Family cooking together / try something new night!

We've been making the kids watch Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution. I say "make,"
but they don't need much convincing. We turn it on and they all seem pretty interested in it. There have been several scenes of Jamie and the citizens of Huntington preparing what could be the same dish, a beef, vegetable and noodle stir-fry. I can't be entirely sure as details are not discussed at length, but I think it might be the same dish featured on Jamie's site here. Anyway, after a couple of episodes of this, we were all ready to have something like it for dinner ourselves; tonight we gave it a try as a family.

Bryce, our 8 year old son, is really into cooking right now, which is making meal preparation a lot more fun nowadays, But Olivia, 6, and Louis, 12, were both anxious to get in on the action tonight as well. Bryce took his best crack and thinly slicing garlic, but found it requires more patience than he realized. Still, he did a fine job. He did generously let me finish chopping the veg, though. Broccolini and snow peas were looking good at the store, so we used those in addition to the peppers and instead of bean sprouts and baby corn, which didn't sound good to everyone anyway. The noodles were yakisoba, found with the tofu in the supermarket and perfect for the purpose.

Olivia was mainly interested in stirring things, and Louis was given a management position. I delegated guiding the stir fry of the vegetables to him while I got noodles and plates in order. Everyone helped to reintegrate the ingredients for the home stretch and get it into a serving bowl.

Everyone served themselves, and I was pleased to see even the most picky trying the broccolini, not new to everyone but quite alien to at least two of us. In the end the whole massive dish was history, except for a couple of pieces of beef that I saved for Milo. I think it's interesting if a kid has some investment in the process, they are a lot more likely to try something new, which is why we try both at the same time. It's a great bonding activity as well, not to mention passing on skills the kids will have an opportunity to use all of their lives.