Spent the day with 15 year old Jocelyn teaching her how to cook.  She comes from a family that loves to eat good food, but with both parents working full time and two kids busy with activities, it’s tough for mom and dad to do much more then grab carryout on the way home from work.  Jocelyn and her mom considered this an opportunity for her to get a feel for what’s involved with meal planning, choosing and following recipes, and making dinner for her family.  It was a busy afternoon.

We started out looking through web sites that offered easy to follow recipes with minimal ingredients like Martha Stewarts Everyday Food.  Jocelyn had no idea these kinds of easy to use sites were out there and liked the fact that the recipes give a ball park time frame, customer reviews and difficulty ratings.

After choosing two fairly simple recipes for baked salmon and chicken and broccoli stir fry, I showed Jocelyn how to organize her shopping list.  A list organized by department will make your shopping trip faster and less frustrating.  Some markets, like Publix, offer shopping list forms to help with this.  Ask for one at the service desk.

From there, we hit Kathleen’s Catch  in Johns Creek for salmon and Publix for everything else.  We were lucky enough to hit Kathleen’s Catch as a shipment of fresh fish and seafood was being delivered and got a quick lesson on what to look for when buying fresh fish and seafood.  Look for a video of this in a future post.  And fyi, I will NEVER by frozen shrimp again now that I know what shrimp caught that day looks and smells like!

Then, it was back to Jocelyn’s house to cook two meals for her family.  She enjoyed doing everything herself with me instructing and watching over her shoulder.  She had lots of questions and tasted seasonings and oils so she’d get a better understanding of the taste they impart for future recipes.

In the end, it was a long cook day, but I left Jocelyn with an experience that will serve her well long term and a homework assignment to cook dinner for her family once each week to practice what she’d learned.