Cooking and...cleaning up (sort of)

Cooking was a family affair last Thursday when I decided to make brownies (because we needed some baked chocolate in the house and Katie asked for them) AND zucchini bread (because I had three zucchini from the local CSA and they weren't getting any fresher).   This was a lot for an afternoon, especially since we were supposed to be going to swim team practice and I had a book club meeting that night.  We were only able to do it because Katie and I decided together that we were going to play hooky from swim team.  After the meet on Tuesday was rained out after the freestyle, we had to go back on Wednesday and finish the rest of the meet.  Two days of swim meets with toddler in tow had me whupped, I was ready for a swim team break.  So, on to cooking!

Katie wanted to stir the brownies but had difficulty getting the spoon around in the thick batter.  She needed me to hold the bowl so she could use two hands to hold the spoon and even that didn't last too long before her poor arms gave out.  She did use her professional egg cracking skills to make sure that the eggs were properly cracked into the mixing bowl.  She was especially thrilled that I needed 6 whole eggs for the zucchini bread since I was making a double batch.  Christian got in on the action with the zucchini bread.  I cut the zucchini up and he and Katie put it into the food processor.  In hindsight, I should have had Katie slice up the zucchini and hand it to Christian to put in the food processor.  That would have been a great opportunity for Katie to work on her knife skills and a better division of labor so that they wouldn't fight over who got to put the zucchini in.  They both helped blend the zucchini and they loved pressing the buttons. :)  Sadly, I wasn't able to get any pictures of the zucchini bread helping but it was pretty neat to have both kids on different height stools next to me helping.  I did get some good pics of the brownie clean up though.

 This was Christian's first experience with getting to lick the spoon and oh, did he loooooove that part of cooking!

Mmm.  Yep, that's how I feel about chocolate too. :) 

Is there any more on here?

 You're the BEST Mom! 

The best part of the night was that I left immediately after putting the zucchini bread in the oven for my book club meeting.  When I got home, my amazing hubby had put the children to bed AND started the clean up.  He knows how to get me to make more scrumptious treats!