Dinner Night on Steroids

Brynley patiently stuffs won tons with a pungeant shrimp and ginger mixture
do notice the swim towell on the ground behind Brynley, and the various random items on the counter. Our family is a work in progress. Sometimes work is messy...

Just a hint of the involved process, the won tons are now cooked and draining in a strainer, as new delicious bites are cooked on the stove. Again, see the chaos around us? We live in a measure of chaos all the time. Order is vital to my sanity, yet I rarely experience it for more than minutes a day.

We have for a few years had a practice of assigning the kids one night of the week to help in the kitchen. The mission was three fold: teach the children to work, spend time alone working with them, and help them learn how to cook. This has worked well at times and not worked so well at others. It is a big commitment for me, and for them, because it involves a lengthy stay in the kitchen preparing, setting table, serving, clearing table and cleaning up (all with the partnership of a parent). When it has worked well, it has worked wonderfully. When it hasn't worked well, it hasn't worked at all.

Bryn has become an interesting phenomenon when it comes to dinner night. She wants to cook things that she likes to eat. These things are involved and time consuming to prepare (not to mention difficult to CLEAN UP after). Bryn is undaunted. She wants to sit down to something she enjoys more than she wants to be finished with dinner night sooner rather than later (oh yeah, and Bryn rarely believes she will actually have to clean up her messes-I think she is of the view that if she produces something spectacular, she should be exempt from cleaning up after herself. It has been a hard realization for both of us ;).

Last week we gave in to Bryn's long time persistent pestering that she make shrimp pot stickers, from scratch. She has this amazing arsenal of cook books that John has collected over the years, and from them she had produced this recipe that was several ingredients (as well as pots, pans, spatulas and strainers) long. We purchased the ingredients, she went to work. She began cooking at 4:30 p.m. or so. The prep work was complete just about in time for her piano lesson to begin. The dinner was hot and ready while she was playing her scales. A sister and father were at soccer practice. A brother was at final dress rehearsal for the school play. Another brother was hard hitting at football practice. The dinner was served (a mountain of food by the way) to the two little sisters and a frantic mother who could only see the dishes, (think; ' forest for the trees') and the mess to be cleaned up.

It was delicious.

Bryn's lesson ended. She reveled in her work. She boasted of its goodness. Then she excused herself from the kitchen. It took many threats and some gnashing of teeth to get the girl back in the kitchen and help me clean it up.

Sometimes I wonder, in the middle of dinner messes, why on earth I work so hard to teach our kids how to work in the kitchen ....

The other night during a discussion about what our kids want to become before they leave our home we listened to the children say things that they want to have experienced when they no longer live under our roof.

Ya know what Brynley said? "I want to leave home with a huge list of recipes that I know how to cook!"

and my wondering heart was at peace.