I am just in the middle of cooking a bolognaise sauce for our meal tonight.  It’s one of the few dishes I cook these days, KD being the masterchef in our house now.  

Talking of Masterchef, I love that programme.  We’ve been glued to our seats all week watching the contestants as they strive to stay in the competition.  There is something compulsive about viewing people get it wrong.  I much prefer this programme to any of the professional cook programmes that are on…..

Anyway, while I was checking on the bolognaise, I had a flash back to when my children were small.  I think my daughter would have been about 4 or 5 and my son just 2 or 3 years old.

A favourite pastime of theirs was to pull up a little chair just by the kitchen door and watch me cook dinner.  However, I wasn’t allowed to simply COOK the dinner.  I had to provide a running commentary of what I was doing, in the style of a TV chef.  I haven’t a clue what TV programme we would have been watching at the time but it clearly had an impact on my children.  Well, I say children…from what I can remember, my daughter organised the whole thing and my little toddler son just did whatever she told him to do.

It is a happy memory, me talking them through every stage of the preparation, as if I was talking to a camera.  Silly but fun.  I wonder if they remember it?  My daughter (now 29) has been a very good cook for as long as I can remember.  My son tells me he can also cook but I have no experience of that, so I have to take his word for it!!!!  I wonder if their early lessons with mum are the reason?