Creative Cooking and How To Make Money In Middle School

Emily and Grace share a newfound love of cooking.  Both girls are capable of preparing a meal when necessary.  But the fun for them (and me) has always been in creating things.  Making a pot of spaghetti or beef stew, though necessary and filling, is not nearly as fun as trying to create something new and different.

During the Super Bowl, Emily tried her hand at football brownies
with moderate success.  

We always make brownies from scratch, 

and scratch brownies didn't hold up as well as a box mix brownie would have.  

But she was pleased with the results...

and so was everyone else given how quicly the plate of brownie footballs disappeared!

For Valentine's Day, it was Grace's turn to try something creative.  She found a recipe for chocolate bowls on facebook.

This involved carefully dipping balloons into warm chocolate.

 

Melted chocolate applied to balloons was its own recipe...

for disaster!

After a few failed attempts 

and several minutes spent cleaning chocolate splatters

off of the counter

doors

floor

cabinets

faces

sink

chairs

(you get the idea)

we figured out the proper technique to make chocolate bowls.

  Then the fun really began.  

Grace did a great job filling and decorating

her Valentine chocolate bowls.

Everyone agreed they were delicious and really cute too!

    

But the most fun was Emily's creative ideas

for a cooking competition held by the high school band.

It was part of a fundraiser the band does each year.

Teams gather for a night of fun playing Trivial Pursuit.

The meal for the evening is chili.  

Families submit their favorite recipe to be judged 

and prizes are awarded to the winners.

There is also a dessert competition for band students only.

Emily made these treats to submit in the contest.

 

and won first place!

Way to go Emily!

   

For winning first place, Emily received two passes to Kentucky Kingdom.

Not bad, Emily, for a couple dollars spent on Jell-o.

Grandma would be proud!

And my mini entrepreneur, Grace, is always looking for a way to make money.

She found the perfect way to meld her love of cooking with her love of money.

Not that her product is edible though!

She jumped on the recent craze of making homemade slime.

She made some for herself,

and then she proceeded to play with it on the bus going to and from school 

making sure to look like it was the most exciting thing to play with
 since the Rubik's Cube.

It didn't take long before Grace's friends were plying her with money 

asking her to make them batches of slime.

 

And so a business was born....

Slime, Inc.

 

Not a bad way to make a few dollars doing something you love!