try a new recipe or cooking tool we learn, and then we try it again and learn more. While we’re learning, we are having fun together as a family. I think Aunt Dani knows it’s about more than just gnocchi, she’s usually right there helping us with our family cooking experiments. Plus, once we perfect our recipe, we know she’ll be there with her fork, ready to eat