Choose a section >> Crocheting / Knitting Woodworking Cooking -How to Read a Cooking Recipe -How to Read a Baking Recipe

Teaching your child a skill that involves both their hands and their imagination provides them with a valuable tool for the future. It also provides you with an opportunity to interact one-on-one with your child, something that is hard to come by in our busy lifestyles. Sharing handcrafts that your parent or grandparent taught you ensures that a small piece of your heritage stays alive with subsequent generations. Try one or try them all until you find a handcraft that appeals to both you and your child.

Crocheting/Knitting

LearntoKnit.com lists some of the following reasons for why over 24 million people say they love to work with yarn.

• It has a calming effect – helps relieve stress
• It is portable – you can take it anywhere!
• It adds balance to a high-tech, fast-paced lifestyle
• Maximizes your time while you watch TV or travel
• Enables you to carry on a family tradition
• It’s cost-effective – you can spend a lot or a little.

Find instructions for choosing yarn, the tools needed, getting started and easy projects at Learn to Knit.

You can also find beginners instructions and easy patterns for crocheting at Crochet at About.com.

Woodworking

Here’s another handcraft that appeals to kids of all ages, and can result in great gift ideas, or even the beginnings of a small home business. Check the following links for getting started in woodworking …

Glossary of Woodworking Terms.

Beginner’s List of Handtools.

Beginner’s List of Powertools.

Cooking

This is a practical life skill that all students should learn (yes, even young men!) before they leave home to venture out on their own. Here are some practical basics for beginning cooks from About.com’s Basics of Cooking Lessons.

How to Read a Cooking Recipe

Cooking is a science, and a recipe is like a chemical formula. Once you learn the basics and the language, your cooking expertise and knowledge will grow by leaps and bounds! Here are some foundational pointers to get you started.

• Always read your recipe all the way through, from beginning to end. This way you’ll know you have all the proper ingredients and utensils *before* you start!
• Most good recipes will list the ingredients in the order in which they’re used. This will help you organize your supplies from the start.
• Measurements in a recipe are critical. Once you’ve become familiar with how ingredients work together in a recipe, you can become creative like Great Aunt Hessie and toss in a pinch of this and a handful of that. Until that time, however, be sure to measure accurately. One thing to note … when a recipe calls for a teaspoon or a tablespoon, this is referring to an actual measuring utensil, not the spoons you would use for eating and serving. You may encounter the following abbreviations when measuring ingredients:
  • Tbsp = tablespoon
  • Tsp = teaspoon
  • oz = ounce
• Be sure to read your ingredients list carefully! If, for example, a recipe calls for “1 cup nuts, chopped”, that is different from “1 cup chopped nuts”. The first is telling you to measure 1 cup of unchopped nuts first, and then chop them. The second is referring to measuring nuts that are already chopped.
• The body of a recipe will contain instructions about combining and cooking the ingredients. You might encounter the following cooking terms:
  • Heating = means to place ingredients (such as oil) in a pan or skillet, turning on the heat to medium, and leaving it on the heat for 1-2 minutes until you can feel the warmth when you hold your hand 3-4” above the pan.
  • Medium Heat = is right in the middle of your dial.
  • Low Heat = is the bottom ¼ in the range from off to high.
  • Browning = means to cook just until the pink or red color disappears from meat. Do NOT cook until the meat is a dark brown. You can always cook some more, but overcooking is permanent!
  • Tender = means that vegetables pierce easily with little resistance when you poke them with a fork. Pasta is tender when it is cooked all the way through. To test, remove one strand of pasta from the pan, rinse with cool water and carefully cut in half. There should be no white areas inside. When you taste it, the pasta should not taste of flour and texture should be tender but still firm.
  • Stirring Frequently = means to manipulate the ingredients in a pan with a spoon every 2-3 minutes.
• All recipes have a cooking time “range”. Begin testing for doneness at the beginning of the time range. You shouldn’t have to cook a dish beyond the maximum of a time range. Many factors influence timing, so remove the food from the heat when it tastes good to you!

How to Read a Baking Recipe

Baking and cooking are two very different kitchen skills. Generally speaking you will “bake” cakes, cookies and breads – anything with flour. And you will cook casseroles, meats, soups and vegetables.

The first four steps in reading a *baking* recipe are identical to those in reading a *cooking* recipe. Go back and read through those steps before moving on with the baking instructions.

• When you are baking, dry and liquid ingredients should be measured using different sets of utensils. Dry ingredient measures are usually plastic or metal. Liquid ingredient measures are usually glass, with a pouring spout.
• You may encounter the following terms when reading the body of a baking recipe:
  • Grease a pan = by rubbing it with a bit of shortening or butter, or spraying with nonstick cooking spray.
  • Packed brown sugar = brown sugar must be pressed firmly
  • Cream = a cooking term that means to push shortening and sugar together on the side of the bowl using the back of a large spoon. This builds small air pockets in the shortening with the sugar crystals and starts to set up the product structure.
  • Blending = means to combine ingredients until you can’t see the separate ingredients any longer.
  • Soften butter = by letting it stand at room temperature for about 1 hour. You can soften butter in a microwave, but if the butter begins to melt, the texture will not be as tender and your recipe won’t rise as high.
  • Preheat oven = means to bring the oven to the required temperature before baking your recipe.
• Begin checking your product at the shortest cooking time given in the recipe. Golden brown means more golden than brown. The toothpick test is usually used to test for doneness. Stick a clean toothpick into the product near the center and remove it. There shouldn’t be any uncooked batter or wetness on the toothpick.