(Updated with pictures!)

My oldest son, Jeremy, is anticipating moving out on his own some time, so for Christmas he asked for the book How To Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. Then as my husband was shopping for video games for the youngest for Christmas, he saw a Personal Trainer: Cooking Game for the Nintendo DS and took advantage of the Toys R Us sales to get this one for Jeremy. Jason liked it so well he bought one of his own. Then, Jeremy had received a gift card for Wal-Mart for Christmas and looked around but didn’t see anything he wanted. I suggested that, just as he had asked for some basic tools for Christmas and birthdays the previous year in anticipation of being out on his own, maybe he could use the gift card for some basic kitchen tools or appliances. So he bought a food processor because he’s been reading about one in his new cookbook.

One day for lunch he made homemade potato soup and roast beef sandwiches. Monday of this week he made homemade bread using the dough-mixing capability of his food processor. It was good!

The DS game is pretty neat. It narrates the instructions out loud, and because you have your hands busy, when you get ready for the next step, you just say, “Continue.” It does tend to interpret any loud noise as the instruction to continue, though. If you don’t understand a step or want a term defined, you can say, “More information.”

Jason unexpectedly got the night off work tonight, so he suggested he and Jeremy collaborate on making dinner. A night of someone else making dinner is fine by me! They’re using the DS game for a recipe, and it smells good so far.

It’s been fun to see their approach. Jeremy is analytical and by-the-book, at least when he’s new to something. Jason tends to be more experience-oriented. One time when I was out of town helping my mom after surgery, Jason had some friends over — he must’ve been about 10 — and Jim let them make mini pizzas using English muffin halves and pizza sauce and whatever toppings they wanted. They had some pretty unique combinations, but they had a high old time.

Jason also started working at Subway several weeks ago and brought home all kinds of neat ideas for sandwiches that I’d never thought about or tried. For a while there at lunch or after church Sunday nights we were all asking him to make sandwiches for us. 🙂

I had always thought it would be a good idea to have them be responsible for a meal once a week or so as they were growing up so they’d know some basics about cooking, but in their high school and college years, they were so busy, there just never seemed to be time. But I am glad they have the desire to experiment now. It will be good to know they won’t have to subsist on fast food if it is a while before they marry or if their wives are sick or away. It’s been a blessing to me that Jim is able to cook a few things in those instances, and I wanted the boys to have at least some skill in the kitchen.

I’ve even learned a few things. With Jeremy’s by-the-book approach and going out and buying the exact ingredients called for, I’ve found it does make a difference. I tend to just use vegetable oil if I don’t have extra-virgin olive oil or minced onion if I don’t have green onion. But sometimes those extra little touches do make a great deal of difference. It’s good to learn how to improvise, too, but I am going to start paying attention to the particulars.

Of course, with any beginning cook, there are mishaps…things I thought they knew or just didn’t think to tell them. Like keeping a eye on the toaster oven and making sure no food touches the heating element…because it can (and did) start a fire (thankfully very small and easy to put out)…and not to touch your eyes after chopping peppers. But we all have our stories…I won’t mention the time years ago I set a bag of popcorn on a burner on the stove when I thought I had a different burner turned on. The boys thought having a fire truck come to the house was great fun…

Finished product:

Update: I wrote most of this last night and didn’t get back to update, but dinner turned out well! I don’t remember the name of the dish — it was from Spain and was kind of a stew with chicken, ham, onions and bell peppers. Different, but good! I took pictures but my Picasa, where I download them, is having trouble this morning and I am waiting til one of my computer experts gets up before I attempt to do anything with it. Hopefully I’ll be able to upload them later! Jeremy suggested closing down Picasa and then opening it again, then rebooting the computer if that didn’t work, before following Pica’s instructions. The first stepped worked, thankfully!! It was scary opening the program to find icons in place of the photos! I have most of them backed up on an external hard drive but wasn’t sure when I last backed them up — this reminds me to do that again!!