Cooking with Love

In January I entered a Facebook contest with a company called Raddish. They do monthly cooking kits for kids. I had discovered them a few months before this and really liked the idea of teaching my kids to cook and be in the kitchen using such a fun product. I had reservations though because of all my daughters food allergies. So when I saw the contest I figured I would try and if I won it would be a great way for me to try them out, and if I didn't win I wasn't losing out on anything. It just meant I would have probably thought about joining, but kept chickening out due to allergies. Well, I won and we were super excited to try this out. I contacted them right way to get everything set up and they sent us the kit for February. We used the kit to cook for Valentines Day, and spoiler alert... We loved it! this kit is well thought out and a lot of fun. I am going to get a subscription for a little while and continue doing this. My kids were both excited to cook and each wanted to help. Here is what came in our box

The recipe cards are laminated and sturdy so the kids can handle them without worrying that they will get ruined. They are illustrated and give pictures with the ingredient lists and instructions. It was very easy for my 7 year old to read the card and follow along. Each card also has some educational tips as well. The cookie card gave cookie tips and the Bolognese card had oven and stove safety information on it as well as some information on different sauces from Italy and where they are from. The kit also came with a chefs challenge card, a table talk card, cookie cutters, iron on patches, and an extra activity that taught us how to take our pulse. Once you subscribe to a plan they send you an apron that you can put the patches on. We cant wait for that. They were also nice enough to add the sibling add on for us so they both got the cookie cutters and patches.

We started our Valentines with breakfast. We did not use the breakfast card that came in the box because of my daughters egg allergy. They do have someone that helps with substitutions on their website, however because of her nut allergy we couldn't use the product recommended due to cross contamination. See why the hesitation with ordering a cooking kit. They did provide a bonus recipe on their bonus bites page that we luckily could use. It was chocolate banana overnight oatmeal. We made it the night before so it would be ready in the morning. I didn't have jars so we used mini thermoses and they worked just fine. We could have probably put it into a large bowl and then portioned it out in the morning as well.

We also used the cookie cutters to make heart shaped toast and we smooshed strawberries to make our own strawberry spread.

The cookie cutters were also used to make lunch. We made heart shaped sandwiches and fruit. The cutters got a lot of mileage that day, but it was Valentines Day. I'm pretty sure there is no such thing as to many hearts on this day.

After lunch we worked on the Sweet Heart Cookies recipe. They really enjoyed making these. It was their first time making sugar cookies and rolling out dough. They took turns with the ingredients so there was no fighting.

While the dough chilled we did the activity that was included. We talked about exercising and making our heart strong and then I showed them how to find their pulse. I had another activity that went really well with this so we did it and then checked our pulse after we exercised. This was so much fun and got my daughter really interested it the body and its functions. We are going to extend this into a science unit next week to learn more.

We also took this time to listen to the Spotify playlist that Raddish provided on their bonus bites page. You do have to have a Spotify account to use this feature. While we listened to the music we rolled the dough and cut out our cookies.

While they baked we made frosting. The recipe calls for jam, but my weird kids both hate jam. We (they) decided pink frosting would be better.

A lot of frosting disappeared during this process...

After thoroughly testing the frosting we assembled all the cookies and put them nicely on a Christmas/Valentines Day platter, I mean who is really paying attention there are cookies on there!

After this we started dinner. My daughter did most of this. I think my sons attention level ran out at this point. He is only 4 and cookies were a lot of work. In the future I might try to spread the recipes out a bit. It was a lot for one day, but it was Valentines and we wanted to do it all. We talked about stove top safety and then dove in. She did such a great job following the recipe and she learned a lot of new skills. On a side note I didn't have the ground turkey that was in the recipe, but I did have some ground beef that my sister in law gave us from her husbands families ranch, and it was delicious! 

Once all the food was cooked we set the table and ate. It was all very good. The recipes were easy to follow and the food came out delicious, cant ask for more then that. My daughter was so excited to use the table talk cards. She was dying to know how me and her dad met, as well as how we chose her name. I think the conversations that the cards inspired were the highlight of the evening for her. She was so proud of her food too.

We are so happy that we won this contest and got to try Raddish cooking kits out. The contest was to comment with what our families new year resolution was, and ours was to start a family game night and to do more read alouds. Raddish, if you see this I just wanted you to know that we are killing it in the read aloud department, and I think we will incorporate a family game night into the nights that we use our  new subscription with Raddish kits for dinner. I see a lot of family fun in the future.