Recipe for successful cooking with children

As soon as toddler Cathal Fox could stand on a chair, he was helping his mother and older brother with the cooking. Sinéad Fox certainly believes in starting them young. Her eldest child Ciaran, who will be five in September, is already making up his own recipes – with the help of a granny who encourages his culinary creations. “When they go on sleepovers, she lets Ciaran have the run of the ingredients press. He will say he wants ‘two eggs, five spoons of flour and some butter . . .’ “She might encourage him to use a little more flour and then she will let him produce his cake in whatever tin he chooses. They are not always edible – but they often are.” While the boys’ baby sister, Laoise, may have been born with a wooden spoon in her mouth too, at just seven weeks old she is going to have to bide her time before she gets in on the action. “I think it is more important to involve them in the everyday cooking than making cupcakes once a month,” says Fox, nailing where many of us go wrong. We see cooking with children as an occasional, entertaining experiment rather than routine. Pressed for time and tired at the end of the day, it can be hard enough to cook from scratch never mind involve “helpful” children at the same time. (It’s a Murphy’s Law of parenting that as soon as the children reach an age where they can be really useful around the house, they lose all interest in doing chores of any kind.) And there is not a lot of culinary education to be had in heating up an oven-ready pizza or micro-waving a ready-meal. But, considering that Fox not only works as a solicitor but also commutes to Dublin from her home in Gorey, Co Wexford, excuses like “strapped for time” or “just too exhausted” sound rather feeble in her presence. She somehow finds time not only to cook with her small children but blog about it too. Bumbles of Rice, which she started a year ago, was a response to people wondering how she managed to provide home-cooking for the family considering the demands on her time. The secret lies in organisation, batch cooking and freezer-friendly recipes.