Themed Cooking: Making Memories That Last
June 11, 2008 | Written by: Rhyah Fletcher
The average family of four spends $40 for a night at the movies. A trip to a water park can run a family well over the $50 mark, and a day at the mall rings up the credit card bill.
While these activities do provide family fun, doing them on a regular basis is costly. One family activity that is big on fun but easy on the wallet is a monthly themed cooking day.
Themed cooking day is an all day affair that actually picks up the night before. You start by gathering together and picking a theme. Fun ideas include cultural themes like Italian, Mexican and Chinese, or food specific themes such as eggs or cheese. If you don’t plan to shop for specific foods for your theme, check out what foods you have on hand before you pick your theme. The best way to save money is to pick a theme that only needs a few special ingredients, and have the rest of the food already on hand.
Once you have a theme, give each person a meal to plan. You need a meal for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert. If you have a large family, people can work in groups. Plan the menu for the next day by looking through cookbooks or cooking magazines, perusing the Internet or using old family recipes. Have each person write down any ingredients they need, and head off to the store for a family shopping experience. Don’t forget to bring along coupons or sale ads to save money.
The next day, while the breakfast crew starts cooking breakfast, everyone else should start decorating the kitchen or dining room in the current theme. Decorations should be simple and use materials you have on hand. Decorating ideas include place mats, wall decorations, place cards, streamers and balloons. Small children enjoy making the place mats from construction paper and crayons. If you chose a cultural theme, such as Italian, they can draw the colors of Italy’s flag, a variety of Italian foods and even Italian words such as “Mangia” and “Vita Bella.” You can decorate the walls, or make place cards, with print outs of photographs and pictures from the Internet.
During breakfast, let the cook or cooks explain why they chose that particular meal for the theme, and how they made it. After breakfast, the cooks clean up the kitchen while the rest of the family prepares a fun game activity. Games should be simple and tie in somewhat with your cooking theme. Depending on your theme, you can look up facts on the Internet and have a trivia game, bob for apples, have an egg toss or egg race, play a board game, learn new words in a different language, make rain sticks with rice, or create musical instruments using beans and paper plates.
Send the lunch crew off to make lunch, and let them explain why they chose their meal and how they made it. Do the same for dinner and dessert. At the end of the night, give each group or person a culinary award, emphasizing something great about the meal. The best way to do this is to have the breakfast crew make an award for the lunch crew, the lunch crew makes an award for the dinner crew, and so forth.
This unique activity helps your family grow closer through planning, shopping, cooking and playing together. Also, everyone probably learned at least one or two new things they didn’t know before. Save more money on future cooking days, and up the fun factor a few notches, by inviting another family to join you and making it a mini-party.
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Themed cooking days sound like a really great idea.
We already have sort of themed days on public holidays, so why not some themed days targetted to our family.
A great idea.
Chef Jamess last blog post..Healthy Home Cooking Is A Good Habit