I’m craving my garden.  

Craving the colour, the tastes and the time out there together with my children. We plant, we weed, we smell, we admire and then we create. Store bought produce tastes like… winter.

In my impatience for those experiences this Spring, I dug out an old cookbook for a bit of creative inspiration and enlisted my troupe to don their aprons for some fun in the kitchen. The day was fleeting sun mixed with grey clouds and some hands-on home-school fun beckoned.  Their little voices crammed into our cosy kitchen warmed my heart.

Of course, the baby woke up just as we began.

How about curry? I suggested for our first round of “French Cooking with Children” – they squealed.

So we tried a super easy little recipe called, “Curried Eggs”. Lord knows, love us some curry and my children love to help in the kitchen. The point on this day of gray was to let all of them have at it with just a little refereeing from Maman. What a riot. They’re so cute I can’t take it.

We measured, tasted, plated and enjoyed and sure enough – the minute I left the room to get the baby from his nap the littlest one farted much to the hysterical enjoyment of her older siblings. All caught on film.  Yeap – we had the camera rolling the whole time to catch any fun. Of course, IMovie crashed and I can’t share that with you now, but I will…. it’s so cute.

I believe firmly in letting kids help in the kitchen. Even though it’s a colossal pain in the rear. There’s always pancake batter dripped on and baked on to the edge of the stove or dropped eggs (I often have to hold my temper – good grief can we do ANYTHING without a disaster???) but, after all those dropped eggs, the oldest three children can make quite a few recipes without supervision and they’re pretty happy to add this fun dish to their repertoire.

We made little ramekin sized curried eggs during our time together and then I made a big dish of them once they all went out to play and served it with some tomato soup and homemade crusty bread to enjoy for dinner. Gray day be gone….Joel had brought me tulips so a celebration was in order.

We seem to have a habit of celebrating even this littlest things. Like baby pink tulips and spices from far off places.

I hope the kids remember that more than they do my sighing over egg yolk running across the floor.