Brielle's Avalon

Anymore, if one wishes and can afford to, one can buy meals and snacks day after day, and never have to worry about messing up the kitchen. Of course if you need to be able to feed yourself without your creation killing you, you want it to be something that you don’t have to choke down just to survive. What else is learning your way around a kitchen good for? Well…

Reading, writing, math, science, even history and all parts of school curriculum.

Reading cookbooks, writing notes when you find something you like, of course. Reading is important to follow recipes and if you want to make adjustments to a favourite recipe or send it to friends or relatives writing is also important. And recipes typically take a specific form, so it’s another way to write. Creative writing comes into play when writing menus, descriptions of foods, sometimes in novels or other works or even things like addendums to recipes. Even invitations to a ‘do’ take a minimal amount of skill.

Learning how to schedule and plan is an important part of cooking, especially when you’re pulling together several things for dinner that take various times to prepare and cook. Making sure they are started in the proper order is important.

Learning fractions was easy when I was cooking with my Mom. Numbers, counting, all kinds of basic math stuff. Measuring by displacement is kind of both math and science. Use a glass measuring cup with water in it to measure an awkward amount of butter or shortening.

More science. Physics, like water turning to steam or freezing, baking and other changes is part of cooking. Chemistry is important when using leavenings in baked goods. Biology is useful when brewing, baking or pickling or when growing anything you want to eat.

Then there’s art and rendering anything kitchen related into any kind of art you happen to want to try. Even flower arranging comes in handy.

Phys Ed can do with a bit of kitchen time. How to plan a good diet for healthy living, how to work safely in the garden, stretching and cool-down before and after garden work. Even kneading bread can be a bit of a workout.

There’s more to cooking than just throwing together something edible. It can be way more interesting than just throwing something together to eat and if the kids learn fractions while measuring in the kitchen it’ll give them a head start in math class.