My son and his creative cooking...

It gives me a nice, fuzzy feeling when I see my children be creative.

Ben, my 9 year old, has started cooking himself breakfast most mornings. Bacon and eggs, pancakes, and omeletes are his 'specialties'. He likes re-creating McDonalds' McMuffins, and when we don't have english muffins, he uses bread and makes it into a toasted sandwich... During the school holidays, he made a bacon and egg toasted sandwich for himself, and latticed 'stringer' cheese on top! This has now become his 'usual' whenever he uses cheese in cooking:

He also makes himself lunch - ham and cheese toasted sandwiches (or 'jaffles'), with stringer cheese arranged like an asterix on top:

I love watching him grow up, and become so independent! It's a little scary that he's already taller than my shoulders (though my husband often remarks and laughs at that), and probably in 18 months he will be taller than me, but his culinary skills are improving each time he cooks (and he's now learnt not not to put the frypan straight into the sink because it melts plastic cups and bowls that are in there needing to be washed up!)

I was so impressed with how much cooking he'd begun that I bought him his own little frypan to use ($7 at ALDI well spent!) - he was so pleased and thankful, as was I, as it's a much littler frypan to wash up numerous times a week! :)

I'm also impressed with the different types of ingredients he uses... The first time he made an omelet, and I asked what he was going to put in it, he replied "Bacon, cheese and lettuce". "Gross!" I thought! But turned around to see that it was baby spinach he was adding to his mixture. Now he will always put baby spinach in his omeletes, which I simply marvel at - because most (generally) children would fight you for even thinking about making them eat their greens and salad!

We must be doing something right! :)