In the US it’s not crazy for kids maybe as young as 6 to make themselves sandwiches like a PB&J/Ham & Cheese either if parents have an emergency, or to take to lunch for themselves because parents didn’t have time. (Or you know, they’re neglectful)
So is there a go to food for children to make in other cultures?
EDIT: Sorry for phrasing it like teaching 6 year olds to cook is mainly to help parents. Personal experience of dad going to prison and mom working 12 hour days at early age shined through. So me being taught to cook wasn’t “This is a skill that’ll be useful as you grow older” but instead was a “Things are going to be rough, and sometimes things won’t work out with me being there when I need too, and I want you to be able to be okay in an emergency”. So cooked myself food when I was little probably a lot more than others, then when I was a teenager I was cooking dinner for the family a lot.
But makes sense it wasn’t the case for others! Still the curious, what other cultures teach their children to cook!
In Mexico it’s
- Quesadillas
- Tacos of any leftovers
- Torta of any leftovers
- Cereal (I think this one is universal)
This list is about the same as my US kids, not torta but quesadillas, tacos or burritos, scrambled eggs and sandwiches; also noodles with chili paste from leftover spaghetti, which they call “hot noodle” and every single one of them learned early to cook that because they all liked it so much.
Question frames it as neglect or neglect-with-excuses. Could also be the kids are practicing independence and life skills.
Which I guess may be a cultural difference by itself. :) Apart from the attitude towards it, Norway has pretty similar ones I guess.
- Sandwiches
- Toast with butter
- Cereal
- Fruit from the fruit bowl
- Microwaved bread with cheese
- Leftovers with ketchup
- Carrots from the fridge
Maybe not age 6, but pretty early:
- Fry egg
- Soup (from bag, add hot water)
(Most homes have electric induction stoves, so the risk of catastrophic fire injury is low)
Ahh sorry! Growing up was a bit rougher and it shined through, when really teaching kids to cook is super important. I’m 29 now and getting in the habit of cooking at a young age shines through every day.
BUt yeah pretty similar! But cheese in the microwave??? That sounds crazy to me. Everything else sounds about the same! We have top ramen for our soup.
Yeah, that bread with cheese thing is a trip.
My kid asked if he could have a grilled cheese and I said yeah and gather to make it and he’s putting bread with cheese in the microwave.
When the fuck did that become a thing?
I mean, don’t get me wrong I like warm bread with a little butter and some cheese on it, it’s comfort food to me, we used to have it for breakfast in elementary school.
But that uses at least Texas toast thick bread slices and goes in an oven, this little fucker just put a piece of American cheese on a piece of white bread and microwaved it.
Not even two pieces of bread just one!
Maybe not age 6, but pretty early:
- Fry egg
- Soup (from bag, add hot water)
My Lemmy app didn’t properly format this as a list so I read it as “Fry egg-soup.” I found myself thinking, “Fried soup? Damn, Norwegians do soup on a whole different level.”
Ve make søup from coffee and fresh salmøn. Then ve fry the søup tu kill the fish.
Now do the one about the moose!
Lucky you! I wasn’t allowed to make anything more advanced than sandwiches. I would only make a mess, my mom complained. She was a bit obsessed with cleanliness and control.
I ate a lot of microwaved cheese sandwiches, and fried eggs as soon as I could move out, though. And spaghetti with ketchup. And rice with ketchup. Cheap and delicious food for a student.
There’s an entire generation of Americans who were cooking for themselves and using the stove in elementary school because their parents were nowhere to be found. Everyone always forgets about them. They’re known as Generation X, or the Latchkey Kids.
My favorite meal was cooking a hotdog on the open stove flame, campfire style. That charr was so good.
Yep, I would make Mac and cheese with cut up hotdogs in it starting when I was 6. It’s still my comfort food.
Traditional Danish lunch is rye bread with a variety of spreadings, sliced sausages and patés. Think of a simpler kind of smorgasbord (depending on the content in your fridge). There’s a lot of traditional combinations all based on a thin sliced rye bread with butter, the main spread and often one or two toppings that go with the spread.
The kids learn to make these kinds of “sandwiches” in kindergarten, and it comes in handy when they get older and come home from school hungry.
It makes for a more varied choice than toast or jam sandwiches.
Examples: https://imgur.com/a/ZgGGUhy
There’s no rye bread with herring in your photo, the Danish don’t eat that? The Dutch do, topped with some chopped onions. Though my kids don’t like rye bread, it is getting old fashioned over here.
Curry-pickled herring with raw onion and caper on rye is the first dish served on our traditional Christmas lunch. Served with snaps.
Fish generally don’t go to well in a lunchbox. The most common are mackerel in tomato with mayonnaise and cod roe with rémoulade, but most kids would frown at it. Also, it requires a fork and knife to eat. The traditional lunch box sandwiches are made to be eaten by hand.
I just found some random photo from the web. Apparently it’s difficult to find a photo of our common lunchbox hand-served-rye-bread-open-sandwiches. Most are of restaurant high topped “smørrebrød”, which also requires knife and fork.
I always just did a sandwich with kaviar (not the fancy type) and cheese or a sandwich with spreadable liver paste and cucumber
Edit: Swedish
I was a little disappointed at how similar the Norwegian meals posted above were to the US, but Sweden delivered 👍
In the UK it’s tea and toast, a lot of kids by 4 or 5 can make tea and toast.
Do British kids drink tea?
Of course. You have smaller cups of more milky tea as a toddler.
I live in the Netherlands and I learned to make my own lunch from an early age. Can’t say for certain at which age, but 6 or 7 sounds about right. I made lasagna when I was 11 and cooked other stuff regularly. My parents always stimulated me being self sufficient. And I saw the same happening with my friends.
Oh do you remember like the very first foods you were taught to make?
Mine were cold sandwiches, then the first cooked things were scrambled eggs and grilled cheese.
Yeah, cold sandwiches were probably the first as well. Then maybe boiled eggs, scrambled eggs were not really a thing in the Netherlands back then. After that I helped out with other stuff like boil rice of pasta. And I remember doing some simple groceries alone when I must have been between 11 or 12. But the supermarkets were only 10 minutes away by foot.
Oh yeah boiled eggs!
Which I almost always turned into sandwiches.
Sandwiches power.
Oh yeah, a good sandwich can make my day
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I’m the US, the first foods I was taught to make were breakfast foods. First the safe stuff like cereal, frozen hash browns, frozen Pop tarts, then (around age six) pancakes and French toast. Deviled eggs were also an early first.
How was teaching a kid how to make a sandwich neglectful?
In your sentence you say“ If parents have an emergency, or to take to lunch for themselves because parents don’t have time”
How about parents who teach their kids how to make food so they have a life skill?
I have two teenage kids, one in college, and when is about to be in college. Since they were young, they have learned how to cook, make sandwiches, salad, fish, pretty much whatever they want. When they were around five or six years old, we started building out a weekly schedule of food and then budgeting it and going to the grocery store together and buying everything. Now they know how to take care of themselves in life even as a first year college student.
My kid in college shares with me that their classmates don’t even know how to do their laundry or read an analog clock, let alone cook anything for themselves.
I guess my long-winded point is there are actual parents out there like myself who teach their kids how to take care of themselves, including make a sandwich at six years old. We’re not neglectful. We’re not too busy, it’s teaching kids at an early age to take care of themselves and be responsible.
Sorry personal experience of dad going to prison and mom working 12 hour days at early age shined through.
You should really try writing a country song, if you haven’t. Like Token/Tolkien in South Park picking up a bass for the first time.
The perfect country and western song has already been written.
Instant noodles or rice with fried eggs and/or luncheon meat.
Beans on toast is probably one of the first meals most of us learn here in the UK. Or a Pot Noodle, once you figure out how the kettle works.
Beans on toast, with Boursin on the toast is a thing of beauty.
I’ve never heard of Boursin, I’ll have to try that out at some point.
The first things I recall learning to make for myself were marmalade sandwiches and this concoction of pinto beans, sausage and cheese. I’d heat it in the microwave, which in classic American tradition was made by an offshoot of a defense contractor, Litton. The first thing I learned to cook on the stove, when I was 7, was scrambled eggs.
Oh yesh beans and cheese were great! Never did it in the microwave, stove was just superior.
In the Netherlands open faced sandwiches are pretty common snacks kids will make. Slice of bread commonly with toppings like ham, gouda, hard boiled egg, etc. Also peanut butter is a popular topping for bread, though having it with jam is a lot less common than in the US.
A very specifically Dutch thing would be piece of toast with butter and then literally sprinkles on top (like you might put on ice cream). The Dutch eat a shitload of that stuff. Also popular on buttered toast or rusk are little anise seeds coated in sugar, referred to as muisjes.
Apart from simple sandwiches my kids know how to open cans, cook pasta and fry eggs. Oh and make dino nuggets and fries and other stuff in the oven.
