Family Matters

There are some things that make life so easy it makes you wonder why you never thought about them before. I did not think of adding this as a tip until a friend of mine opened my cutlery drawer and found scissors in it.

"Scissors?" she asked me, really surprised, "You keep scissors in the kitchen?"

Since many bags and packages have a little drawing of scissors on them, I assumed the best tool to use was scissors. I thought everyone had a pair in the kitchen too, but I guess not.

"What do you do when you need to open a sealed bag or cut the corner of a milk carton?" I asked her.

"I use a knife", she said to me with that "Isn't that obvious?" look, "And sometimes with my teeth…"

The first time I saw scissors in the kitchen as an essential tool was at Gal's mum's kitchen. She was a very practical woman and I admired her and decided to do the same. In our house, there are always scissors in the cutlery drawer. Everything I need to open, I cut with scissors. It is easily available and for a long time, I thought scissors were for opening things.

During the past month, my kids decided to experiment with the scissors. This is wonderful with kids - they see you using something one way for a long time and still experiment and find different uses for it. At least my kids are not afraid to try different things. When I worked for 4 years in the Creative Thinking project, we showed the kids various things and asked them to find as many ways to use them as they could. Anyway, at home, I did not ask the kids to look for different things to do with scissors, it just happened and I think they liked the idea so much they became creative with the use of scissors in the kitchen.

It started when Eden fried some meat for a salad. When it came out of the pan, she took the scissors and cut the meat to tiny pieces. The pieces came out equal in size and everyone was impressed.

Two days later, I asked Noff to bring me some spring onion from the garden and wanted to put it in the salad. She went to the drawer, took out the scissors, picked the onions, washed them and chopped them with scissors into the salad. I think she had so much fun she put more spring onion than she would have if she had cut it with a knife (spring onion is not one of her favorite foods).

One day, Noff's friend came over and they made a cheese twisties (puff pastry filled with cheese and spices, twisted and baked to perfection). They were having lots of fun preparing the sheets of pastry and then Tsoof brought some scissors and they cut the sheets with scissors. Did you know that cutting puff pastry with scissors is very easy? It is. Any kid can do it.

Using scissors in the kitchen is a great tool for young children that need to develop their fine motor skills. You see, instead of always cutting paper, they can cut other things and it is especially fun to cut food.

You can use scissors for:

1. Cutting dough to equal portions
2. Opening food packages
3. Cutting toasted bread as croutons for a salad
4. Cutting small cubes of cheese for a salad or for the kids' lunch
5. Slicing pizza
6. Cutting lettuce for a salad
7. Cutting dough to fit your pan
8. Chopping spring onions
9. Cutting celery for a Waldorf Salad - comes out even and beautiful
10. Clipping the edges off beans - safer and much more fun than using a knife
11. Slicing meat to small pieces - no need to clean a cutting board later
12. Making interesting puff pastry or cookie dough shapes
13. Trimming the fat off meat
14. Chopping sundried tomatoes or pickles to small chunks for a salad
15. Cutting fresh lemon grass for tea

I know there are some special scissors for the kitchen, but I use simple scissors - no brand name, the same ones I use to cut paper. They work great and if when they get dirty, I put them in the dishwasher.

Do you have scissors in the kitchen?

Ronit

You may want to read

• Ronit’s Parenting Bible: Food
• Quality Time: How to Have Fun with Your Kids
• Quality Time: The Gift of Your Presence