My Kitchen Helper

I am so thrilled Stella enjoys helping me. Not just in the kitchen but in other areas-dusting, cleaning up spills, throwing away things, recycling, "folding" clothes, 'hanging up" her clothes, "sweeping".  Anytime she does something like this she says, "I helping. I helping Mommy." I love it. But to see her want to help me cook is such a wonderful feeling.

Here are some recent pictures of my mini sous chef:

Like a true little southerner-snapping beans on the back porch. She'll snap them alright. Right in half. We are working on just popping the ends off.

"I mix it." In regards to scrambling her eggs.

She is also the ultimate hard boiled egg peeler. No really. I'm making her my official egg peeler. She truly does a great job and doesn't get all irritated with it like I inevitably do.

One day last week she wanted to help me wash dishes. After we finished she continued to stand on her perch and scrub the right sink (the rinsing sink=her station) for literally close to 10 minutes. She'd dip the bottle brush into the suds in the left sink and scrub, scrub, scrub. It was so funny. I just let her keep doing it until she started trying to clean the chair she was standing in. Too much of a slipping hazard for her bare feet. 

I can hardly wait until Donald can build this learning tower for her. I finally got back down to IKEA for the step stool needed to make it. They were sold out last time I was there.

Last Wednesday we made muffins after her nap. Kathleen shared her recipe/method for them after Stella devoured a few on our family reunion weekend. 

I got the bowl, wooden spoon and mini muffin pan out. I stood her on the chair and I started pouring the ingredients into the bowl. She immediately began mixing. Then she wanted to taste. Which wasn't a problem since we didn't use eggs, but I was afraid she'd be turned off by the uncooked taste and then not actually eat the cooked muffins. But she only got a little taste. And I didn't have to worry about her not eating them.  Before I could get the paper liners for the tin she was already trying to plop down a dollup of muffin mix into a few of the muffin slots. It was so cute and reminder that she really is paying attention. I retrieved the cupcake/muffin liners and she placed them all in the slots. Then together, we scooped the dough into each paper. The recipe made 23. It would have been 24, but a paper went missing and I'd already put them away and didn't feel like getting them back out. She ate nearly half of them that evening. She had a couple before dinner, then 5 or 6 before bed when she announced, "I honey." Clearly she was starving even though she ate a decent dinner. I'm still waiting on her to grow a foot after all the food she's been inhaling and her constant "I honey" proclamations.