My new meal-planner

For Christmas my sister gave a wonderful gift to my daughter. She made a little apron, and wrapped it up with a kid's cookbook. Ella loves it, and frequently browses her cookbook asking, "Can we make this? And this?" Or, "Mommy, when's it gonna be Valentine's Day so we can make these heart cakes?" We've made a few things, but generally when I'm planning meals I'm not thinking about making sure to stock ingredients for Ella's cookbook requests.

This past month I decided to be proactive. I told Ella she could choose one day a month to plan a meal for our family using recipes from her cookbook. I suggested that she choose the 5th of each month, to go with her age. She was oh-so excited about the prospect, and happily ran to get her cookbook to plan her meal right then and there.

She looked through the pictures in her cookbook and selected a main meal, and then promptly told me what else she'd like to go with her meal.

Here's what she wanted:

chicken wraps
rice
peas
jello (for dessert; she chose blue)

I made out the list and then when we went shopping I had her help me find the ingredients on the list that were for her meal.

Here's our little cook:

And this is what we ate:



Mmmm. It was very good! She sat through the entire meal positively *glowing* from everyone's compliments.