Cooking

Books

🌿Tofu Takes Time by Helen H. Wu
This illustrated fiction book offers a narrative of a child learning to make tofu with her NaiNai. It underscores the idea that good, fresh, homemade tofu is worth the time it takes to make it–especially when you spend that time together! It also highlights the connection between the tofu and the various resources from the earth used to make it.

🌿Mud Book: How to Make Pies and Cakes by John Cage and Lois Long
In case you’re wondering, yes– it’s written by that John Cage. This beautiful book features hand-written recipes and instructions for making mud pies and cakes in the timeless ways that children do.

🌻I Made This: Snacks by Chopchop Family
This photo-illustrated nonfiction board book walks toddlers through simple recipes to build their own healthy snacks.

🌻Stir, Crack, Whisk, Bake by America’s Test Kitchen
This illustrated interactive book walks children through a cooking narrative where they “drag,” “pour,” and “mix” ingredients right on the page until a batch of sprinkle-covered cupcakes is completed.

🌻India on a Plate!: Indian Food from A to Z by Archana Sreenivasan
This illustrated board book explores the diversity of Indian cuisine. With good rhyme scheme and included pronunciations, this book so well done I wish it was part of a series.

🌻Yum, Yum, Mexico: Mexican Food from A to Z by Diane de Anda
This brightly-illustrated board book uses simple rhymes to describe an alphabet’s worth of Mexican-American cuisine. For those of us who never picked up Spanish as a second (or fourth) language, there is a pronunciation note for each dish.

🌻How We Eat by Shulli de la Fuente-Lau
This board book is photo-illustrated with diverse representation, like others in the We Are Little Feminists series. Very simple text explores how people around the world eat in ways that are different–and the same.

Stone Soup by Jon J. Muth
In this variation on the classic story, three zen monks trick a fearful hungry village into contributing the food they’ve hoarded away in their homes and becoming a happy and sharing community once again.

Soup Day by Melissa Iwai
A child goes to the store with her mother and picks out produce needed to make their favorite soup (celery, onion, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms, zucchini, and parsley). At home they wash and cut the veggies and put them into a pot of water to cook, adding seasoning spices. While they wait for the soup to be ready, she reads books and plays with her mother.

Granny’s Kitchen by Sade Smith
This illustrated story takes us through a narrative of Jamaican culture and popular breakfast foods. When Shelly-Ann asks her grandmother how to cook a favorite dish, her grandmother walks her through the recipe. Several recipes later, Shelly-Ann is feeling discouraged by cooking that has come out too burned, too soft, or too salty. When she takes her grandmother’s advice and tries the recipes again, she finds her cooking has already improved a little! I really love that this book doesn’t promise us perfection on even the second try.

Lefse Day by Heidi Smith & Kari Throop
This book describes the tradition and process of making the Norwegian potato-based flatbread, lefse. What I found most interesting about the illustrations of this book was that there are no people in any of the pictures. In some ways, this does maintain an isolated focus on the materials and cooking process, but it also feels odd to have a book about family traditions without people.

Tyler Makes Pancakes! by Tyler Florence
This book features simple illustrations as young Tyler goes through the store collecting ingredients for pancakes and learning about the sources of eggs, milk, flour, blueberries, and maple syrup. The story then takes us through the steps of cooking the pancakes for his family.

Dumpling Day by Meera Sriram
This illustrated counting book describes ten different types of dumplings made by families around the world. You can find recipes for all ten dumplings at the end of the book.

Spicy Spicy Hot! by Lenny Wen
In this illustrated fiction book, a child named Lintang tries sambal for the first time with her grandmother and learns that it is too spicy for her! What I absolutely love about this book is that her family validates her low tolerance for the spicy food and reassures her that she doesn’t have to like the same food that they do. Lintang’s repeated attempts to try different varieties of sambal are born entirely of her own desire to like something special that she sees the rest of her family enjoying together. Seeing her determination, her grandmother offers her fresh sambal made with very mild spices and Lintang is happy to be included (in a way that honors her limitations). Her grandmother then teaches her how to prepare different types of sambal and how to reduce spiciness from the different kinds of peppers.

Lunch From Home by Joshua David Stein
In this illustrated story, four children face criticism of their ethnic lunches in the school cafeteria. One by one, they ask their families to pack them basic sandwiches instead of the lunches they loved. By the next week, they’re so bored of simple sandwiches that they start bringing their normal lunches again, embracing and defending their culture and tastes. This fictional story is based on the lives and experiences of four real-life chefs.

I’m a Hungry Dinosaur by Janeen Brian
This illustrated fiction book shows a dinosaur baking a cake. While the rhythm and rhyme of the story are great, my favorite part is echoing the simplified block of large print text in a loud and gravelly dinosaur voice. Interestingly, the artwork for the chocolate baking mess was created using real cocoa powder.

Creative Art Opportunities

🍚Potato/apple stamps
🍚Cookie cutter stamps
🍚Cookie dough shapes to bake
🍚Swirl designs in pancakes
🍚Painting on apple discs with food coloring
🍚Decorating a pizza
🍚Collage with rice, pasta, lentils, beans, etc.
🍚Paint with puffy whipped cream
🍚Wet noodle sculpture (dries firm)

Hands On Experiences

⛅️Explore common pantry ingredients in sensory tubes (flour, oats, rice, pasta, quinoa, etc)
⛅️Explore with cookie cutters and playdough (or cooking dough)
⛅️Ladle water/rice/oatmeal from bowl to bowl
⛅️Balance eggs on spoons
⛅️Play with toy fruits and vegetables
⛅️Explore pots and pans with a wooden spoon
⛅️Measuring cups and spoons with rice in sensory bin
⛅️Mixing bowls, spoons, spatulas, and whisks with rice in sensory bin
🍱Make soup (real or pretend)
🍱Make banana muffins
🍱Make oatmeal bites
🍱Make toast with butter/nut butter and sprinkles
🍱Make mini pizzas with tortillas & tomato sauce
🌿Have a picnic outdoors to enjoy your homemade treats
🌿Make mud pies with dirt or sand outdoors
❄️Make snow cakes with bowls and cooking spoons outdoors

Songs to Learn and Sing

“On Top of Spaghetti” – American folk song by Tom Glazer, 1963 (Tune: On Top of Old Smokey)

On top of spaghetti, all covered with cheese
I lost my poor meatball when somebody sneezed
It rolled off the table and onto the floor
And then my poor meatball rolled out of the door
It rolled in the garden and under a bush
And then my poor meatball was nothing but mush
But the mush was as tasty as tasty could be
And early that summer it grew into a tree
The tree was all covered with beautiful moss
It grew lovely meatballs and tomato sauce
So if you eat spaghetti all covered with cheese
Hold onto your meatball and don’t ever sneeze!

“Aiken Drum” – (Scottish nursery rhyme of which there are many modern versions; Raffi did a cover in 1976 with foods familiar to Canadian children and that version is reflected here)

There was a man lived in the moon, in the moon, in the moon
There was a man lived in the moon and his name was Aiken Drum

And he played upon a ladle, a ladle, a ladle
And he played upon a ladle and his name was Aiken Drum

And his hair was made of spaghetti, spaghetti, spaghetti
And his hair was made of spaghetti and his name was Aiken Drum

And his eyes were made of meatballs, meatballs, meatballs
And his eyes were made of meatballs and his name was Aiken Drum

And he played upon a ladle, a ladle, a ladle
And he played upon a ladle and his name was Aiken Drum

Adn his nose was made of cheese, cheese, cheese
And his nose was made of cheese and his name was Aiken Drum

And his mouth was made of pizza, pizza, pizza
And his mouth was made of pizza and his name was Aiken Drum

And he played upon a ladle, a ladle, a ladle
And his name was Aiken Drum

There was a man lived in the moon, in the moon, in the moon
There was a man lived in the moon and his name was Aiken Drum

“The Best is Apple Pie” -Ginalina

Things taste good when they are sweet
An orange, carrot, and a big red beet
Chopped up rutabaga–what a treat
And how ’bout apple pie!

All it takes is flour, sugar, cinnamon spice
Butter, milk, and an apple slice
In the oven for a little while
We’ve got apple pie!

Things taste good when they are sweet
An orange, mango, and a raspberry
Count this watermelon, what a treat
And how ’bout apple pie!

All it takes is flour, sugar, cinnamon spice
Butter, milk, and an apple slice
In the oven for a little while
We’ve got apple pie!

Mmm, mmm, apple pie
Smells so good and looks so nice
Call your friends, oh me, oh my
We’ve got apple pie!

Things taste good when they are sweet
An orange, carrot, and a big red beet
Chopped up rutabaga–what a treat
And how ’bout apple pie!

Things taste better when they are sweet
Friends at the table can’t be beat
Always room for one more seat…
And the best is apple pie!

NIYN – Cooking on Spotify
All playlists are works in progress and are actively curated when I have a unit in play or preparation, so new songs may appear and old songs may be removed if they don’t suit my designs.