Kids in the Kitchen - Baking Cookies with Susannah

This past Sunday evening Daniel played for a special Thanksgiving Service at church while the rest of us stayed home (and the littles finished their naps).  Sundays after church are low-key for us, mostly resting and spending time together as a family.

This particular afternoon I decided to give Susannah some baking experience. She has helped me with baking a lot over the years (when she was a toddler she would stand on a stool watching and sometimes helping dump ingredients into the mixer). This time I decided to let her be as independent as possible, barring something terrible (salt instead of sugar, that type of thing).

I chose my favorite Gingersnap Cookie recipe, partly because I was in the mood for them, and partly because it is a very simple recipe. And they are super delicious!

I had her read through the directions of the recipe BEFORE she started putting ingredients into the bowl, to help her learn that ingredients list order isn't always the mixing order.

From there she just started making the cookies! She had questions from time to time but I only had to intervene once when she used baking powder instead of baking soda. I was able to scoop out the baking powder, and I told her that I've made the same mistake before. :)

She did all of the work from start to finish, even putting the cookies into the oven and taking them out when the timer beeped.

I was proud of her and she was excited to have gained and earned that level of independence. I'm looking forward to lots more cooking and baking together in the days and years to come!

A Day in the Life

Today was our first "back to reality" day after our vacation.  We got home Friday, but took it easy Friday and Saturday.  Sunday was the normal day of church and resting. Monday morning was my MUMS group meeting and Catherine had a well appointment in the afternoon.  After her appointment I ended up getting groceries before coming home.  Monday was also my day to work in the office, so once I was home I holed up there for the tiny bit of time left in the day. I didn't even put away the non-cold groceries.

As such, this is how my kitchen greeted me this morning:

The morning got off to a bit of a rocky start and a lot later than I wanted, but eventually the ball started rolling instead of skidding.

Susannah did her piano practice, Charity unloaded the dishwasher and Sylvia had free time.  After that, Susannah and Sylvia started their school-work for today.  It's a challenge to get back into the discipline of staying focused and actually doing the work, but we managed.

While the girls did school I started cleaning up the kitchen.  I started with the groceries because I was stepping around them to do anything. Plus Silas was wanting to open all the packages, and managed to open the lid AND the pull-tab inner lid of a can of peanuts!

There was plenty of helping people with various needs mixed in every other minute or two. It seems to take forever to do a single task right now in life!

Finally the groceries were away and Silas stayed busy for a bit "fixing" the kitchen door.  He uses an old mixer attachment thing (that I no longer have the motor for) as a "screwdriver," and tinkers on the screws of the door.  At one point he was outside fixing on the deck.  He actually had gotten my meat thermometer to use at first, but I swapped him for the real pretend (??) screwdriver.

Charity played in the living room for quite a while.  These magnetic tiles were a fun Aldi find a few months ago.  I have always wanted some but never wanted to spend the money on them. When I saw them at Aldi they seemed to be a good price.  The girls love playing with them, so it was a worthwhile purchase!

Before I got much headway on housework (oh, I did wash and dry some laundry here and there), it was time to make lunch.  I made sandwiches for everyone else and a salad for myself.  It was yummy: lettuce and spinach, tuna, apple, avocado and grapes drizzled with extra light olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

After lunch Susannah put away the food while I fed Catherine.  Then I loaded Catherine into the Ergo (love that thing!) and we went for a walk.  Our first stop was the chickens to look at the peeps that hatched while we were away.

Then we went to a "meadow" that is literally 1 house away from us to walk.  This was the first time I took the kids for a walk like this. They loved it! We are definitely doing this more often.  The weather was beautiful too.

Silas held my hand for the first while. 😊 I tried to show him our shadows but he couldn't "get" it.  Catherine fell asleep and was a content passenger.

I love the colors of fall and noticed the deep burgundy of these leaves. I think they might be Sumac but I'm not sure.

This just begged to be photographed.

On the way home Silas stopped often to collect rocks.  It is interesting to see the difference between girls and boys!  He also will collect sticks to carry.  Hopefully I won't find toads in his pockets some day...

When we got back Catherine wanted to eat again.  Susannah worked on her school some more (she was in Sloth mode all day).  Silas went down for a nap and Sylvia and Charity played.

I finished cleaning up most of the kitchen and then had the girls work on some picking up.  Some worked more willingly than others.

I made chicken pot pie for dinner.  I just chopped up chicken to cook, added mixed vegetables, some chicken broth, 2 cans of Cream of Chicken, some Poultry Seasoning and some rubbed Sage. It filled the casserole dish to the brim, then I topped it with homemade pie crust.

While it baked, Catherine ate again.  About the time she was finishing I smelled something burning and thought the casserole was getting too overdone.  As soon as I could I went to check, expecting to see burnt crust on the pot pie.  Instead it had bubbled over a LOT, and was creating a puddle of oven lava on the oven floor. 🙄  Oh yay...

Catherine was happy after eating and hung out in her seat while we ate dinner.

After dinner it was baths for everyone.  Daniel and I have a pretty good system down pat: I start with Silas and work my way up.  As each kid is finished, he gets them dressed (well, Sylvia and Susannah don't need his help) and starts brushing hair and teeth.  This works really well and really helps lighten my load.

Eventually everyone was in bed, finally earlier than it had been for a while!!  I went out and closed up the chickens, and came back to clean up the kitchen. (The oven spill will have to be cleaned later. This Mama can't be all things to all people and do all things too.)

The Oven Lava awaits...

I'd hoped to get a lot more done than I actually did, but there were no dull moments in the day for sure.

It was nice to end the day with a much cleaner kitchen even if I didn't get to every nook and cranny.

The day ended with feeding Catherine once more before I went to bed myself.

And that is a day in my life!!

Kids In The Kitchen: Cooking With Sylvia

This afternoon Sylvia and I worked together making dinner.  I had gone down to the freezers this morning looking for dinner inspiration. As it was the first "cool" fall day, what better way to celebrate the arrival of cool weather than a cozy meal of beef stew? I got a beef roast out to thaw while we went about our morning of school and all the general goings on in a busy homeschooling, piano practicing, toddler-activity, baby-nursing household. 😊

By early afternoon it was thawed and after Silas started his nap I asked Sylvia to come to the kitchen with me.  I cleared off the counters while she got potatoes from the potato basket in the pantry.  I peeled the potatoes and she cut them into large chunks, tossing them into the roaster.  After we finished the potatoes, I peeled and she chopped up several carrots.  Then I pulled out an onion. "Oh no, I'm not chopping that! I'm allergic to onions!"  (She thinks that because it makes her eyes burn she is allergic. Haha!)  So I peeled and chopped the onion for her.

When we went to add the roast we realized that our small roaster wasn't big enough so we pulled out my big roaster ($5 find at Goodwill!).  We put the beef roast into the pan and seasoned both sides.  Sylvia added the vegetables and arranged them around before we seasoned them.  Next we sprinkled dried parsley all over everything.  We both thought it looked pretty!

Seasoning for a Beef Roast:
Season all sides generously with salt
Sprinkle with a bit of garlic powder and pepper
If adding potatoes and other vegetables, season them with salt and pepper.

Since this was a larger pan I did add about half a cup of water before we put it in the oven. Typically I don't add water as a beef roast (especially from a fattened beef animal) will render a nice amount of delicious broth.

I had also been wanting to make a pumpkin pie and thought this would be a good meal with which to serve pumpkin pie. :)  I found the recipe in my recipe book and showed it to Sylvia.  While I mixed up the crust she worked her way through the ingredients list, making the filling.  It was her first time independently following a recipe, but I wanted her to do it herself as much as possible.  I knew there was a chance of something getting goofed up, but there is something to be said for independent learning and the experience of being trusted with following a recipe all by yourself.

At one point she asked me to read the next ingredient amount (it was 3/4 tsp.) and I realized she had just interpreted 1/2 teaspoon as 1 teaspoon.  Since she had just put in the salt, and we didn't want salty pie, I scooped some of it back out.  After that she had me double check her reading of the measurements.  She measured everything by herself!  After she had everything added, she did the preliminary mixing and then I gave everything a good stirring to finish.

The pie baked along with the roast, making the house smell wonderful!  Supper was very delicious; the roast was amazing and had made a delicious broth that I made into gravy to pour over the vegetables.  For dessert we had Sylvia's pie.  It was very yummy and she was thrilled to serve it to us with whipped cream on top.

The pie was a little "extra" with the spices, but for her first time measuring spices and making a pie, I think it turned out very well!  I think the extra flavor came from accidentally packing the spices into the measuring spoons as she leveled them.  I will show her next time how to better measure, but I didn't want to rain on her parade too much the first time.

I am looking forward to having little cooks working in the kitchen with me this winter!!

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Waiting for Baby: Making Donuts!

For Christmas we gave Susannah the Richard Scary book, Humberdink's Busy Day. In the book Humberdink and his helper, Able Baker Charlie, make donuts. Susannah has been asking off and on since Christmas if we could make donuts sometime.

Making donuts isn't really that difficult, but it is a little time consuming and when it comes to the frying (because in my book fried donuts are the only REAL donuts) it is an all-or-nothing, undivided attention, must be very, very careful, part of the process. For this reason I knew it was not a project I should tackle without another adult around.

This past Thursday Daniel had the day off since his work is slow right now, and I asked if he could help at the key points of a donut making adventure. He and the girls were outside most of the morning and I mixed up the dough it had risen and was ready to cut out by about 11:30. I was going to have the girls help with the cutting out then realized that they would get just as much satisfaction out of helping me cut out a few as they would cutting ALL of them out, so I started the process alone.
They wandered in from outside in time to help with the last few rollings and cuttings of the dough. Each of the girls got a small wad of dough to roll out with their own little rolling pins.

Sylvia ended up eating her dough, but Susannah tasted some and saved some to cut into donut holes. I think we ended up with 18-20 donuts and about 10 donut holes. Then it was time for those to "take a nap" in the oven while we ate lunch. By the time we'd finished with lunch they were ready to start frying!

The girls really wanted to watch, so with very careful and deliberate safety instructions given and with Daniel's help, they watched me fry all of the donuts in our little deep fryer. It took until almost their naptime to fry the donuts. Then I mixed up the glaze and glazed a couple donut holes so they could each have a hot, fresh donut hole before their naps. Normally we don't do food or even sugary sweets before naptime but this was obviously a VERY special occasion and nothing is as good as a hot, fresh, homemade donut!!

It took me a while to glaze the donuts and by the time I had finished up the entire donut making process my legs and feet were aching from all the standing, but it was a fun way to pass another day waiting for our baby to be born.

Wordless Wednesday {Making Chocolate Chip Cookies}

Butter

Brown Sugar

Whole Wheat Flour

~Susannah, age 2

Of Bread And Bubbles

This past Wednesday my order of wheat berries arrived and I am so thrilled to be back in fresh-ground flour bread makin' business!! My first experience with ordering wheat berries I ordered Hard White Wheat. This time I ordered 50 lbs. of Hard White Wheat and 45 lbs. of Soft White Wheat. The hard white is supposed to be better for bread, and the soft white better for pastries. I used the hard white in cakes, cookies, muffins and so on, liking it just fine, but I'm eager to see if the soft white makes a difference.

As the new baby hasn't come yet, I have to keep making bread to keep my freezer stash supplied. We go through bread so quickly sometimes I'm not sure if I'm keeping up with my supply for after baby comes or just using it up!! Today was an overcast morning and then rainy afternoon, and my bread turned out beautifully! I was a little worried that maybe I would have lost my "touch" (ha!) as it's been a few weeks since I ran out of wheat berries. I was happy to turn out three loaves of nice, well-risen, good textured bread.

One of Susannah's thrills is helping me grind the "fow-er." Today when I mentioned bread she pointed to the mixer and jabbered something about fow-er, then pointed to the mill (which is in the opposite corner of my kitchen counter).

She likes to watch the wheat berries run down in the hopper on the mill :) As it nears the end, I do put the lid on in case any of the berries go flying as I don't want them to hit her or me.

I asked her to say "cheese" and instead she said "fow-er!"

This morning she also helped me wash up the few dirty dishes that didn't go in the dishwasher. She loves to put things into the dish-water for me, and I have to monitor closely that she doesn't put in something that doesn't go in water OR something I'm not ready for yet (I am a little picky about my dish-washing order! :) ).


After I finished, I drained the water but didn't rinse down the sink like I usually do. Pretty soon, she had the measuring spoon drawer open and had gotten out every single measuring spoon to scoop soap bubbles out of the sink and onto the counter!




Even though I am very eager for our baby to be born, I am reminding myself to enjoy these times with Susannah while she is the "only" child and I can give her my undivided attention :)

Baking, Building and Making Memories

Last week I had a huge [what I suspect was a] nesting spurt and spent the better part of 2 days in the kitchen. I had been planning to get some baking done before the baby comes, and those days it just seemed like I wanted, almost NEEDED, to do it and get it out of my system :) For some reason these last few weeks of the pregnancy I have been very un-motivated and un-inspired in the kitchen (or much of anywhere else, really!), so I had great fun doing something that I actually WANTED to do (besides sleep, that is :) ).

The first day I felt almost giddy with everything I got made and frozen:

Double batch Cinnamon Raisin Bagels (yield 20)
Double batch Onion-Parmesan Bagels (yield 20)
Double batch Strawberry-Blueberry Muffins (yield 24)
1 batch bread (yield 3 loaves)

My brothers gave me those stacking cooling racks a couple years ago for Christmas and I put them to good use a few times a year and REALLY like having them!!!

I did not get a picture from the second day. That day my top priority was 3 angel food cakes (from scratch) for a family birthday party we were going to. Aside from the 3 cakes, I also made a double batch of Chocolate Chip Cookies and a big batch of mini crustless quiche (I think it was 3 1/2 doz? Baked in regular cupcake pans.). For the chocolate chip cookies, I baked 4 dozen cookies, then the rest of the dough I scooped out onto waxed paper covered plates and froze, getting enough for another 2 dozen cookies, I think. Of course after the dough was frozen I bagged up the dough balls :)

Susannah had great fun helping me over the two days. I was shaping the first round of bagels while she was awake, and I gave her one of the little dough balls to play with. After I made her stop taste-testing it (she'd eating probably 1/3 of it, ha!), she had fun mashing and kneading and stretching and attempting to imitate my bagel shaping. When I finished with the rest of the bagels, I did help her make her little dough wad into a bagel and she was pretty thrilled :)

Her favorite place in the kitchen - if I'm in there working on ANYthing - is on her "ng" (like "ing" without the "i"), which is what she calls the kitchen stool*, RIGHT at my elbow watching and ready to help with whatever I'll let her help with. If I am making something in the mixer, I've started dragging it out to the middle of the counter where she can see into the bowl and watch it mixing. She loves to help dump ingredients in and help stir if I'm mixing something by hand. She can't wait to be able to crack eggs and measure oil :) And she is always ready and eager for a "gaze" (taste) and lets me know it! I actually almost always enjoy having her company while I'm cooking or baking. I want her to have great, fun memories of helping me in the kitchen - not only because I want her to grow up knowing and enjoying how to cook and bake, but because I just think it will be a fun thing to look back on many years from now.

*We have no idea where or how she came up with "ng" to be her word for the stool. We call it the stool and try to get her to say stool, and she just keeps calling it "ng" :) I know one day she'll say it and it will no longer be the "ng".

While I worked in the kitchen on Saturday, Daniel was working on the addition. Susannah loves it when her Daddy is home and she can be with him. If he is out there and she is not, it doesn't take long for her to ask to go out there, too. She loves to "hammie" (hammer) and "bang-bang" (what you do with a hammer, of course!) just like he does. I always make sure it suits him for her to be out there (for her safety), and when it does she has so much fun! Saturday evening was one of those times so I bundled her up and out she went. I finally remembered to grab my camera and get a couple pictures. It was dark outside and the lighting isn't the greatest out there (yet!), so this was the best one I got.


I still love being a mama, seeing things through Susannah's eyes, watching and helping her make memories (even though she doesn't realize it yet) of helping her mama and daddy with the things they do. The things we simply enjoy, or do just because they are something we do, and yet they are big and exciting and so much fun for her! It is a thrill to my heart :)

A Taste Through Time {Try New Adventures Thursday}

**I wrote this post on a Wednesday. The most mixed-up day I've ever had, I think! I woke up Wed. morning thinking it was Tuesday. Then somehow I realized it was not Tuesday, it was Wednesday. Then I sat down to write a post and my brain started thinking it was Thursday. All day yesterday I kept checking Alicia's Homemaking, waiting for her Try New Adventures Thursday post to go up so I could link, and I was thinking that she must be really busy since she didn't have it up already. Last night I was checking one more time when it dawned on me that it was not Thursday yet!! So, now that it IS Thursday, and Alicia DOES have her TNAT post up, I'm going over to link my Try New Adventures Thursday on a Wednesday post :) **

If you know me very well at all, you know I love to cook and bake. My kitchen is "my place" in our house. It is my favorite room to be in (unless I'm sleeping in bed, or curled up on the couch with a book or movie :) ). When I'm asked what my hobbies are, "cooking and baking" are always at the top of the list. If I had nothing else to do in this world, I think it would be great fun to open a little restaurant and bakery.

With that, it is no surprise that I have my "own" cookbook. Side note: I'm also a little OCD about my kitchen :) I don't like having recipes scattered between 20 different cookbooks. If I use them regularly, I want them all in the same place so they are right at my fingertips. I don't want to flip through a cookbook of 1,000 recipes to get the only one I use out of that book.

Daniel and I have been married for a little over 7 1/2 years. When we were first married my recipe collection was pitiful. Not because I didn't know how to cook or bake, I had just never taken the time to gather recipes for myself. That first summer I spent a lot of time copying recipes into 2 small binders, and I used them alot. Over time I was discovering that I also had a lot of recipes that while I knew what they were, I just didn't use them because they weren't favorites.

Three or four years ago those two original binders were starting to not be as efficient as I wanted them to be. So I spent another hunk of time copying down (by hand) only my favorites and the ones I knew I wanted. And by that time I'd added quite a few new favorites to the group. My current recipe book is a 2" full sized binder full of recipes, with plenty of bits and pieces of paper scribbled with even newer favorites stuffed in the side pockets.

When my youngest sister announced her engagement this summer, I knew immediately what I wanted to give her for a wedding gift. A copy of my cookbook. Many of the recipes she will be familiar with, because they are ones that we made and ate growing up. For the rest of them, hopefully we have similar tastes and she'll like them just as much as I do :)

I knew I didn't have time to hand-write each recipe, plus I wanted to make something that was cleaner and neater than handwriting on note-book paper. I love the way a clean, neat, freshly printed page looks, so I decided that typing and printing everything was the way I wanted to go.

Over the past few months, I spent spare time here and there going through my cookbook, typing up many of the recipes. I found some more to cull out, and plenty to add. I also learned the hard way to proof read before printing anything! I think I had printed 2 or 3 sections of the cookbook before I started proof-reading, discovering a lot more mistakes than I wanted to!

My sister was married this past Sunday, and last week I spent much of my spare time and a few late nights finishing it up. I had been thinking that I wanted a name for this cookbook, but nothing had ever jumped out at me or suddenly popped into my head. The word "taste" kept coming to mind and I was pretty sure I wanted to use it in the title somehow. The last day that I was working on it, I kept thinking over and over different titles including the word "taste." I came up with one I liked that didn't include the word "taste", but it reminded me too much of a very, very popular early 90's wedding song (Through The Years, anyone?). I just couldn't bring myself to name the cookbook Through The Years when all I could think of was that song. But I loved how it fit what the cookbook represents: recipes all the way from my grandparents generation to now.

With a little more grinding of brain gears, I finally had a name that represented the recipes collected and used over the years, A Taste Through Time. After a little more playing around with fonts and layouts, some whirring of the printer had the cookbook finished. I am very happy with the way it turned out. It was hard to wrap it up and give it away, not only because it was so neat and clean and pretty that I wanted to keep it for myself, but having it printed (even though just from my home printer) is something I've wanted to do for a long time.

I am very happy that my sister gets the first printed edition, and I hope she will get as much joy and as many miles out of her copy as I do mine!

~ A letter I wrote to my sister. ~

~ Alphabetical Index for the 231 recipes ~
One recipe per page, and the recipes in each
category are in alphabetical order. I did it this
way so that if recipes get added in the future,
it could still be kept in alphabetical order.

~ Tabbed dividers for the categories ~

They are in alphabetical order, too. :)

Even though I tried to remember all the recipes I use less frequently (that haven't made it into my own copy yet), this week I have been making a list of recipes that I missed! I will get them typed up and printed off, along with an updated index, and give them to her the next time we see each other.

Get the Hint?

Hmmm. Do you think that the fact that Daniel helped put away groceries last evening and might have seen this inside the refrigerator...



...would have anything to do with me finding this on the whiteboard this morning?
It's one of those things that I've kept pushed to the back burner lately. The bananas were markdowns when I bought them, so if I never got around to making banana bread I would only be out a few cents. I had no intention of just letting them rot, but other things were far more important and pressing than taking care of a few bananas. I had every intention of making banana bread or muffins when I bought them and then life went crazy for a while.

Thankfully the refrigerator is great at preserving the insides of the bananas so I think I'll be doing a little baking this morning ;)

What To Do With 4 Bushels of Peaches

Wonder if I had lost my mind, that's what!! Susannah and I made the trip on a Friday, driving 2 hours each way, to pick up peaches for myself and a friend. Thankfully my sister lives probably all of 5 minutes from the orchard so we had lunch with her, and then when everything took much longer than I anticipated, we were able to stop by her house again so I could feed Susannah before we headed back home. The bed of Daniel's truck was full of boxes of peaches!

I wish I had taken a picture of my kitchen floor crammed full with the boxes of peaches. Instead I have a picture of this beauty:
The peaches were enormous this year. I guess the weather must've been just perfect, because quite a few of them were as large as the one I'm holding in my hand. No puny, shipped across the nation, grocery store peaches here!

So what did I do with all those peaches besides wondering if I'd lost my mind? I canned peaches and canned peaches and canned peaches. That's what. Here is the finished product, all 72 quarts (maybe it's 73?).
I only had 1 jar crack (I'm pretty sure it had a hairline crack to start with), and every single jar sealed! I was so happy about that!

I also canned 2 canners (14 jars) of peach pie (or cobbler or crisp :) ) filling.
And made pies to put in the freezer to pull out later and bake - they taste like a fresh peach pie that way! Here is the big batch of pie dough (w/out the water) for 7 pies. (I like my big bowl!)And here's the peaches for said pies.And here's the pies freezing! (I ended up rolling the dough thick, so I had 6 pies + leftover dough, and I baked one of the pies to enjoy right away.)Once they were frozen solid, we took them out of the pie plates, wrapped each one in 2 layers of plastic wrap, then into a plastic bag marked with which pie plate it came out of (so I can put it back in that same one to bake for the right fit), and then stacked them up in the freezer. It is very important to remember to line the pie plates before you make the pie! Last time I forgot, and all my pie plates were in the freezer until I started baking the pies :P

And made "Peach Caskets" - basically peach tarts. I used my Pampered Chef Press'n'Seal, leftover pie dough, and pie filling with small-diced peaches and I made it a little thicker so it wouldn't run as much.
After the Peach Caskets were frozen (unbaked), I put each one in a sandwich baggie, then all of them into a larger plastic bag. This winter when we want a little dessert, I can pull a few out and bake them without having to eat a whole pie :)

And last but not least, I couldn't have accomplished all this in a timely fashion without my lifesaver, Katie.
She had a few days off work, and wondered if she could come visit. I told her to come on and we could work on peaches!! It was great. I could tend to Susannah's needs and not have to worry about making sure the canner was boiling or not boiling too hard, or did I need to set the timer, or was the timer getting ready to go off and the jars needed pulled out of the canner... And Katie could keep working on peaches while I fed Susannah, so there weren't big chunks of time where peaches weren't getting done.

Susannah Makes A Strawberry Pie

Susannah asked me if she could do a guest post about making a pie for her Daddy. I'm a pushover and said yes :) Take it away, Susannah!!


Hi, I'm Susannah. I can't type very well so I'm gonna mostly use pictures to tell you about what I did this evening.

I heard Daddy tell Mama the other evening that he wanted a Strawberry Pie. So I got an idea... Why couldn't I make one for him? He's really special to me and I wanted to do something special for him. I can't talk big people words, so this is how I got Mama to figure out what I wanted to do. I got out the rolling pin. Everyone knows that a rolling pin means pie dough, right?

"Mama, I have an idea...
I love my Daddy so much, I want to make a pie for him.
You said "yes!!" Now I'm really, really excited! Will you help me?
Oh, what kind do I want to make? Why, Strawberry, of course!!"

First we mixed up the pie dough.
Then we made the crust. Now, making a nice pie crust takes the perfect touch.

All the pie dough making made me sleepy. Plus the next couple steps of making the pie involved the hot oven, boiling stuff for the filling, and a sharp knife - Mama told me I wasn't big enough to help with those yet. So I went and took a nap and let her do those things. When I woke up we finished the pie.

Whipped cream is yummy! Mama asked me if I wanted to lick the beaters, and I was so surprised that I said "I can?!?!" (Yes, I really did say that. Daddy heard me, too! At least, the noise I made sounded like "I can?!?!")
When the pie was all done it was time to give it to Daddy. First I gave him a big hug and told him how much I love him. Which is a LOT.

Then I couldn't keep the secret any longer and told him that I'd made a Strawberry Pie for him :) He was really happy.

And here we are with the pie.