Week 47: Little Chef

One thing is for certain with Jonah - he likes to help. He's good at cleaning up his toys, once you get him focused on the task. He loves taking something or other to Mommy or Daddy whenever needed. He loves to help feed Mr. Fish, too. We try to include him whenever possible and while sometimes that's not practical, we often make a point of including him in the kitchen.

We'd read that one strategy for getting kids to eat a wider variety of foods was to include them in the preparation. That was the initial motivation for asking him to help with tasks that I knew would lead to more work when he's around. Sadly, it didn't really work. However, Jonah now loves to help cook - especially breakfast. At least once a week he'll request to make waffles. A close second in the number of requests is banana bread or scones. You can tell we prefer carbs for breakfast to the protein heavy breakfasts in the midwest!

This weekend he got a double dose of cooking. I needed something chocolate to photograph for another project I'm working on, so Jonah helped make chocolate cupcakes. He'd been asking to make banana bread as we had a few bananas that were just right for baking, so this morning Mommy and Jonah made banana bread while I set up a couple of lights. I know that Jonah wanting to be in the middle of everything won't last forever and I'm doing my best to enjoy it while it lasts. It is hard sometimes when the flour goes flying everywhere and about a cup and a half of salt gets poured into a mix that required 1/2 teaspoon while I'm reaching for the milk. I do hope that this early exposure to the kitchen will lead to a lifelong love of cooking, though. I know I have been well served by my mom teaching me to cook as a child.

Photo - this one was very quick. Jonah was fine with cooking, but was ready to play when I asked him to move his stool over and look at the camera. I got a dozen frames at best, most in which Jonah was sporting a grimace. This is a Profoto head in a beauty dish on camera right and a Profoto head in a 3x4' softbox camera left for fill. This is my 50mm lens at f/5.6.