Why? Because we all have to eat. Sure, you could go out to eat all the time but that's a huge waste of money and is not the healthiest way to survive. The same goes for microwavable frozen foods.
Also, cooking helps you relax and wind down after a long day. (The stress of holiday meals is not due to the cooking itself.) With proper nutrition knowledge, those who cook for themselves eat healthier, tastier meals (or better yet, tastier healthy meals — many of those frozen "healthy meals" are horrible).
Not so obvious benefits
Knowing how to cook — how to work with different foods, flavors, spices and cooking styles — opens up a world of options when it comes time to eat. It is fun to experiment with food AND (my favorite part) kids gain a healthy dose of real-world math and science when they are learning.
This kind of experimentation also helps open up new creative channels for your children (whom I'm assuming are already very creative as it is). It allows them to build on the creativity they already possess and helps them develop and fine tune their problem-solving skills. Many problems arise in the world of cooking, and considering the properties of various foods, flavors and spices helps you and your children to find solutions (i.e., if food is too sweet you add lemon not salt). Finding substitutions for certain ingredients, working with new flavors, or trying new cooking methods to liven up old recipes are all ways to learn and explore with cooking.
And, hey, your children may even find that cooking is a fitting career choice for them.
Let's start cooking!
There's no definitive way to determine when you should let the kids into the kitchen. You know your children better than anyone else so you will know when they are ready for different tasks in the kitchen. I let my son help me decorate pizza when he was three. I sat him at the table with bowls of various toppings. He picked them up and placed them on the pizza. You can let very young children help with tossing a salad or adding ingredients to a mixing bowl (take precautions with moving parts if you are using an electric mixer). When I was young, I used to love snapping beans and shucking corn. I can't imagine I got all the hairs off the corn, but I'm sure my mom took care of that when she took over.
As they get older, children can be trusted with increasingly difficult tasks such as grating cheese, measuring ingredients and hand mixing. Soon they will become a trusted cooking partner in the kitchen with you and you will be having fun together.
What if I can't cook?
That's exactly what I was thinking when I started out. I knew how to scramble an egg real good and knew how to boil water (lots 'o pasta possibilities).
But the truth is, I knew a lot more than I realized. I just needed to get more creative and learn more recipes. The home economics class I took in high school taught me how to follow a recipe. We learned mixing methods and other basics. We weren't really encouraged to experiment. We didn't learn what flavors went really well with each other. We didn't explore various possibilities. We weren't given the opportunity to try something different. In essence, we were playing it safe. But knowing the basics is a very good starting point, at least.
After watching A LOT of Food Network shows, I've learned that it's OK to try something new and different. It may bomb and be horrible, but it also may be spectacular. No matter what, it's a learning experience that you and your children will enjoy (even if it does bomb you can always laugh about it later).
Besides watching Food Network shows, there are plenty of free cooking podcasts, Internet sites with loads of cooking tips and recipes, and even a few of Nintendo DS games that teach cooking to adults and children:
Personal Trainer: Cooking
Happy Cooking
My Healthy Cooking Coach
If you run across cooking terms or techniques you don't know, it's easy enough to look them up and even find videos for them that you and your children can watch together.
As long as your taste buds are willing, there's nothing that can keep you from learning and teaching cooking.
Explore, experiment and have fun
So, what are you waiting for? Get in the kitchen and cook up some magic! One of the biggest benefits to having your kids in the kitchen (that I only hinted at before) is spending some quality time together. Yes, cooking is an important life skill for eating, but it's also wonderful bonding time. What could be better than that?
Looking for online help?
A website called startcooking.com has many tips, videos and beginner help that you and your children will enjoy. You can subscribe to their videos for free and have a steady stream of cooking basics sent to you.
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