Home Ec for Boys

I think it's extremely important to teach boys "home ec." I've been teaching DS all his life. DS knows how to clean bathrooms, how to properly wash dishes my way as opposed to his father's way. ;-) He can dust and he can vacuum. He knows how to spring clean as opposed to regular weekly cleaning.

My son has learned to sew by hand. His favorite sewing activity when he was small was to sew the patterns in paper towels. On the back burner is a grand project of making a quilt. That will probably be started this summer. DS has also learned to crochet.

He's been making a mean grilled cheese for a few years now. He can prepare scrambled eggs and omelets. He has made many boxed cakes. He can bake cookies.

I decided it's time to start "real" cooking. That's difficult when the teacher hates to cook. We started out by working on our Webelos fitness badge in Cub Scouts. We have gone over the food pyramid many times before, but we covered it again. One of his projects to complete this badge is to plan a week's worth of menus, making sure he gets all the required food groups. That's a difficult task for a child that hates vegetables. (And he wants to be a vegetarian, too! -- The vegetarian who hates veggies lol)

Tonight for supper, I let him make a very special dish. We don't make it often because it's not very nutritious. The dish he prepared was my grandma's beef and noodles. My grandma was born in the late 1880s and died in the 1970s. (I always have to throw genealogy into my blog!) She never cared about fat content in meals, so this is a high-fat goodie.

DS started by making homemade noodles. He had a lot of fun with that, except having sensory issues, he hated the sticky feeling of the dough. Here's the recipe he followed for grandma's noodles.

1 C flour, not sifted
3/4 tsp. salt

Mix together with fork

2 egg yolks
1/4 C. half and half (we used fat free)

Mix liquids together. Form a well in the middle of flour, pour liquid in, then mix. Use hands to do this. Dough should be soft, not sticky. Form ball, cut in half. Roll out to the size of a large pizza, flour. Roll second ball out the same, and place on top of the other. Use a pizza cutter to cut noodles. Make them small and thin, because they'll swell up when cooking. Let dry at least two hours.

We made two recipes of noodles. (That's why it's not very nutritious!)

Once that mess was all cleaned up, I taught DS to use the crockpot. He put the roast on, poured water in, and forgot about it. Grandma always used a pressure cooker, but since I hate to cook, I don't know how to use our pressure cooker. (DH loves to cook) Plus, those things just scare me.

After his roast cooked for six hours, he took it out of the crockpot, and shredded the meat. He then learned how to skim the fat off the juices. He put the roast back in the crockpot, added the noodles, then poured boiling water from the tea kettle until the meat and noodles were covered. He then cooked it for 45 minutes.

He was thrilled. It was SO good! DS doesn't like meat and always has to thank the animal before he eats any meat. So we had to thank the cow, and then he enjoyed it tremendously! This is one of those meals that really sticks to your ribs.

I think the next time I make it, I'll use egg beaters and unbleached flour along with my fat-free half and half.

It's just the most wonderful feeling in the world for a mom to sit back and watch their child learning. He was so proud of his accomplishment. Mom and dad enjoyed it very much, too.