Cooking and Baking Chez Nadia

Simply put, I've got an amazing 12 year old chef-baker-extraordinaire-in-the-making! Some of our big home schooling goals for 6th grade include learning how to take care of a home and what to do in the kitchen (besides make messes and wash dishes)! Over the course of this year, Nadia has become quite the accomplished cook. She thinks nothing of whipping out 6 or 7 pizzas - making the dough, the pizza sauce from scratch and coming up with whatever is available for toppings that everyone will like, and pulls it off in 1.5 hours, by herself while watching 2 little ones. She can even light the pilot for the oven all by herself (which I recently found out!)

It has been such a delight to see this side of her emerge - her confidence, competence and creative problem solving skills. She is easy to work with, teachable and seems to take pride in what she is producing from the kitchen. And that is no small feat when your kitchen temps soar to over 110'F! It has also been wonderful to start to get to know my one daughter who has always been a bit of an enigma to me... to see what makes her tick and what motivates... to start to get a grasp of her skills as well and those areas we still need to work on. Having Nadia home with me this year has been a treat in every way and I will miss her when she heads back to the world of "real school" (as she calls it) in August. I thank God for every moment we've had... and for the ones that remain (in which we really need to focus in on some math and creative writing - otherwise, she's right on track to complete her home school curriculum this year!)

So, I wanted to take a few minutes today to brag on her... and show some of her recent kitchen efforts:

curry...

starting the rice...

preparing fresh pineapple...

(we like to top our curry with peanuts, raisins and fresh pineapple, when we can... if the pineapple makes it to the table prior to being inhaled by our crew who we lovingly refer to as vultures when food is present!)

Tsoureki

(thanks to our friend Lucia for this lovely recipe)

It tastes as heavenly as it looks!

... and these are just a few of the recipes in her continually growing repertoire!

Don't ask... she's not for loan
and still too young for her daddy to even think about a bride price!!
Think I'll keep her around just as long as I can.