Get home ec cooking in your homeschool everyday…

Whether intentional or unintentional is a great skill for anyone in any generation!

For our family, cooking is a necessity. Three growing teen boys who are “starving” all the time, we have to cook and cook creatively. Otherwise, we’d be broke. Oh wait, we are. Never have I believed the sentiment more: “eating us out of house and home.” Whether you have a large family like us or a small one, cooking is a necessity.

What’s Happening and Why Cooking?

According to the Food Institute, cooking skills are starting to trend upwards as of 2024, with an average of 58% of generation alpha children ages 8-18 years cooking for themselves. Many of them using social media, the Food Network and other sources to teach themselves how to cook.[1] This could be a reaction to the previous generational changes or perhaps COVID or rising fast-food costs. Regardless, cooking is a necessary tool for any successful person in life.

Top 3 Staples to Home Ec Cooking:

Everyone should have 2-3 foods or meals they can cook themselves.

Whether your child is in college, living at home, or living by themselves, there will be times they need to cook. It’s a necessity to life. And most of the time, starting a new job or going to college makes you poor. Cooking can help that.

Teaching your child any cooking skills will be a priceless skill they will appreciate:

1. It helps you save money.
2. You can make healthy meals.
3. You can have a meal to entertain friends or guests.
4. You have a meal you can take to a party or carry-in picnic.
5. You can survive on your own.

1. Easy Recipes & Meals for the Everyday

Easy Meals to Bring to a Party

2. How to Modify a Recipe

Making modifications due to lack of ingredients or food allergies is a skill all by itself. It takes practice, but inviting your child to work with you when you happen to run out of something and can’t get to the store is a great way to improv teach and improv learn!

Teaching your child how to adjust a recipe due to time restraints or lack of ingredients is an essential. Skip the meltdown – teach the skill of problem solving.

1. Google it. It’s true. Teach your child how to search for “substitutes for cheddar cheese” or “best substitutes for milk allergy”. It’s a game-changer. More than likely, google is going to spit out a million options and something is bound to work for the recipe.
2. Teach similar tastes and flavors – we are out of spaghetti sauce – here’s how you make homemade spaghetti sauce with tomatoes and paste
3. Teach how to portion and moderate – changing to taste (small batches to try)

3. Improv Cooking

Whether you live in a small town with everything far away or closed by 8pm or a big city with stores open 24/7, cooking on the fly is an important skill.

The easiest way to get improv cooking in on the everyday is adding sides or treats to a meal plan. We usually have a meal plan listed for the week using this easy weekly planner template, then we add sides, fruits, vegetables, salads etc. to it depending on what everyone wants to eat.

• How to make recipes with staples at home
  • Homemade pizza (homemade dough, tomatoes, and cheese)
  • Burgers (meat, seasonings, cheese and buns)
  • Soup (noodles, chicken, vegetables, broth)
  • Homemade bread (flour, sugar, yeast)
  • Black bean nachos (canned beans, cheese and chips)
  • Casseroles (noodles, sauce)
  • Pasta alfredo (sauce and pasta)
  • Beef and shells (beef and pasta)

3-Ingredient Wonders

1. Chicken Quesadillas: Chicken, cheese and tortillas.
2. Grilled Cheese: Bread, American cheese and butter
3. PB&J: Bread, peanut butter and jelly or jam
4. Egg Sandwich: Eggs, butter, bread
5. Pesto Chicken: pesto sauce, chicken and cheese

Show and Explain Pantry Staples to your child:

Some common pantry staples include:

Home ec cooking doesn’t have to formal or organized, it can happen naturally. From showing your child the everyday pattern of cooking a meal to itemizing what you have, it’s important.

1. When you decide to shop, have your child help you find pantry items to make a list.
2. When you make a recipe, have your child help cook with you.
3. Pick a day to let your child just “try it out” to learn how to make a recipe with what you. The best learning is hands-on experiences.
4. Having a day? Just have older children try out a recipe with the instructions and you work on something around the house that needs done and wait for them to ask for help or ask you questions.