Cooking with Toddlers: Five Safety Tips

There is nothing better than getting your child interested in preparing food at a young age. Cooking with toddlers is no easy feat, but it does mean that you will reap the benefits later in life!

The best way to cook with a toddler is to practice extreme safety. Here are a few ways to keep your little one secure in the kitchen.

1. Invest in a kitchen helper stool. These have a railing around them so your child won't fall. He can stand high enough so as to reach everything, but won't be able to slip and fall or lose his balance.

2. Keep sharp knives out of reach. Make a point of explaining why you're not letting your child have a knife. Give her a butter knife and mushrooms or a banana to slice while you are chopping . . . preferably at least a foot away.

3. Keep pot handles turned in. Every young child should know what "hot" means. However, little ones tend to be curious and they might pull down a pot of boiling food if they reach up to tug on a handle. Remember that they can't see what is in the pots and it's best to keep those handles out of reach.

4. Teach stove safety. If you have a gas stove, make sure your child understands that he is never to touch the knobs without your permission. This can cause gas to leak into the house and can cause an explosion if you don't know and try to light the stove. Kids are never too young to learn what is dangerous and they'll remember a lot more than you expect, though they may challenge you sometimes.

5. Use plastic and metal utensils. These are less likely to break if your child throws them on the floor or drops something.

These tips will help make cooking with toddlers fun and safe. A lot of it is common sense, but you will find that your child learns very quickly if you teach him not to touch certain things, too.


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Stand Out From the Crowd With Mini Cakes

First of all, what are they? They are just what they seem they would be. They are pans that help you to create several little cakes instead of one big one. Usually, you will be able to bake 6 or more cakes with one pan.

Why mini cakes? Well, although we all love a great big cake and I will never pass up an offer for a piece, why not do something different? It is always fun to stand out from the ordinary and do something people will remember. These pans will help you do that.

The possible uses or types of occasions during which you could use these pans are many. You can create mini cakes for fancy gatherings or even for backyard get-togethers. They can be fancy or cute. These cakes fit right in with any crowd and at any occasion.

If you, or someone you love, are going to enjoy a small, intimate wedding, you could use these cakes and decorate each one with a monogram of the new couples names. These cakes can be piled at each table on a nice dish for the guests to enjoy. Another great idea is to pack each cake into a small, white box and hand it to each guest as a gift when they are leaving the reception. This is definitely different and memorable. Of course, monogramming each cake by hand is only feasible if you have a small wedding.

Are you celebrating a child's birthday or even just having a sleep over? One fun idea is to bake several of these mini cakes and frost them. Then, once you have removed the cakes and frosted them, you can fill each hole in the cake pan with a different topping. Allow each child to decorate their own cake. The possible topping could include sprinkles, chocolate chips, small pieces of strawberries, shredded coconut and more. This will be so much fun for each of your child's guests. They will talk about long after the party is over. The best part is that you will gain instant "cool mom" status with your kids' friends. You can't beat that.

The many possible uses for these pans are only limited to your imagination. I know of one mom who has even used the more decorative pans to make mini jello molds! Each child gets one and there are no arguments about who is getting more than the other.

So, when you are looking for something new to try and want to stand out from the crowd for a birthday, wedding, reunion or get together of any type, consider purchasing the pans and making mini cakes. You will love them!

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Quick and Easy Cooking Tips with Top 10 Seasoning Ingredients

For many cooking beginners, they find it difficult to master the taste of the good with some good sense; sometimes there too much salt and soy sauce, sometimes too little sugar, sometimes not enough flavor, and always seems like short of something in the taste.

Here is a piece of handy summarized and short list that will help you get the right seasoning for your foods, especially for those who are looking for quick and easy cooking methods, this will really help a lot.

1. Miso Paste
With the recent years of Japanese foods popularity and health consciousness, many people like to eat and cook Japanese foods. Miso paste is the most frequent used seasoning ingredients in Japanese foods making.
Basically it is very easy to get in the hypermarket these days, there are two types, the red miso and the white miso. The red miso is more salty and spicy in nature, suitable to cook in soup or go very well with fish based cooking. The white miso is more sweet based, suitable for frying and simmering dishes.

2. Kimchi
Kimchi can eat with rice or noodles directly, however it is a very good seasoning and flavoring ingredient in cooking also. There are basically two to three types of kimchi that originated from different country like Korea, Taiwan and China. Taiwan kimchi is suitable to eat with rice or just by itself, Korean kimchi is a bit salty and spicy, which is more suitable to use in frying, soup making and meat seasoning.

3. Curry Stock or Powder
Cooking curry is never easy, but everything changed with the widely available curry stock or powder in the market. There are Japanese style curries, Indian style curries, Jawa style curries, Thai style curries, and many more.

4. Fresh Chicken Stock or Block
It preserved the fresh young chicken taste, it is more healthier over MSG. It is very suitable and better taste in stir frying vegetables, cooking noodles, steam fish, and others.

5. Thick Soup Stock
This is very efficient in cooking thick creamy soup. Just mix it with boiling hot water. If you like more ingredients, you can cook it over medium fire with vegetables, meat, seafood, chicken, and so on.

6. Deep Fried Red Onion Toppings
Slice the small red onions and deep fry in pork oil. It is very delicious to sprinkle some on top of noodles, stir fry vegetables and soup.

7. Chicken Soup Stock
This chicken soup stock is used in preparing soup, can replace MSG and salt for stir fry dishes.

8. Sesame Sauce
There are two type of sesame source, one is white and the one is black. Black sesame source is good to go with meat, where white sesame is good to go with noodles and vegetables.

9. Mayonnaise
It has many flavor in mayonnaise and it can serve with many different type of dishes whether it is raw green salad or some deep fry dishes.

10. Dashi Stock
Natural extraction from fish. It helps in bring out the taste of the food but just adding a little on the dish. Mostly task delicious to go with season type cooking.

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