can anyone recommend a toddler cookbook that they love?

[samstress]

dd loves to help in the kitchen.  she's turning four next month and i was thinking of getting her a little chef set (at the very least, an apron) and a cookbook or two.  anyone have any suggestions (for cookbooks and/or chef sets)?

[tzs]

i think moosewood has a cute book for kids, if i remember correctly. honestly, it's tough because in my search for kids' cookbooks to use with my toddler class, it seems like most of them have recipes that are either way too advanced for a kid to do but are "kid foods" like i dunno....homemade dinosaur chicken nuggets...or are easy foods that don;t require a recipe but have some cutesy thing a kid can do...like a PB&J cut into a shape with a cookie cutter. neither of these impressed me. the internet has some good resources. i think i may have found a few things on perpetualpreschool.com. i really wanted to make things that tke kids could have a major role in (and they were only 2 so....) i'll have to check back to see if there are any good recs!

as far as chef sets i just use regular stuff. i did see a kids' kinife by kuhn/rikon that i want to get. it's a dull knife but still with a metal blade and has a hand guard so the hand doesn't slip down to the blade (and it's shaped like a dog!)

[caenach]

We have "Pretend Soup" by Mollie Katzen (author of the hitherto mentioned Moosewood), "The Toddler Cookbook" by Annabel Karmel, and some other really generic kids' cookbook that I can't remember the name of. My mother-in-law, who has the most elaborate cookbook collection I have ever seen, likes "Chef Bobo's Good Food Cookbook," which is not, explicitly, a children's cookbook, but has approachable recipes that kids can make.

I did not buy "There's a Chef in my Soup," or "Cooking Rocks" because I can't stand Emeril or Rachel Ray, but for someone with less angst than me, they might be awesome!

Honestly, I started cooking with my mother at a young age and I never really had any "kid-oriented cookbooks." The thing that my mother did was to give me "recipe cards," containing her favorite and other family favorite recipes, and I worked from those. She could adjust the recipes, that way, to fit my skill level, and make them simple enough for me to read. And it was fun to make "great grandma mona's favorite noodles" and to hear the stories behind the recipes.

DD cooks with me almost every day and we focus a lot on "remembering" what ingredients we need from last time and what techniques we used to, let's say, make spaghetti (saute, chop, boil water, open cans)--because I don't work from recipes frequently and I believe that learning the ideas/concepts/eyeballing stuff is maybe even more important than reading a recipe.

DD's probably a little too young for her own chef's set, but that's such an awesome idea! I'll probably just try to collect a few utensils/bowls/pans for her over the next year or so.

[HikeMama]

If you avoid characters, you won't like this, but we have C is for Cooking and it's a Sesame Street book. We don't really do the show but we have a few of the books and our daughter knows some of the main characters. There are pictures for every recipe and they're all really easy. My daughter will eat anything we make out of it. I have tried some other kids cookbooks without anywhere near as much success.

Oh, and her apron and utensils are from Ikea and were very reasonably priced.