As the only woman in my family of four, I’m usually the only one in the kitchen. My husband, who is happier than most men to do his share of chores and more, will avoid the kitchen like the plague. So it was a pleasant surprise when on Christmas Day, he and our oldest son said they wanted to help in the kitchen.

My Christmas cooking was simple. Born and raised in India where cooking is usually stove top, I’ve so far used my two oven for storing pots and pans. On Christmas Day I decided to give the ovens a try. On the menu was spinach soup, roast  chicken, roasted potatoes and roasted vegetables. Now that I had decided to use the oven, why not go the whole hog!

Billi, who is 12, helped rinse out the herbs for the chicken — basil, rosemary, marjoram, parsley and bay leaves — and helped chop some which were to be stuffed under the skin of the chicken. He helped stuff the cavity with rosemary and lemons, drizzled olive oil over the chicken and sprinkled pepper and salt as I rubbed it into the chicken. My husband cleaned and cut the potatoes (he loved potatoes) and tied the chicken’s legs with a metal wire because we didn’t have the required string to do so.

The meal was a success and everyone tucked in because they had a part in putting it together. Aristu, our 2 year old, for once decided not to be fussy and declared after nibbling on a piece of chicken, “yumm … del …i…cious.” He even sang “happy Birthday” when we lit the candles on our table centerpiece.

The Christmas Day cooking has given my men a taste of the kitchen. They enjoyed it, though I have to say that they haven’t offered to help since. But now that they have taken the first step, I’m hoping the next time will be easier. Let’s see …

For years, I’ve purchased masses of small gifts for my children which are duly wrapped and placed around the fireplace waiting for the holidays to appear.

The years have changed the gifts from small plastic frogs and harmonicas to book lights and gift cards, but what hasn’t changed is the tradition of drifting by the fireplace during the weeks of December, counting up who has how many packages.

What’s also tradition is that I get the fewest number of gifts. This year, my youngsters decided that wouldn’t be so.

I got the regulation gift cards, of course, from my husband, but I had seven small gifts in odd-shaped packages waiting for me as well, putting me one-up from my husband and tied with my two oldest children in number of gifts.

What my enterprising children did was purchase two silicone mitts and a set of metal measuring cups and wrap them up separately. The first gift I opened was the 1/4 cup, nicely tied up with a bow all to itself. I opened the third-cup measure next, in its own package. Then came the rest, one by one. They also wrapped up the ring that holds the measuring cups as a set.

Frankly, I’m still laughing. And here’s a wish for laughter and good kitchen memories to all for the upcoming year.

I’m happy to report that after a couple of weeks of nothing but cheese and bread, Zyla’s appetite is coming back.

It all started on Christmas Eve, when the entire family—there’s 20 of us—sat down to a very rich, very delicious meal of Beef Wellington, roasted potatoes, green beans and salad. I thought Zyla would only want the dinner rolls, but she surprised me when she bypassed it and started munching on the lettuce. Then she took one morsel of the meat and was hooked. I had to fill her bowl three times. She wasn’t even interested in the pastry around it. It was all about the red meat for her. She’s had beef maybe once or twice before.

Since that night she’s been devouring veggies, eggs, pasta, rice, soup and, of course, Christmas cookies. She hasn’t even asked for cheese. I guess I just had to release her inner carnivore.

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Photo (not of Beef Wellington, but still beef ala porterhouse) courtesy of TJN.

I was watching my oldest putter around the kitchen making mini cheesecakes for an upcoming party a few days ago, an activity that recalled to mind a photograph of her baking shortly after we moved to the East Coast.

She was standing on a chair, her hair tied back, an apron draped over her sweatshirt and pants and dropping past her feet, a rolling pin in hand, flour on her nose and a look of concentration on her face. She was contemplating a round of dough she had just been working on, the family specialty cookie we only seem to make at this time of year.

Judging by the kitchen, I’m thinking she had just turned 5 years old, since her birthday is in early December. And judging by the look of the dough, she was familiar with a rolling pin and how to use one.

Cookie-making is one of those kitchen activities that work well with small children. The physical work — whether it’s putting thumb prints in dough, using a rolling pin, grinding nuts, mixing sugar and cinnamon or measuring milk or honey — is usually easy to divide into jobs even the smallest child can do. Even accidents usually don’t mean more than a mess, provided the youngest children are kept away from the hot stove or oven.

There is some debate about the right age to introduce small children to kitchen work. At least in our family, preschool age seemed to be the right time. Just a thought.

We got a jump start on the holiday cheer last weekend when we had a birthday brunch for me and my sister. There was tons of food, starting with cheeses, lox, bagels, muffins, scones, souffles and roasted corn chowder. We later moved on to roast beef, green beans, spinach salad and roasted potatoes. And topped off the day with two kinds of cake—chocolate mousse and hazelnut chocolate.

Everything was exquisite except for one thing: Zyla maybe ate a piece of bread that day. At night, she shared a bowl of cereal with her grandmother to make up for her day of fasting. As I mentioned earlier, she was ill two weeks ago and hasn’t gotten her appetite back. Before that, she ate it all. Now, the only thing that seems to interest her is cheese, crackers and wonton soup. Oh, and her milk. Each morning and afternoon, she enters into a state of bliss when she drinks her milk, a roughly two-minute long indulgence that no one dare interrupt.

I’m wondering is she still sick or just growing older and pickier? She’s turning 21 months on the 21st of this month. Hmm, do all those 21’s mean anything? But I digress.

I will continue to try and feed her the good stuff. I’m not too worried about it because I know a lot of toddlers are fussy eaters, right? Eventually she’s going to get hungry.

Let’s hope on Christmas she’ll go for the lasagna and the rest of the still undetermined feast.

I’m starting to think that the days of eating anything I put in front of my daughter—vegetables—are over. In the not-to-distant past, she gobbled up lettuce, mushrooms, onions and other healthy greens. But lately, all she seems to want is plain cheese, bread with cheese and pasta covered in cheese. Oh and pizza. Notice a theme there?

Last night, I mixed vegetables into her brown rice and she picked up the celery, said “what’s this?” When I told her, she replied “sucio.” That’s Spanish for dirty. I guess she equated it with the dirty laundry I tell her not to play with.

I can pinpoint the downward spiral since it only began last week after she got ill. She had a 102º fever for two days and didn’t want to eat anything. In her 20 months of existence, that was a first. After she emerged hungry on day three, she’s been on that cheese diet I mentioned.

I’m going to try for chicken, veggies and rice tonight. I hope this phase lasts as long as that high fever.

We were talking the other day about the toaster, and how, when my son goes off on his own some day, the toaster goes with him.

It’s become a feature of our household that people who complain long enough get put in charge of what they dislike. That’s why my youngest now makes the pancake batter on Sunday mornings, for instance. Enough grumbling to her dad about ‘when are you going to make pancakes’ when she was young, and she was put in charge of whipping up the batter to facilitate the meal.

My son used to complain about the quality of the toaster since he used it more than anybody else. Enough complaints, and we bought him a toaster for his birthday. It’s the toaster we use now, essentially ‘on loan’ from our son for the duration. But he does occasionally (and jokingly) threaten to take the toaster away when he leaves home permanently.

I can’t say that our philosophy has helped us spread around the responsibility for keeping the house in order. I still do the majority of cooking and cleaning. But boy, have the complaints dropped off in the past decade!

When my mother-in-law comes for Thanksgiving, we take the turkey carcass and make soup. When it’s just the family, we dispense with a whole turkey and make house rice out of the remainders.

It may be a generational thing. My mother-in-law grew up during the Great Depression on an Ohio farm in a large family — something like seven brothers and sisters. Everything was used and everything was expected to stretch.

My family is fairly small — my husband, our three children and me — so we’re less inclined to overcook and seldom have leftovers. My children, thankfully, are willing to eat leftovers. They just are very particular about how that leftover food is served.

That’s how we created house rice. It’s based on a typical fried rice offering at the local ethnic eatery, but with leftovers instead of — er — new food.

When I was a child, we had ‘clean out the refrigerator night.’ My own children know that house rice means ‘everything we have in the house goes in the rice.’ So after Thanksgiving, I took what turkey still remained after my son finished his midnight raid, the leftover vegetables, some frozen peas (because you always have to have peas in house rice. Don’t ask), an egg and mixed them in the wok with cooked rice and soy sauce and had no complaints about yet another turkey dish.

Any other family leftover recipes I can try? We’re out of turkey, but I still have some stuffing and mashed potatoes to get rid of.