Baking

Cars has become quite the cook! He has always loved to cook, but I have so much going on at dinner time, it's near impossible to let him help me with the whole meal. He has almost forever cooked the tortillas, and he will chop anything in the food processor, but as far as cutting and adding ingredients to the meal, not so much. He started about a month ago making cakes. He started with a chocolate sheet cake with chocolate frosting. He finds something in my cook book (homemade so it has all my recipes in it) that he wants to make, gets out all the ingredients, and puts it together. He wants to make a dessert every night. He has started helping make dinner, which is super impressive. He will line a cookie sheet with tenfoil and broil asparagas drizzled in olive oil and kosher salt (he has watched me and knows exactly what stuff to use). He will chop up other veggies and put them in bowls for dinner. He will cook the meat. He is even getting where he will read the dinner recipe and get the beans or chilis or whatever else is needed and add it to the pot. He still cannot do things like cilantro or make enchiladas. Mostly he can do soups and side dishes and always does a dessert. He can make the french bread (cut it and butter it and broil it (I still garlic salt it, but he wants to!) Just today he wanted me to make banana bread so he got out every measuring cup/spoon and ingredient I needed. He will grade cheese and on and on. I am so impressed with him. He LOVES it. He always says very proudly as we are wrapping up dinner, "I cooked it, you clean it!" to his brothers and dad. It brings him happiness! I am curious to see if he sticks with it. If so, he will surely make a wife super happy!

Side note: Our neighbor came in the house with Carter the other night close to dinner time. She comes into the kitchen where Cars and I were finishing up making homemade pizza (he read the recipe and made the dough, spread corn meal on the cookie sheet without any prompting and then asked me to roll out the dough, then was putting the garlic butter sauce and cheese and dill and veggies on top. He even cooked up 5 slices of bacon and chopped it into small pieces and was adding it to the top) She smelled the pizza and said, "I wish my mom baked like you. She never cooks anything" (which is pretty true. They eat out about 18 meals a week!) Cars, oblivious to the fact that a lot of families don't have a homecooked meal every night, says "Cook it yourself. It's super easy!" As much as I was happy that he has seen it so much it's just normal for him and almost easy to just take over for me, I was super sad that she did not. She told him that they don't have anything in the house to make anything. I hope that all my boys marry girls that think it's a priority to eat dinner as a family every night. I hope they (my boys) all know how to cook, and appreciate their wives when they do. We do our share of eating out too, but even when we grab a pizza or tacos, we eat it at the table as a family after a blessing on the food. I have a feeling that we will look back on this time every night and cherish it. Right now I cannot even hear myself think during dinner for the volume, but I know when I get Momma amnesia and only remember the good times and tell all the moms in Walmart that have small children and look like they might have a breakdown right then and there how fabulous the times were for me and just a complete joy all the time (no sarcasm there!), this will be one of them!!!