Please help! Going to teach dss how to cook, any suggestions?? And this got way longer than it needed to sorry :)

[IneedacleanerIamalazyslattern]

Dss is very fussy. (he's 9)
He eats next to nothing and it's getting worse.
We're don't make a huge fuss of things but I was thinking about teaching him to cook.
Him and I had a chat about it tonight and he is very keen got very excited telling me he had made Angel Delight before bless him.
(neither dh or his ex can cook anything that isn't ready made and can go in the microwave.)

So any fantastic suggestions. We are going to start on Wednesday and for a first off we are going to do cakes for his Granny coming over that evening and I know he'll eat cakes so thought it might be encoureging start for him.

I would like to get him learning things that we can eat as a family meal or part of it so any easy suggestions to get us started?

I am a pretty competent cook, i'm the one that cooks for all (dh's) family occasions because none of them (even MIL) can cook so they all look to me but after talking about this to dss I am now thinking OMG where do we start???

HELP!!!

If you go along to your local library you will probably find kids cookbooks that he could look though and decide what he wants to make.

My DS loves looking at cookbooks (kids ones and grown up ones) and picking out things to cook.

Off the top of my head, making pizzas is a good one. My DS loves making eggy bread for breakfast or an omelette.

I can't get to a library easily, did think about getting some simple cook books to for him to look at thank you

I would try involving him in making anything he does eat - and start from there.

Home baked bread is easy and fun to make (all that bashing). There's a book by a teenage boy with recipes for teenagers - Sam Stern, I think. Basic stuff - meatballs, etc. Would he eat that?

Cakes are great, obviously, but if you're trying to get him involved I think you're right to look at other stuff. Cheese sauce? Home made pesto? Pizza is great as Stirling said, lots of scope for different toppings.

BBC Food has some good stuff andBBC Cooking with children might be useful.

His eating is soo poor at the moment that getting him involved in things he does eat would be .....erm sweets.
The reason I chose cakes for a first was basically because I know he is going to be determained he is not going to enjoy it but I know he will love the cakes and I know he is (despite himself) going to be so proud when he gets to give his Granny a bit when she arrives that evening and that will give him a bit of incentive.

He is barely eating anything just now even the things he would eat before he isn't eating so the intention is eventually to get him cooking and trying different things.
But he is sooo bad it really is a bit of a slowly approach.

Juuule thanks for the links some good things on there to have a read through.

There are lots of more 'healthy' cakes etc he could help with - flapjacks, oat and fruit bars, carrot cake - even a really solid fruit cake. then perhaps fruit scones or pancakes with a fruit filling. Definitely try pizza - he can choose the toppings. If that works maybe a stir fry - again he can choose what goes in it.

The Usborne First Cookbook by Angela Wilkes and Stephen Cartwright here is a brilliant introduction to cookery for younger ( and not so younger!) children. It has a good variety of recipes, lots of illustrations and explanations and little cartoon cooks heaving food and implements around ( think The Borrowers).

He'll need some help to start with - obviously - but I still cherish the memory of my, then, 11 yr old son shutting me out of the kitchen and making the profiteroles from this book - perfectly.

I have to add that this represented the peak of his culinary career and he's now a whiz with the microwave . Adolescence does kind of get in the way so get your DSS going now!

I don't tend to bake, but I do cook and 7y DD likes to join in and help.

Do you have some normal cook books at home? I don't bother with kids ones.

DD will sit with one or two and choose one or two dishes she fancies. We then will make sure the ingrediants are ordered and we get cooking.

One pot meals are easy to make - chillis and stews, as are pasta meals. Burgers and meatballs are good as it is lots of hands on. And you could serve burgers with some homemade oven baked wedges - no peeling needed, just get him to cut some chips up.

I think if you get him to choose something to make it might be easier.

Jamie Oliver's Ministry of Food is great for basic recipes written in a no-nonsense style. Would thoroughly recommend starting DSS on a loaf cake - get a 2lb loaf tin and some loaf tin liners and find a recipe that just involves dumping all the ingredients in together and whizzing them up, then pouring into the liner. This is so straightforward and non-fiddly that it's a great way to kick off their enthusiasm. I can dig out two recipes for banana loaf and lemon loaf if you're interested.

HTH

Absolutely agree with everything Hulababy suggests about books, burgers and one pot jobs.

Ds picked up a slow cooker book the other day and spotted a pork and pineapple thing. It was called something like "Mexican Pork Chops with Pineapple", which to be honest doesn't really appeal but ds was taken by the idea and it was soooo easy.

Ds likes the idea of cooking but has a short attention span so minimal prep is the way to go. Anyhoo, it involved browning off some pork steaks (you could use diced), then frying up an onion, two chillis (deseeded, and not hot really), and a pepper then sticking the lot in the slow cooker with about 120ml of juice from a tin of pineapple cubes and the same of chicken or veg stock. After about 6 hours on low (book said more, but they lie ) you add the rest of the pineapple juice and the pineapple itself for the last 30 mins or so. We had it with rice and it went down well - not as bad as I'd feared.

Ds's contribution was to chop the pepper (not the chilli) and anything pineapple related (measuring the juice, tipping the tin into the slow cooker) so his role wasn't exactly key but he was happy. Baby steps and all