Harvest

This weekend is harvest festival and, whether you're religious or not, it's a great time to mark the start of autumn. It's something we celebrated throughout our school days, making harvest boxes brimming with goodies, and I'm more than familiar with as a teacher too, yet I've only recently discovered that it's always on the Sunday closest to the full moon of the autumn equinox (thank you google!).

I've been trying get Charlie involved in cooking at home (simple things like tearing the basil leaves off, stirring sauces and cake mixture, or giving him leftover bits of pastry play with), so was looking for ways to get him involved as well as helping me get my head round this season's ingredients. He loves fruit, so I thought we'd work in reverse and start with an apple pie, letting him play with the peel and pastry. Next up, a firm favourite in our house, butternut squash soup/mash where he ''helps' to scoop out some of the seeds and put the butter on before roasting.

It's all baby steps and doesn't always go as planned, but I remember my mum including us when we were younger, encouraging us to get involved and understand our food. She's a firm believer that it helped us become good eaters and I'm pretty certain she's right.

Yesterday afternoon we shelled peas. Well, I shelled them and Charlie sorted them between colanders! It took me back to my childhood, when my mum and I would sit on the back porch in the sunshine with two colanders of peas. We'd eat a lot of them along the way, of course, as they're so sweet!

If you're not sure about getting your LO involved, perhaps because there really isn't the time, why not give them some Play Doh to mould into different shapes. We have one of their kitchen sets which is great fun, although my plastic and rubber baking utensils are still firm favourites!
Pop over to my instagram and twitter this afternoon and you can see whether our efforts were successful or not!!