Lesson Plans

This is our week. Keep in mind it's one kid short,
due to a school trip

Posted by Melissa Baumgart
It has been baseball and soccer.  More baseball and more soccer.  And end of the year school happenings (and finals, ugh) tossed in with healthy doses of hanging with friends.  I am not complaining at all, I am loving it.  Going to my kid's sporting events (assuming it is not a rainy day) is one of my favorite things to do.  It has not, however, been conducive to setting up a date for cooking lessons in our kitchen.

It looks like, for now, Thursday and Friday nights are free this week, so I am going to schedule two cooking classes with Jamie for those night.  I am going to get that up on the chalkboard wall schedule and hope that nothing more important comes along to erase them.

Lesson Plan 1:

• Go through a Thomas Keller's Ad Hoc at Home cookbook.  Start with the section titled, "Becoming a Better Cook", where he briefly goes through some simple and illuminating tips on cooking.  And I applaud his simple equation of, "great product + great execution = great cooking."
• Prepare the Spring Vegetable Garbure from page 112.   Hopefully, Jamie will find this to be one of his go-to soups.  This should give ample practice in the art of vegetable chopping, which will int turn, help Jamie's salad preparation.
• Bake a loaf of bread.  Although, not on his list, I think if he learns a good soup, bread naturally follows.  

Lesson Plan 2:

• Indian Food!  YUM!
• I will teach Jamie how to make Chicken Tikki Masala, Palak Paneer and rice.  I want to add in a simple dahl, but don't want to overwhelm him.  This will offer Jamie a chance to see how many dishes can come together and be ready at one time.  
• There will also be a pre-lesson of searching for a good recipe online and shopping efficiently and effectively.  How to choose the best ingredients, even if they aren't the cheapest.  (Jamie is thrifty.)  Recall the Keller quote from above, great product is a very important piece of the cooking equation.  

 Wish me luck!  Not about the teaching part, but about nothing trumping the scheduled lessons!