I had a passion for baking since we were in Hershey, PA, when I used to bake a lot of cookies, cakes and dough recipes. About 13 years ago after moving to Texas, I used to bake for most of our JesusYouth gatherings multiple times a month, during the Christmas season, and for any guests we have. Slowly Anita took over when she used to be our ‘professional baker’ including wedding cakes at 13 years old. But now, all our kids as young as the youngest are bakers and cooks! Abel and Abraham made some pretty compelling dishes for their 13th and 11th birthdays (including chicken biriyani). Anita and Abraham had a ‘parotta from scratch’ competition. Some of them are into French baking as well! I had started calling Abraham ‘dough-boy’ as he is mostly our pizza dough and pastry dough expert.
As all the kids enjoy time in the kitchen, I nowadays literally have to put up a signup sheet so they all can have a fair chance! Though they do fight a lot of days to be the chef or baker of the day, the irony is that when there is a day I did really want them to make something, nobody wants to! They have to be in the mood, I guess.
Though I also cook everything from scratch, I mostly resort to ‘fast, simple, efficient methods’. If I can produce similar results through shortcuts, I am all for it! Simple, fast, and sustainable! One of my shortcuts is to never follow a recipe as is (except for baking cookies or cakes). I just read the recipe, gather insight and throw in whatever ingredients without measuring (most times I should say, it comes out decent and a lot of the times actually tasty!). And that is exactly also how I have been able to manage a busy, active, large family without being enslaved in the kitchen.
But all our kids are very authentic cooks, and love to cook in the most authentic ways. I usually try to impress upon them my shortcuts, but they don’t usually fall for it. They want to measure exactly and follow long hard methods. (Like marinating ahead of time, which I completely avoid 😁.) It is also very funny to watch different cooking personalities among the kids. Ann is very detail-oriented. She has been trying her hand at French baking, and made French macarons from scratch. The way she puts things on the cookie sheet is quite impressive, by using a ruler to exactly measure the distance between the cookies! If it were me, I would just throw them all onto the sheet and switch on the oven in 1 minute!
Abel(13 years), our 5th, came to me during the 2026 World Cup with the idea of cooking a different country’s cuisine every single day of the tournament by spinning a wheel. I said yes, without even thinking about what that yes entailed. The plan was simple enough: spin a wheel, land on a country, and cook that country’s food for the day. What followed over the next several weeks of June and July was one of the most unexpected and impressive learning experiences our homeschool has ever produced, and it happened entirely outside of any curriculum plan I made. 😊
Some days they made just desserts, some days just breads, and a lot of the days, full multi-item meals, sometimes up to 4 or 5 different dishes in one day, all from scratch. By the end of the tournament, Abel, Abraham, Aaron, Ann, and Albert had cooked their way through 65 different cuisines from around the globe!
The boys had been watching the World Cup games, and all our boys are into soccer, so the excitement in the house was already high. But what struck me most was that Abel was so absorbed in the cooking that most days he did not even stop to watch the game. He just kept cooking. He made a dish on pretty much every single day of the tournament, more than anyone else, and with so much focus and dedication.
A lot of the cooking was done solo, each child taking on their chosen dish independently, though some days it turned into a group effort when the recipe called for it. They made pretty much everything from scratch, including their own ramen noodles, pastry dough, ketchup, breads, custard bases, whipped cream, and even fresh pasta using the KitchenAid pasta maker attachment. When a recipe called for an ingredient we did not have, they improvised and substituted rather than giving up, which in itself was a lesson worth more than any workbook page.
One of the things that genuinely impressed me was watching them navigate the kitchen appliances. There are a few gadgets in this kitchen that they now operate with more confidence (especially the pasta maker attachment that they had requested to buy) than I do, and I will just leave it at that. (I am choosing to call this a homeschooling win and not think too hard about what it says about me, haha 😊.)
What made this whole project so rich as a learning experience was how many things it covered without anyone sitting down to study anything formally.They adjusted recipes to the right serving size for our family of 11 to avoid too much leftover. They were learning food science and chemistry, understanding why bread needs time to rise, why marinating ahead of time deepens flavor, why certain ingredients react the way they do. More importantly, they were learning time management, figuring out what needed to be prepared first, what could be done ahead, and how to coordinate multiple dishes so everything was ready around the same time. They were learning geography and world cultures, not just through the food itself but through understanding the spices, the techniques, and the traditions behind each cuisine, all while watching teams from those very countries play on the screen in the background.
Persistence and resilience showed up too, and in a very natural way. I would say close to 90% of the dishes came out genuinely well, and many of them were really next level. But the few that did not turn out as expected were still valuable, because they kept going anyway. They troubleshot, adjusted, learned something, and came back the next day. Though they couldn’t make some dishes on the exact day the wheel was spinned, and some days in general as we had other commitments, they did make up during the other days, by doing more dishes on days they could.
Though they do a basic cleanup after the cooking, there was a HUGE 😱 amount of cleanup and loads of dishes each day, which is where I guess ‘authenticity’ comes with a price. This whole month there were atleast daily 5-6 loads for the dishwasher plus extra pots to hand-wash (than the regular 3-4 loads a day). I was also quietly resetting the kitchen every few hours to maintain an uncluttered environment. Generally, I naturally enjoy resetting the kitchen after it looks like a tornado passed through, but maybe not exactly every day consecutively for 2-3 times a day. 🫢 Even though the kids were on ‘meal duty’, I was on overtime ‘kitchen cleanup duty’.🙃 But I think the main thing I have been gracefully able to do, was to say yes, to be open to let them try, and provide a space for them to work. I really believe giving them space and opportunity is instrumental to allow them to soar and take on to greater heights, and I am very grateful I said yes to this opportunity!
The real lesson I took away from all of this is that when we give our children space, a clear opportunity, and the freedom to own something fully, they will often exceed every expectation we had for them. Abel did not need me to plan this. He just needed me to say yes and get out of the way. To me, that is one of the most beautiful things about homeschooling, and about parenting in general. Sometimes our greatest contribution is simply making room and stepping aside.
Below is the full list of the 65 cuisines they cooked their way through. I thank God for giving me the grace to say yes, and I hope and pray that this post inspires many more junior chefs! God Bless! 🙏
