by Patricia Driscoll
We bought those colorful kid aprons at the Hobby Lobby for a few bucks each and we found paper chef hats by the dozen through the Oriental Trading Company. They also have aprons by the dozen for cheaper than the Hobby Lobby- but they were out of stock when we needed them.
Today, we celebrated our daughter's 4th birthday at The Healthy Dish. It was a fantastic time and the kids really enjoyed it. My daughter had chosen what I thought was a super-cool theme of Dinosaurs and Fossils. After loading our cart at Party City with dino-themed items, and thankfully just before paying, she informed me that she actualy wanted a DinosaurFairy theme. That was going to be too hard to explain to my logical friends, so we re-entered negotiations. We shook hands on The Princess and the Frog.
Patricia Driscoll writes from Laredo, where she lives happily with her husband, two children, two cats, a millipede, three hermit crabs and the occasional domesticated scorpion
You can have The Healthy Dish provide aprons and hats but that is factored into the party cost. http://www.orientaltrading.com/chef-hats-a2-3_1095.fltr http://www.orientaltrading.com/childs-colorful-aprons-a2-48_1959-461.fltr?xsaleSku=3/1095
I met with the Healthy Dish Cooking Team: Luis, Herlien and Paulina Andrade to discuss the details. They hadn't ever done a cooking party before. They offer weekly kids cooking classes where children come in twice a week fo two hours, wear aprons and chef hats, cook and maintain their own recipe binders. This party business was a new service and I agreed to be their guinea pig. All experiments should end so well.
We all showed up an hour early and decorated the room. You'll notice that the room appears small in the photos. Healthy Dish can accomodate up to 12 children at a time, but no more. This facility is made for cozy parties. The good thing is that the children spend most of their time at the tables unless they are washing their hands between tasks, so the limited floor space is not an issue when they are all focused on squeezing cream cheese from a tube, cutting a strawberry, or cutting out shapes.
I explained that we wanted to do a Princess and the Frog themed party and that we had a kids cookbook with New Orleans-inspired recipes. We looked through the book together and settled on cute sandwich cut-outs, mint juleps to drink and froggy cupcakes. Herlien had some ideas about how to make the recipes more fun- instead of PB&J blossom cut-outs, the kids used turkey and cheese and colored cream cheese; instead of mint lemon juleps, the kids made a similar drink but using strawberries and limesThey provided me with printouts of the recipes we selected to use as favors for the gift bags- We rolled them like scrolls and put them into the brown paper bags (yes, I used brown paper bags, why not? They are recyclable!)
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Once the kids started mixing the batter, breaking eggs and cutting out bread shapes, their focus was on! First, the kids prepared the batter for the froggy cupcakes that needed to bake while we made our tea sandwiches:
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July 2011