To be, or not to be in the kitchen with kids

April 29, 2023

First things first. 

You need to see the wild growth of the formerly dead decorative sticks. I’ve got 5 or 6 curly willows growing with the will of weeds in my backyard pots. A friend of mine who has had this happen to her before has told me I should leave them in place for now, until the weather stabilizes. This sounded sensible to me. So I’ve kicked the can down the road for these lush things:

In reading about dead sticks coming back to life, I saw repeatedly that curly willow sticks can sprout but red dogwood won’t. And yet here we are. 

Now to the business of the week. A few days ago was the second anniversary of a dear friend’s death. In that odd way death has, her absence has both the rawness of a recent loss and the feeling that she’s been gone a million years. She was the kind of person who was sparky and full of fun, lived her faith in every breath, and had a robust, dark sense of humor. And so in honor of the wonderful Shelley Luppert Barnard, whom so many of us miss, I share this small set of memories about a sweet time in both of our lives. Plus a recipe. 

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I really can’t stand cooking with kids. I lose my head when kids are in the kitchen with me. They do everything wrong, they don’t listen to a word I say, and they make me nervous. Even my own kids. So I–like my mother before me–always kicked them out when I was getting started on dinner each evening. 

I have no idea when I thought they were going to learn to do this cooking thing.  

But I had a dear friend who was much kinder, wiser, and better in this regard, my homeschooling co-teacher Shelley. In the few years we homeschooled together, my friend Shelley and I split the duties. I took on literature, history, and art, and she handled math and geography. Her geography lessons included cooking–each week she and our three students would create a menu from the country they were studying. They made several complex dishes, and I was always invited to lunch at her house on those days. I made sure not to show up until lunch was actually on the table: I had no intention of getting caught up in any sort of kitchen fiasco. If any such event had transpired, by the time I got there Shelley would be laughing in the retelling and everything was very jolly. That was all very well and good for her. I was endlessly grateful that she did this with the girls every week for a whole school year. And not only that, she also taught math, the mere contemplation of which was enough to make me break out in a rash. Shelley was the sort of person who loved cooking challenging international meals with 6th graders, and regularly declared that math was “beautiful.” I thought she was an angel from heaven. 

Now Shelley thought the same of me, as I was teaching things that made her itchy. Literature? Including poetry? Forget it. I don’t know why poetry makes everyone practically homicidal but I think it’s quite delightful under the right circumstances. And to me, the right circumstances means, you have friends, fancy tea things and tea treats, and a pile of poetry books. You can’t go wrong with this set up. I did Tea and Poetry with my own girl for 4 years, 2 of those with additional students. I believe I can get anyone in the world to like poetry in this manner. 

Early on we started with some very fun books of children’s poetry and the idea was, between pouring yourself some tea into my fanciest china cups, and passing the scones, you would pick something out of a book to read aloud. We could easily pass an hour this way, taking turns around the table, amusing ourselves with Shel Silverstein and Jack Prelutsky and Robert Louis Stevenson. As the students got older, Tea and Poetry adjusted. The books became more diverse and challenging; we went from sharing random poems, to drilling into one particular poet each week, to each girl picking a poet to learn about and present each week. In our last year of Tea and Poetry we made a poet timeline around the perimeter of the entire dining room featuring printed out heads of poets, a few facts about them or their work, and some favorite lines. 

But the tea treats stayed the same–fruit, a dish of nuts, some wonderful baked thing, dainty little store bought cookies. I loved any excuse to bake scones, muffins, or cookies each week. And whereas I never wanted (okay, allowed) any help with baking, everyone helped set out the tea things and clean up at the end. Sometimes this turned out awkwardly, like the time I pulled the creamer out of the cupboard only to find it still contained last week’s cream. I’m pretty sure I did that myself.  

One of the students was nervous about breaking the china, and I said, I’m not nervous, you’ll be fine, and she was. We never even chipped a dish. But on one occasion it was difficult to maintain our usual Tea and Poetry poise. 

That afternoon, my dog trotted into the dining room, right in the middle of Tea and Poetry, with a large mouse in her mouth, head hanging out one side, tail out the other, like a cartoon. Terrier that she was, she was very proud and paused to look at everyone at the table, showing off her catch. Immediately every girl in the room–notably, not one of them the screaming type–screamed and jumped onto her chair with a great clattering of china. This alarmed the dog, who immediately dropped the mouse, which then began running about the premises, not helping matters. The mouse found a small crack in the corner and beat a hasty exit, but Tea and Poetry was thoroughly disrupted, our equanimity not to be restored that afternoon, nor our poetry.  

By eighth grade Shelley had taken over history, and she really did it up right. She taught 20th century America, delving into complexities like labor history, struggles for rights waged by many different groups, and the complications that underlie patriotic war slogans. She showed the girls how to use–oh my heart–the microfiche machines at the Harold Washington Library downtown to look at hundred-year-old local newspapers. Each quarter she had a history immersion day, Throwback Thursday, where the girls would bring news stories from that date, wear that era’s clothes and play its parlor games, and yes, once again, cook food from that time. She chose 4 dates of huge significance so there would be much to discover and discuss. They covered everything from ridiculous pop-cultural touchstones to forgotten foodways to events they’d never hear about anywhere else. The 1980s day definitely had big hair and pretentious recipes with way too many ingredients. The 1960s day saw them ironing their hair on an ironing board to get that straight as a pane of glass look. The 1940s day found them cooking within the constraints of war rations. And who knew that in the early 1900s a fun parlor pastime was for two people to lie on the floor blindfolded and hit each other with rolled up newspapers?

History is such a great subject. We lost wonderful Shelley only four years later to cancer. When I think of her I will think of this game for the rest of my life. 

I still don’t cook with my kid, but every once in a while it turns out there’s a small handful of kids in my kitchen, most likely baking. I try to steer clear and let them muddle through without my bossing them about, and I try to channel my friend who never minded what transpired in the kitchen with kids, but trusted it would all work out. Which it usually does.  

The scones that follow are from allrecipes, and they never go wrong. Try a batch this weekend. I promise they will be perfect. 

Grandma Johnson’s Scones
(with a few emendations that aren’t Grandma’s)

1 c sour cream

1 t baking soda

4 c all-purpose flour

1 c white sugar

2 t baking powder

¼ t cream of tartar

1 t salt

1 c butter

1 egg

1 c raisins, currants, or mini chocolate chips (totally optional)

In a small bowl, blend the sour cream and baking soda, and set aside. 

Preheat oven to 350°. Lightly grease a large baking sheet or line with parchment paper. 

In a large bowl, mix dry ingredients. Cut in the butter. Stir in the sour cream mixture and egg into the flour moisture until just moistened. Stir in the add-ins if using (truly, these scones are perfection itself just plain). If you’re having a hard time getting the dough to come together, certainly mix it with your hands, just til the dry ingredients are totally incorporated. Do not lose heart in this step–it takes longer or looks worse than you think it should. Turn dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead briefly–just once or twice. 

Now the original recipe has you pat the dough into a ¾” thick circle and cut into 12 wedges, but as I can only picture dagger-like scones resulting from this, and I don’t want my scones to be enormous anyway, I cut them differently and get many more, close to 2 dozen. I pat the dough into a ¾” thick rectangle, then slice it across lengthwise in three roughly 2″ rows. Then I cut triangles down each row. The ones from the ends of every row will be slightly raggedy or wonky triangle shapes, which is fine–much better for these things to be tender and slightly raggedy than look perfect and be tough.  Place them 2″ apart on your baking sheet.  

Bake for 12 to 15 minutes, until golden brown on the bottom, and becoming a very good golden color on top. Don’t take them out too soon or they’ll be glugey inside. 

While they’re still warm, sit down with a friend, pretty china cups for your tea, and a few poetry books. Or a couple of rolled up newspapers.