Season 2, Episode 4:
Holiday Cooking and Baking with Kids

Transcript

Conner: (00:01)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Meghan Stott: (00:12)
We need to give her exposure to all the things that she's going to encounter in life, and she's going to have to live on her own one day, and she can't stay and live with us forever. And so she's going to need to know how to prepare her own meals.

Stephanie: (00:31)
That's Meghan Stott, a mom and a teacher in the Seattle, Washington area. She sounds like a lot of parents we talk to. Interested in finding ways to give her daughter the tools that she needs to succeed in life. But there is something more to Meghan’s story, something that's inspiring and educational for us all. Meghan's daughter is visually impaired.

Stephanie: (00:56)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner. And today we're going to talk about holiday cooking and baking with kids, and what we can learn from a family that has had to make adaptations in the kitchen.

Speaker 4: (01:20)
Support for this podcast comes from Active Voice Communications, a content strategy and copywriting firm that works with food and wellness, healthcare, technology and education companies across the country. Whether you're looking for content strategy or creation, Active Voice Communications serves as an extension of your team, bringing concepts to life, taking plans to fruition and transforming strategies into results. Learn more at theactivevoice.com.

Stephanie: (01:49)
Meghan and her husband got Kaitlin's official diagnosis when she was about three months old, but they knew much sooner than that.

Meghan Stott: (01:59)
I guess we found out she had albinism pretty much at birth. Kaitlin was born with this lovely, full head of white hair. My husband and I both have darker hair, and we just didn't jive. And actually the first words that my mom said to me when she was born and she said, "Oh my goodness, she's beautiful. Is she albino?" And I said, "No, she's just blonde." That was the same sentiment that doctors had given us. I wanted to not recognize that part of her. My husband immediately Googled albinism, and did a lot of research on albinism. It took us going to a geneticist, actually. We said, "We're 95% sure that she has albinism," and he took a flashlight, and looked at the back of her eyes, and he said, "Well, I'm like a hundred percent sure she's got albinism."

Stephanie: (02:54)
Albinism is more than white hair. The experience for Kaitlin also affects her eyesight. She's legally blind, with 20/200 vision.

Meghan Stott: (03:04)
Twenty over 200 just means what we can see at 200 feet, Kaitlin would need to be 20 feet to be able to see as well. She needs to be closer to things. Her vision varies from day to day, and lighting and her environments. What also comes with albinism is called photophobia, which means that she is sensitive to bright lights. When we go out on a walk on a bright day, her acuity of 20 over 200 reduces. It gets even worse, so she can't see when it's really bright out. So it's not just distance acuity, it's also her near acuity. So when she's reading, we have determined 36-point font is about her ideal reading font. That's big. She also gets what we call eye fatigue. When she's using her eyes a lot, she just gets tired.

Stephanie:
Kaitlin is now 11, and there are various ways the family has learned to adapt. Computers that allow her to enlarge text on screen, learning braille and using audio books and textbooks. Kaitlin's listening ability comes into play in the kitchen too, and we'll come back to that in a minute. But first Meghan says she didn't exactly love cooking growing up, but cooking became more important when she got married, and realized, as a lot of young couples do, they didn't have enough money to just eat out all the time.

Meghan Stott: (04:32)
I started experimenting in the kitchen, and I really fell in love with being able to cook and bake on my own. That was like my personal journey, and then when we had Kate, it was just including her in it. My husband and I decided early on, when we first got her diagnosis of albinism, we wanted to make sure that we gave her all the tools that she needed to be successful as an adult. We need to give her exposure to all the things that she's going to encounter in life. She's going to have to live on her own one day, and she can't stay and live with us forever, and so she's going to need to know how to prepare her own meals. We were very conscientious of that, from the beginning, of making sure that we included her in those things. That's the practical side of things.

Meghan Stott: (05:20)
I think the personal side of things is just finding that joy of being in the kitchen, and being proud of something that you've put a lot of time and energy into. Nothing is better than sharing a warm chocolate chip cookie with somebody, right? Nothing gives somebody more joy about baking them something, and showing your love to them by share this food with me. I think that's why cooking has stuck with our family is just because nobody is sad when they eat a cookie.

Stephanie: (05:52)
I was curious about what the holidays look like in Meghan's house. And she shared that Thanksgiving is all about the bread and pie, and her family is building their own Christmas traditions, but there's one tradition, one meal on Christmas Eve, that persists from Meghan's childhood.

Meghan Stott: (06:13)
My grandparents are German, and we would always celebrate Christmas Eve. That was our big holiday with my dad's parents. That's where we would have our German meal, and we'd open up presents Christmas Eve with my dad's side of the family. That is still my favorite meal of the year. That's the one tradition that doesn't falter with our family. I was talking to Kaitlin about traditions, and things that she enjoys. She immediately said, "Oh, my favorite thing to do with you on Christmas is to make rollata." It's a beef dish that we make together. It's such an easy meal to make, but we only eat it on Christmas Eve. It holds such special memories. It's just fun when I think she's feeling like, "I could make this on my own." She's starting to feel confidence in that part of it. Our family tradition is being together, and enjoying food together and just being in the kitchen. When I think about holidays, I really just envision a kitchen, a warm stove and oven and just all the smells. The eating part is great, but I would say, for us, the cooking part is where the memories are made. Passing down those traditions of cooking.

Stephanie: (07:29)
For any parent, safety in the kitchen can be a stressful thing when you're cooking with kids. But when you have a child with a visual impairment, that adds another layer of worry to the equation. Three years ago, Meghan actually started a new career as a teacher for the blind and visually impaired. So she has skills as both a mom and a teacher. So how does she teach Kaitlin, keep her safe and build her confidence at the same time?

Meghan Stott: (07:59)
First, I am a control freak. I always want to do it myself, and it's really hard to give over that control and let her experiment. Also, I haven't parented a child without a visual impairment, so sometimes when people ask, "What do you do differently?" it's a little bit hard because like, well, I don't know. I don't know what it's like to cook with somebody who doesn't have a visual impairment. But I think one of the hardest things was giving over control of the knife. I would assume every parent has the same anxiety about giving their child a knife.

Meghan Stott: (08:39)
First, we started out with just cutting bananas, so a butter knife and a banana. And let's get comfortable using this. As she got older, one of the tools that we really found useful in our house was those choppers. We use a Pampered Chef chopper. I didn't have to worry about fingers getting under it, and she could feel immediate success of just pressing that and getting her chopped goods. Then she was at a point where she needs to use a knife, and it seems counterintuitive, but we would give her the biggest, sharpest knife in the kitchen. We would tell her, "You've got to keep your fingers curled," and we would always talk about try and cut it so that you have a flat surface, and then you can dice with that.

Meghan Stott: (09:22)
If it's an apple, cut off one side so that you have a flat edge, and then you can continue slicing, reminding her to keep her fingers tucked and her knuckles. Kaitlin is a dual print braille reader, so we've created braille labels to go on the back of our oven so that she doesn't have to lean in close to look at which button she's pressing. She can just reach over and touch them. It's still a little bit hard because she is 11, but she is a small 11. She's still not quite even big enough to touch the back of the oven yet, but she's getting there. So braille labels have helped. Some other things that we've used in the kitchen, like measuring cups and spoons, those numbers are really hard for her to see. So we've actually just taken a Sharpie, and we've written larger numbers. It can be on the handle, or she can flip it over and it can be on the back of the cup. Just that we would write in a bigger Sharpie, one cup, or half-cup, or three-fourths, so that she can see them.

Meghan Stott: (10:26)
Same thing with the teaspoons. When we use a scale, the hardest part for her is just to see which units it's in. So I usually set it up. If a recipe calls for grams, I set up our scale for grams, and then she's usually pretty good to go because if they're in grams, usually the whole recipe is in grams. She likes using the scale, and the scale we have, the numbers are big enough for her to see.

Stephanie: (10:49)
One area where Meghan and her daughter's kitchen approach differs is in the way they preview recipes.

Meghan Stott: (10:56)
She really likes to watch the YouTube video beforehand and get a really good feel for the steps that it takes to go through it. I like to look at the recipe. I've noticed that Kaitlin doesn't like to look at a recipe. I've talked to her about that, and part of it is just that she doesn't like to enlarge the recipe, like when you are online, and trying to scroll through somebody's blog, trying to muddle through all of that, where is the recipe? And she just is like, "Ah, it's just too much of a hassle, so I'd rather just bake." So that's something that we have been working on, getting the recipe, and having her follow. She's done really well with the recipes that have check-off boxes. Did you put in the three fourths cup? When you have, then check it off. We prefer those kinds of recipes that she can enlarge on her tablet and then check off. Those ones aren't always easy to find.

Stephanie: (11:54)
It's interesting to think about, oh, could she listen to a cooking show, or watch a video and get inspiration and ideas for dinner, and then learn technique that way?

Meghan Stott: (12:06)
As much as I would like to say that she got her love of baking and cooking from me, I would say she probably was first inspired by watching kids cooking shows and YouTube videos, and watching somebody else be successful at that and kids, right? So watching YouTube videos of kids cooking, and then realizing that, well if they can do it, I can do it. When I ask her to research... Oh, we want to make this for dinner, her first step is always YouTube. She always watches a YouTube video first, and it's funny because she will watch the YouTube video, and then we go back, she'll holler out the recipes for me.

Meghan Stott: (12:42)
So like three-fourths cup flour, and then she'll pause it. Then I'll write three-fourths cup flour, and then she'll go on, and then it's like a half a teaspoon of baking soda. Did you get that? And I'll write it down. That's how she prefers to get her recipe, auditorily. I prefer to read the recipe, and read the instructions, and then reread them, and then this is the mental step that I'm going to go through to make this, and she likes to watch it, and then re-watch it, and get the, "Okay, this is how I'm going to go about doing it." We've had to blend our methods.

Stephanie: (13:18)
So you talked about that auditory experience in the videos. Is there anything else that maybe you've learned from Kaitlin and her approach that's inspired you to do anything differently when you cook or bake?

Meghan Stott: (13:29)
Yeah, there's an auditory part, but I think that one of Kaitlin's strengths, as being somebody with a visual impairment, is just texture and smell. I really enjoy baking bread, we've had her in the kitchen and we've baked bread together multiple times. Now, it's one of those things where she will go down to the kitchen and she's like, "I'm going to make a loaf of bread." And for a while, I'd be like, "You can't make a loaf of bread without following a recipe. Can you pull up a recipe and follow the recipe?" and she would always just say, "Mom, it's literally flour, water, yeast, and salt. Why do I need a recipe?" So I would get like, "Oh, just, just follow the recipe." And what I've learned from her is that she would take a bowl down, and the flour down, and she would just start mixing, and she would work the dough until it became the texture that she wanted and the smell. I was really skeptical about her baking abilities, but she would just work that dough until it felt the right way under her fingers.

Meghan Stott: (14:36)
She surprised me on several occasions where she would just produce this loaf of bread and it'll be like, "I baked bread." I'm like, "Oh my gosh. You baked bread." But I think what I've learned from her is not being so restricted. "Yeah, you're right, Cait. It is just flour, water, salt and yeast." Just work it until it feels the right way, then you're done. I've learned to let my guard down a little bit. Hey, if she can go in the kitchen and just throw these ingredients together, and we get a pretty good loaf, I can also not feel so much stress about that baking. Just enjoy the process. I would say that's one of her strengths, letting down those guards, and just trusting her instincts and knowing if it feels the right way, it's probably going to turn out right.

Meghan Stott: (15:26)
My grandma, my oma, would bake this party German sourdough bread. It was a 50-year-old sourdough that she brought over with her. She's now 95, but a couple of years ago, I asked her, "Can you teach me how to make your bread, so this is not lost to us?" She brought me into the kitchen, and it was like her spoon. You need three of her tablespoons, from the actual table. I was just like, "I can't recreate those. How are they going to recreate those without having your silverware? I just want a recipe." And then of course she gave me the sourdough start, and of course it promptly died in my fridge. I killed your sourdough. And that was the way my oma taught me. When it smells like that, then you know it's right. If not, add some more flour, add some more water, and this is how it should smell. I think one of these days Kaitlin's going to have to be the one that helps me recreate that bread, because she's got the skills to just let loose.

Stephanie: (16:33)
Thank you to Meghan for sharing such wonderful insights. My next guest is Hassanatou Berry. She is the founder of The Babysitter Guru, an informational site for parents and sitters. She's also the director of Parent and Sitter Relations at My Supersitter, and the chief operating officer at Nanny Sitter Education Fund.

Speaker 4: (16:59)
Support for this podcast comes from Active Voice Communications. Whether you're looking for content strategy, or help writing articles, white papers, reports, blog posts and more, Active Voice is here. Learn more at theactivevoice.com.

Stephanie: (17:15)
Hassanatou's love of caring for children partly stems from growing up in a large West African family. And one of her favorite activities with kids is baking.

Hassanatou Barry: (17:28)
With baking, they get so excited. They get so happy. They get to do something that's different. It's a learning opportunity for them. Children are visual learners at first, but as they get older, they change their learning technique. But they're visual first, and with visual, they get to touch stuff, they get to see how things transfer from having just dough and flour to the full-blown cake that you could eat. In schools it might vary if they get to do those type of stuff where they're making things with their hands, like Play-Doh, but actual food, it might be a little different due to some restrictions.

Hassanatou Barry: (18:07)
So when they're home, provide them the opportunity to make something with either their sitter, or their nanny, or mom and dad. It's pretty cool. I encourage a lot of my sitters and nannies that I interact with to do a lot of baking and cooking with them, and bring them in, show them everything. Maybe show them a quick two-minute video of how something is made, and then you have all the utensils laid out, and they get to see like, "Oh, okay. She's adding the chocolate chips into the batter for us to make the cookie dough," and stuff like that. Visual is important, which is why I always like to introduce baking to my little ones.

Stephanie: (18:41)
What kinds of things do you incorporate, just beyond this is a whisk, and this is a mixer, and here's how we physically do it? What other kinds of skills do you try to incorporate?

Hassanatou Barry: (18:50)
Motor skill development, especially when you're working with the little ones. They're using their hands, so they get to feel, they get to touch, they get to scoop stuff, they get to form the dough, they get to mold different type of foods that they're playing with. So it's a motor skill that I usually focus on, especially with the younger ones to toddlers, around two years old.

Stephanie: (19:13)
As kids get older, how do you keep them engaged?

Hassanatou Barry: (19:17)
With baking, I always say it's memory. You're building their memory and repetition. When you're baking with them, the more you do it, the more they'll remember. You no longer need ingredient lists, or how to make stuff list. They'll know. They'll go in the cabinet, grab what they need to grab, like, "Hey, I'm ready to make our cookies. I know what to do." So the more you show them, the more you bring them in and show them exactly how to do it, the better. They'll remember how to do everything, and one day, they'll probably lead the whole activity for you. You don't have to do anything. You'll just sit there like, "Okay. Yeah. All right, all right. Let's see what you're doing. Okay." Put it in the oven with your help, and you supervising them, and then they decided to make something on their own. We all know children are very proud when they get to do something on their own, like, "Look what I did." I love it. I always say baking is about happiness. When I think of baking, I think of happy. There shouldn't be any type of negativity in baking. You're eating sweets for goodness sake. With children, they like to imitate you, right, as an adult. Whether you're mom, dad, nanny, or sitter, they like to imitate you. So what I do is I set up the kitchen beforehand.

Hassanatou Barry: (20:28)
So let's just say we decide to bake right after lunch. They're probably somewhere, either in their living room, or in their room doing something, and you prep the kitchen. So as you have your bowl, you'll give them their own bowl. As you have the ingredients laid out and the measuring cups, you'll also have the ingredients laid out for them, and their own measuring cups. Whatever you have in your corner, make sure that they have as well. Anything that you pour into the bowl, they're also pouring into the bowl. Repetition is important, because they'll remember whatever you do, they'll do themselves. Just giving them their own personal space to make what they need to make, but then while also following you, and if it tends to get a little messy, hopefully you initiate a little messiness because kids are unpredictable. Maybe you could take a little frosting and just put on their little faces, or engage with them and taste some of this stuff.

Hassanatou Barry: (21:24)
If they want to taste it, if they want to touch it, they want to feel it, let them do it, but just make sure that they know, "Hey, we're baking. If you behave, and you act well, we'll be able to taste everything towards the end, but you have to listen, and you have to follow instructions, just like in school when you're following instructions, you also have to follow instructions here." We all know the way that they act in school is different than they act at home. So one thing I always see is that at school, they always want to be the perfect child. When they're home, it's just a different person. So like, "Hey, we're going to follow an instruction just like you do in school, you're going to follow here. And then if you want to do this more often, we have to make sure that everything is good, and that you are listening, and that we're able to make this delicious, sweet so that you could enjoy, because this is all for you. For us to have fun." Build that bonding moment.

Stephanie: (22:17)
Hassanatou points out that at different ages kids can do different things. From whisking and stirring, to operating the mixer solo, to putting cookies in the oven all by themselves. Maybe you'll pre-measure ingredients for younger children, and by the time they're seven or eight, they can do that part themselves too. But the most important thing, she says, is to use this time to engage in conversation.

Hassanatou Barry: (22:42)
When you talk to them, ask them some questions. Maybe like, "How's your day going?" Or, "Did you talk to a certain friend today?" or, "Is there anything that you were doing in school these last couple of days that you want to talk about? Who's your favorite teacher?" Stuff like that.

Stephanie: (23:02)
Thank you again to my guests today, Meghan Stott and Hassanatou Barry. You can learn more about Hassanatou at thebabysitterguru.com and on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn she's The Babysitter Guru. You can read more of Meghan's advice, and learn more about working with individuals who are blind and visually impaired at The American Printing House for the Blind. That's aph.org, and they have a blog too called familyconnect.org where Meghan's advice frequently appears. I'll share all of these links in the show notes at Kiddos in the Kitchen too.

Stephanie: (23:46)
I love preparing family holiday meals. I love asking my son to help plan the menu. I love the centerpiece meats, the sides, the appetizers, the desserts. Oh, the desserts. I love baking Christmas cookies, and getting frosting and sprinkles everywhere. There is no part of holiday cooking and baking that I don't love. Wait, I take that back. The dishes. I don't love doing the dishes. When I think of my conversation with Meghan, I'm reminded that we all process information differently. Whether we have a visual impairment or not, our brains work differently, some of us need to read, some of us prefer audio or visual cues. We use our senses differently. Most of us rely on our sight to see if a dish is done, but cooking is a multisensory experience. The feel of bread dough in your hands, the smell of a sauce, tasting something before you salt it. The sound of a rolling boil. Then, there's a deeper sense, a muscle memory of sorts for those holiday kitchen traditions, and what those memories mean to us, how they shape us, how embedded they are.

Stephanie: (25:20)
Meghan's childhood memories of a German Christmas Eve feast are now Kaitlin's memories, too. My son is only 6, and he already has holiday muscle memory. There are certain cookies we make every year, and even though I have about a dozen cookie cookbooks, it's hard to get him to try something new, and anything new would be in addition to our traditional fare. I grew up making peanut butter blossom cookies and decorating cutout cookies, and he is too. I wonder if his kids will as well, and when they do, there will be a little bit of me, and a little bit of my mom in those cookies. Whatever you're cooking or baking this holiday season, I hope it stimulates all of your senses, and fills your heart with joy and love.

Stephanie: (26:18)
Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (26:24)
If you like my mom's podcast as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple podcast, Google podcast, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie: (26:44)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com. We're @KiddosCook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.