Confessions of a Work-at-Home Mom: The Kitchen Helper
Sometimes my son and I have these days when, though we’ve been together since before the sun came up, I realize that we whiled away hours and hours and still somehow managed to not spend any quality time together. We were so busy running from one errand here, a meeting there, a pit stop for nap time and rushing home to greet my husband that we hardly said a word to each other all day outside of, “Baby, I think we put your pants on backwards,” and “Mommy, my shoe fell off an hour ago in aisle nine.”
Yeah, Not a good feeling.
Cooking dinner together is one of the ways we reconnect. Yes, you read that right – my two-year-old son helps me cook dinner. He’s not dicing jalapenos or boiling live lobsters or anything, but he does enjoy helping me measure and add spices, and if there’s something that needs stirring, my son’s your man.
This would be impossible without this gadget we found here in Tulsa one day when we popped in to see what Sage Culinary Studio was all about when it first opened two years ago on Brookside. It’s called the Kitchen Helper, and without it, my son and I couldn’t have made together some of the memories of my motherhood that I hold so close to my heart.
The Kitchen Helper – or, as my son affectionately calls it, The Tower – is basically a stand that makes it safe for a child to stand tall enough to be able to work at the height of a typical kitchen counter without the danger of falling or tipping. A child would really have to do some fancy acrobatics to get into danger in one of these, and we love that it collapses to a size that we can slide into a closet until the next time we need to break out our aprons.
We’ve especially enjoyed our Kitchen Helper now that the holidays are on and I’m in the kitchen what seems like constantly. Not only do my son and I get to cook our meals together, but with every batch of snowman-shaped cookies we bake, we’re also making holiday memories that will last a lifetime.
On top of all this, I get the gratification of knowing that rather than leaving my son to his own devices in the TV room while I whip up something as close to edible as possible or, worse, load him into the car seat for yet another trip through the drive thru, that I’m teaching him an appreciable skill. When a man knows how to cook, he’s better equipped to lead not just a healthier lifestyle, but also a more money-conscious one.
Because anyone who has ever compared the cost of a supper in a sack to what it would have cost to make the same thing at home knows that kitchen skills can save a serious chunk of change.
I could sit here all day and write about how much I love this simple kitchen little tool (and about how crazy I feel for not coming up with it first because, well, it’s brilliant ), so I’ll just stop now and say that if you’re looking for a gift for the kid that has everything, see what you think about the Kitchen Helper. While they’re available for purchase online, you can hop aboard the shop local train and check them out at Sage Culinary Studio (which has a south location at 105th and Memorial now, too, by the way).
If you decide to get one for you and your child, be sure to come back here and let me know what you think about it in the comments. I’d love to hear about the memories you make.
