The Joy of Cooking

On Sunday we hosted a Thanksgiving dinner with my brother and his partner and invited over a couple of our good friends. Both my husband and my brother love to cook and I like to bake and since we were all inspired by a little book I had bought the kids called "A Pioneer's Thanksgiving in 1840," we decided to make the entire meal from scratch - including cranberry sauce and ice cream to go with the pumpkin and apple pies. And just to make the preparations even more complicated than they already were, my husband and I decided that the kids were going to help us with the cooking...

We look so peaceful in this photo, don't we? The kids look cooperative, but here's a rough approximation of what happened in the moments leading up to this photo being taken:

Nicholas: "Mom, I want to watch my Scooby Doo video."

Me: "Not right now; I want you to help me cook this afternoon. It's important."

Nicholas: "Mom, please, I don't want to cook - it's going to take forever! Please just let me watch Scooby Doo!"

Me: "No. Get in the kitchen."

Nicholas: "But I want to watch Scooby Doo."

Me: "No. Mommy and Daddy need your help in the kitchen."

Nicholas: "Then I hate you and I'm not being your son anymore!"

Me (in yet another Jekyll/Hyde moment): "GET IN THE KITCHEN RIGHT NOW! I DON'T WANT YOU TO EVEN MENTION THAT VIDEO AGAIN. WE'RE GOING TO COOK TOGETHER...AND IT'S GOING TO BE FUN!"

I wasn't sure whether I could find any joy in this Thanksgiving cooking experiment, but Steve and I were convinced that it was much better to involve our kids in the whole process than to have them sitting in front of the TV - even though I would have been able to put the ingredients together much more quickly without their help. And it turned out that standing firm in our convictions - though they inconvenienced us and made our kids extremely grumpy - eventually filled the afternoon with joy and happiness and a deep sense of personal satisfaction.

Nicholas and Emma sliced all the apples for the apple pie, prepared the mixture of spices, milk, and eggs for our pumpkin pie and made the pastry - with only a little help from me. While I peeled the apples and they sliced I talked about their great Grandmother - my Grandma Bernice - and how she taught me how to make pastry. I shared her pastry secrets with the kids and told them about great Grandma Bernice's life growing up on the Stoney Plain farm. It was a joy to cook with my kids. I felt whole; I felt happy. I got that, "This is What it's All About" feeling.

I think I'll make it a tradition for our family to cook together at every holiday. I'd much rather their Thanksgiving memories involve cutting boards, apple peels, cinnamon, and raw turkey, than movies on the TV. Midway through slicing his pile of apples Nicholas looked up and said, "this is fun!" I guess that's why they call it the joy of cooking!