Ace Makes Dinner

Yes this was a Messy March project, how could you tell?  ;-)  Ace has been helping in the kitchen for years (literally) now as much as we ever let him to - so I thought it was high time he learn how to make dinner all by himself  mostly by himself.    Continuing with our theme of Messy March I thought what better time to give him some freedom in the kitchen!

I planned to do this on Friday night and he patiently awaited dinner time that night and after we finished several less than fun tasks we headed downstairs to get started.  Mommy fail! I did not have the biscuits that we needed and it was far to late to whip up some of my own dough to make anything.   He was disappointed but he recovered well enough with a trip through McDonald's drive thru as a substitute.

Saturday was plain too busy with toilet paper fun to bother getting ourselves ready to go to the grocery store (yes the whole day) and so we did something else for dinner.  However, that night I asked him to remind me after church so that we could go to the store to get some biscuits.   Sunday rolled around, we went to church, and came home got out of the car and then he remembered - kudos for remembering - but would have been SUPER awesome if we had still been in the car.  We went a few hours later.  :)

With our supplies ready: Pillsbury biscuits, marinara sauce, shredded cheese, mini pepperoni, and spinach I let the boy get to work.  I let Mae play too - but she freaked out when I plopped down biscuit dough on her tray.   She has made it bizarrely clear that she is NOT ok with anything dough related. Noted, Baby Girl...

Ace got to work patting the dough flatter. He worked in pretty quick fashion, didn't really lingering or play with it.   Really focused on the end goal.  I ended up smashing them a bit more for him because he agreed that they weren't flat enough.  :)

He did a great job applying the sauce as well and Mae enjoyed that part of the fun - she rubbed her fingers all over her tray and enjoyed sucking the sauce off of her fingers.  Ace didn't sample any of that - he was focused on the cheese.   Mae the second she saw it squawked her desire for some too!

Finally after cheese was liberally applied to all the pizzas he got to work applying the pepperoni and spinach to the pizzas in whatever way he felt led.  It was fun to watch him decide how to apply it.  He was insistent that they all have pepperoni and spinach rather than some without one or the other.   Well, ok then.

After he declared his work done I cleaned up around the individual pizzas and tossed the extra cheese on top of the pizzas and then put them in the oven.  Mae was fidgity in her chair so I let her down to wander while they cooked (which for the record was a total of 9 minutes at 350')

 
9 minutes later the pizzas came out - and looked delicious - cut one up for the boy and sent it on over to him.   He was thrilled.  Ate the whole thing and enjoyed it.   I won't lie I ate 4.  DELICIOUS!  Quick, fun, somewhat messy, and a great confidence builder in our young chef!!