Sara Sandstrom-Kobi, Peak to Peak. We recently had a four day weekend, meaning there was no virtual school lessons on Friday and Monday. This time off in April is greatly anticipated. It is the last couple days off before the end of the year stretch. 

This year it did not have the same excitement in our house. The established routine was finally feeling a little normal. Now I had to decide, do I ignore the days off and continue the routine or not. I chose to let the kids sleep in as late as they wanted. To my surprise no one slept in…except me. 

Usually at this time of year I am longing for spring, but I was actually thankful for the large amount of snow we have received. It meant a big chunk of a couple days could be spent outside sledding and making snow people. 

My kids are old enough and skilled enough in sledding that I do not have to hold my breath anymore as they weave between trees. A skill their dad taught them. Most of my sledding days were in South Dakota where we had to search for a hill and there were no trees to avoid. 

After sledding it was time for some Cooking with Mom lessons. I am a firm believer in teaching kids the domestic sciences. Young adults should leave their childhood homes knowing the basis of cooking, sewing, understanding a bank account and general car maintenance. 

During this cooking lesson I started with the dessert hoping to keep the kids interested. They were not as excited as I was to try a new recipe of gluten free skillet apple crisp. While dessert was in the oven we made a dairy free creamy mushroom soup. The kitchen was alive with wonderful smells! I was in my element. I love to be in a kitchen cooking and baking. 

Cooking is a great way to develop eye-hand coordination, organizing, multi-tasking and concentration. All skills we want our kids to have. For me it is a creative outlet. And has become not just a necessary task but a therapeutic one. Cooking and baking feeds my body and my soul. 

I am fortunate enough to still be able to pick up the telephone and call my mom when I have a question about cooking. I call her often. I want to learn as much as I can from her while we still have the time. In a strange and comforting way, I can often sense my mom and grandmothers with me as I cook. I watched them carefully as a child in the kitchen. They all made almost everything from scratch. 

My maternal grandmother would make her own noodles. I would watch as her hands and the flour flew in the air and, of course, snitch some of the dough before she dropped it into the boiling pot. She also made the most wonderful sugar donuts and jelly rolls. Her cooking showed her German heritage. When she spoke, there was always German sprinkled in with the English…zucker, mehl and die butter.

My paternal grandmother’s cooking showed her Swedish identity. Meat, potatoes and bread were always on the table. Spritz cookies were always in the cookie jar and nothing spicy ever touched her kitchen. 

How we cook and what we cook shows a piece of who we are. It is part of our identity. Whenever I cook with my kids, I try to teach cooking skills and at the same time sprinkle in stories of my childhood. That helps them understand their people and where they come from. 

The reality of the cooking lesson on that snowy day is that I lost one kid to boredom halfway through the dessert and lost the second kid to The Adventure of Paddington Bear in the middle of soup making. Well, I tried, and all was not lost. We had a wonderful dinner of homemade mushroom soup, and salad and apple crisp for dessert. 

I do hope someday my kids will have some of the love that I have for the culinary arts. I hope they appreciate their roots and how the people who came before them have influenced them. And maybe even sense me in the kitchen with them when we can no longer be together.

(Originally published in the April 23, 2020, print edition of The Mountain-Ear.)