agonyaunt | Care & Feeding: Advice for a parent whose child has been watching too many cooking shows

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Care & Feeding: Advice for a parent whose child has been watching too many cooking shows

Dear Care and Feeding,

My daughter is 9 and wonderfully smart and creative. One of her favorite creative outlets is cooking. However, she has been somewhat brainwashed by cooking shows, which give the impression that everything is prepared off the cuff. So she now believes that cooking is wantonly combining ingredients to create culinary masterpieces. I have explained that all those celebrity chefs develop and follow recipes based on carefully measured ingredients and food science, and that I am happy to teach her how to cook so she develops the skills to eventually create her own recipes. She, however, wastes huge amounts of food creating inedible dishes based solely on her creative whims.

I was working outside in the yard and my daughter, beaming, came out to tell me she made me lunch. My heart sank. She had “made lunch” out of $100 worth of ingredients, three to four meals’ worth. I put my foot down and told her that unless she is supervised and following a recipe, she is not allowed to prepare anything in the kitchen. I was calm but firm, explaining how our family can’t afford to waste food on experimentation.

I feel guilty for suppressing her creativity, but I have held firm on the recipe rule. She is as stubborn as she is creative and, under the new rules, refuses to even set foot in the kitchen to assist with meal preparation. We are at a mildly hostile stalemate going on weeks and I am at a loss for how to move forward constructively. I have an overarching concern that her resistance to learn a skill because it infringes on her freedom means that she is essentially “uncoachable,” one of those precocious and obnoxious kids who will miss out because no one wants to deal with her attitude. Do you see a different way to move forward? Please help.
—Cryin’ Chef

Dear CC,

I suspect that your daughter’s avoidance of the kitchen has less to do with a refusal to follow recipes and more to do with the fact that she felt as though she was doing something awesome and just ended up getting in trouble. Your response was not without justification, of course, but the impact was demoralizing to your budding chef. This is something I’m sure you don’t want, so as it stands now, it is you who has a little kitchen cleanup to do.

Our daughter went through a precocious baking phase when she was about the same age, fueled by obsessive viewing of competitive cooking shows and the fact that one of her closest friends was a wildly talented baker. (Seriously, this fifth-grader was so good I actually resented her. Like, who gave you the right to craft a tray of perfect macarons, when I can barely get my meringue to peak, you little brat?) After a few destroyed cake pans and a container of expensive gifted chocolate powder spilled behind the stove, we decided to designate her own section of the cabinet with her own ingredients with which she could do as she pleased. If she wanted to use something from the general stash, she had to ask permission. It is great that your daughter wants to cook, but let her manage her own ingredients, rather than filching yours, and see how quickly she learns to slow down and take it carefully.

Also, I recommend The Great British Baking Show, especially the early seasons. Unlike the drama-filled Death Chef: Torture Blades of Satan–style shows that have become so popular, TGBBO features talented chefs using recipes, struggling with measurements, and pursuing the science of baking. It shows that cooking is not some dramatic improvisational dance but rather a slow, detail-filled pursuit. Maybe your daughter will be inspired! Maybe she’ll learn that cooking is actually lame and boring. Either way, problem solved.

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I was looking for a letter to post where no one was terrible. This isn't quite it -- some of the parent's statements here really rub me the wrong way, from "somewhat brainwashed" to "she is essentially “uncoachable,” " -- but it's not as fraught as some others.

I kind of wish the advisor had pointed out that the parent is missing an important point about the artistic side of cooking -- recipe design often involves a lot of playing around and many people do indeed cook off the cuff, and the way they learn to is by experimentation. (At least, that's how I did.) OTOH, I love the advice to give her a cabinet of cheap food to play with.

Yeah, that's great advice, about her own cupboard. I feel for the LW -- I can sense that they see that daughter was really being creative, and only put their foot down because of the $100 worth of food, which was clearly a harsh shock. I don't get the sense it's just the money, either: "three to four meals’ worth" is a lot of time in planning and shopping.

"Here, kid, you get $10 a week to spend at the grocery store as you see fit for your own cupboard, and I'll start you off with a one time contribution $50 of pantry staples" is actually a great way to teach cooking, because, like writing a sonnet, constraints can absolutely hone creativity.

(I also remember being a 9 year old who had absorbed a lot of bullshit messages about giftedness and spontaneity and how all these things made me a genius, so I am sympathetic to the LW's aggravation as I remember how insufferable I was.)

Ok, you have made me more sympathetic to the LW. I was thinking of "uncoachable" as a synonym for "uncrushable, refuses to blindly obey," but you've made me think again.

Edited (speelllinng) 2019-11-19 21:14 (UTC)

Various inflation calculators tell me that $100 in 2019 was only about $38 when I was 9 (really? I don't feel that old), but even so, same here. I mean, let's face it. The definition of inflation is that what $100 buys now is what $38 bought when I was nine, and $100 is .... a fuckton of food. My parents would've gone spare.

I can see that as 3-4 main meals for 4 people; with nice but not super high end ingredients. I could spend it on one meal for 4, but I'd need to go buy specific pricey things (specific cuts of meat or truffles or something); I can't see myself using up 4 meals worth of food - because in my house that would be 4 planned different meals, and it wouldn't make sense to mix them up.

Destroying $100 in food when I was a kid would have resulted in unpaid bills or rent because food isn't optional. I get the feeling that the letter writer is a bit wealthier than my family was since their focus is on their guilt for "suppressing her creativity" rather than monetary concerns, but still.

I have to say, I am agog.

If I'd taken $100 of ingredients as a child and wasted them, I would have had to come up with a way to pay for them.

(Granted I'm not sure we had $100 of food ingredients in the house until I was in high school...)

Yeah, as someone who was told "don't eat so much bread because then there won't be bread for the rest of the week" and whose family got anonymous food parcels left on our back door step by church members...

Wasting $100 of ingredients would have been a major crisis. It would have meant missed mortgage payments.

The LW's daughter should be brought along on grocery shopping trips, to learn about the costs and tradeoffs of choosing and buying food for the entire family. It sounds like LW is a careful budgeter and the daughter hasn't been taught that (1) the family budget is enough to feed everyone, but not luxuriously, and (2) food costs real dollar money.

I was given my first cookbook at the same age as LW's daughter, and I had to ask permission before trying recipes. Maybe give her a good starter cookbook like one of the Bittman books?

ETA: Also, LW needs to let go of "I am happy to teach her how to cook..." because that ship has sailed. I don't think Daughter will listen to the parent on this now, it's going to be like the traumatic driving instruction things if LW pushes it. Let others teach the kid. Let her watch LW cook and encourage her to help if she wants, but by no means make this into a Thing.

Edited 2019-11-19 21:37 (UTC)

I agree with the above recommendations to teach the kiddo about the actual dollar costs of cooking. I also agree that GBBO is a great way to see folks on tv baking and using recipes and sometimes failing at them. And talking about how long they've been cooking, which is generally years and years of practice before they went on the show. (martha is an outlier adn should not be counted, though she's lovely)

I would also suggest watching Alton Brown to learn about the science behind cooking, or America's Test Kitchen which goes over recipes and tools. Both also show failures and go over costs and how to budget, or at least nod towards budgets being a thing.

I was going to recommend Alton Brown, as he's very much the measurer. I seem to remember the Barefoot Contessa being a strict "exactly how much the recipe says" person. Man, I miss those kinds of cooking shows.

Emphatic nods here

I wonder if the LW's child has ever been allowed to participate in the parent's day-to-day meal preparation (e.g., peeling carrots, trimming green beans, kneading pizza dough, and so on). Because that seems like a pretty straightforward of directing the kid's interest. Although I agree with

movingfinger that the parent may have lost their chance to mentor the kid on this subject for some time if not forever.

I am not a huge fan of this advice, tbh. Unless there was shrieking and yelling and massive hostility (which it doesn't read like there was), I don't think LW was out of line.

I think I would approach it by talking about how it's television and therefore it's made to be entertaining, not factual. You could get the kid on board by pointing out how other genres of TV are not real or realistic, and point out similarities in drama-generating and narrative techniques between cooking shows and other forms of television that she already knows aren't realistic. If her misconceptions have come from following competitive and reality-TV cookery, maybe turn her onto more "honest" cooking TV (straightforward "today we are cooking this recipe" style stuff).

But yeah, I don't think it's a bad thing for a kid to have this boundary, TBH. I think C&F missed the mark on this one.

Yeah, same. I mean, it's not like the parent lacked empathy for the kid's excitement. And I don't think the idea of exposing them to more realistic knowledge of food science and recipe creation is bad. But saying no to aimless experimentation with real ingredients seems like a reasonable default, not some draconian stifling of her development.

Edited 2019-11-20 09:38 (UTC)

As I asked Eleanorjane, so, no experimentation with cheap ingredients to be allowed? Maybe because that's how I learned to cook (and my amily is not made of money) but that seems a little harsh to me.

Well... I was allowed to make food for myself and snack as I wished, sure. We had stuff that they knew I knew how to make and snack ingredients and the like. And later when I knew how to bake, I was allowed to bake, but this was after I had been taught to bake by my mom from age 5 and had baked for years with her as an assistant first. I doubt I'd've gotten in trouble if I spoiled some ingredients by mistake, particularly in that context, but it was a context of knowing how to make specific things and deviating from them, not a context of making things up at random. I definitely wouldn't have used a bunch of ingredients worth a bunch of money in quantities adequate to offer them to a parent for a meal without discussing it with them first - it wouldn't even have occurred to me to do that.

Huh. So you disapprove of the "here's your cabinet of cheap ingredients and your budget for cooking" solution? That's really interesting. May I ask more about why?

(I mean, I don't disapprove of stopping the kid from using $100 of ingredients ever again. I boggle at how she MANAGED to unless she ruined a whole tenderloin. But I disapproved of the "stop experimenting in the kitchen" part of what the LW did and sympathize with how the kid may have felt "punished for doing something awesome". More on that later.)

I think the practical suggestion is a good one; I wouldn't have thought of it myself, but I certainly have nothing against that idea, and in the same boat I might well follow that advice myself.

It was less the content and more the tone - there was a firm, though gentle, implication that the LW had made an error in how they handled their daughter, and that was the aspect that I disagreed with.

Also, I kind of wish the response had distinguished between cooking and baking. Enthusiasm for and advice about one does not necessarily transfer to the other.

True. Neither does skill on a side note. I can COOK the most ridiculous things but BAKE? Can't even make you a decent cupcake.

Hard agree. Glad not alone here.

I think LW is a bit confused about how much of this is "the brainwashing of cooking shows on TV" and how much is "nine year olds, amirite?"

I am mostly stuck on the 9-year-old using the kitchen without supervision, which would have been an absolute no-no in my childhood--too high a risk of me setting something on fire. But no one in the letter seems the least concerned about that, I guess?

Heh, I didn't think about that at all, because I was using the kitchen unsupervised from when I was 8 (I was a latch key child). I also set things on fire deliberately because I was a baby pyro, but my parents didn't know about that part. (That's not reassuring, is it?)

I was using the kitchen unsupervised at 9. I'd been cooking or assisting in the kitchen since I was able to pull up a chair to the stove and "help stir" vegetables. I made sure my son was also that capable in the kitchen, because it's one of the most dangerous places in the house and needs to be used safely.

No one's really concerned about it because plenty of kids are super capable in the kitchen at that age. If the mom wasn't concerned, why should the advice giver focus on something extraneous to the actual issue?

Absolutely. I was allowed to do 'cold things' but I wasn't allowed sharp knives without supervision and looking back I'm kind of stunned at how young I was allowed near a kettle. When I learned to cook it was very much with my mum at my shoulder. She didn't help or tell me what to do but she'd set out ingredients and prevent me from screwing up. I think I had it balanced.

My sister recently found an after school program for tweens that let them learn how to cook and explained some of the food sciencey stuff (as well as budget stuff) to her tween. And since that teenager is now a vegetarian it has been helpful that she can help prepare her meals (I don't actually know how my sister does it making 2 full sets of meals for each type of eater in her house. actually 3 now because one became vegan, one is vegetarian and the meat eater refuses to eat vegetables) So I would steer the kid more in that direction. Let someone else teach them the ways of the kitchen AND give them a cabinet of foostuffs they can use.

Some people grok cooking better than others. Experimentation is good, but if there are enough terrible meals they will eventually realize they have to go back to a recipe as a basis bc they are hungry. (yes I see the privilege of having the $$ to experiment and have terrible food. I remember eating a lot of terrible meals that didn't work when I was on a stricter budget)

As a latch key kid who was told at 9 that "You are old enough to read a recipe and follow it. The meat is in the fridge, make meatloaf from joy of cooking" There has to be a middle ground. Starting to let kids help when they are younger (yes younger than 9) and also explaining budgets to them younger (yes younger than 9) might have helped stave off the 100$ experiment. But kids still need to experiment. So let them have boundaries to do so. (my experimentation foodwise was confined to tuna fish salad. I could put ANYTHING I wanted in it, but I still had to eat it.)

I cannot wrap my head around wasting that amount of food. I read the post and had to go read something else for a bit. My anxiety went through the roof. I also can't wrap my hear around thinking going into the kitchen like that and doing any of that would be ok. I just wasn't that sort of child so I don't relate to the child here. When I learned to cook and bake it was helping my gran or my mum would tell me to follow a recipe and set out ingredients and sometimes tools I needed then supervise, only intervening to save a screw up.

The answer of her own cupboard of food and all this experimentation just....screams privilege for me. I fully admit I can't see past the waste in it as a kid whose gran fed her more often than not and who grew up on microwaved pasta with tuna and mayo because the lecky is ticking down again. Then I ate it in the dark.

I don't think it is too late for LW here. Why not ask child what they want to make at the weekend? Commit to making it together. Couple that with explaining that things cost a lot of money so it is important to try and avoid mistakes, though they do happen, but cooking is still cool.

Why not pick a recipe off one of the shows and try make it together? I'd especially pick one LW knows they can't do perfect (idk, something that means they need to drizzle a sauce over at the end) and show small child that it takes practice to learn those skills but hey, a puddle of sauce still tastes the same.

Idk this one gives me Emotions.

It's interesting how these things affect different people.

I mean, this one gave me Emotions too, but very different ones -- while my parents weren't wealthy, they both worked, and that meant that we kept the lights on and could spare some food for me to experiment with (and I went shopping with whichever parent was buying food, usually my mother, so I had an idea of what things cost). On the other hand because they both worked I spent a lot of time in the house by myself once I 'graduated' from babysitting, and because I've always been fat trying to watch my mother cook was very hit or miss because she would often yell at me for being fat, send me away from the kitchen, and restrict what I could eat.

But otoh we did always have utilities and enough food that I could waste some. And you're right, that is privilege.

Also, part of my approach to this is that I love to cook (and bake, and they are different). It's one of my creative outlets, and I chose it in part because it's relatively inexpensive (flour and sugar cost less than marble or oil paints, anyway). I would have been upset if I'd been barred from cooking due to expense just as I would have been if I'd been barred from drawing because paper and pens cost too much. But then, I knew we could have these things. If paper and pens and flour and sugar had indeed cost us too much... at any rate, you've given me a lot of food for thought.

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Care & Feeding: Advice for a parent whose child has been watching too many cooking shows

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