yesterday zelda and i made pumpkin oatmeal chocolate chip cookie/muffins. the recipe originally called for making cookies, but since we had hello kitty muffin liners, well it was just meant to be that these treats would be in muffin form or at least liners.

zelda was a great assistant. she cracked the eggs, lined the tins, poured (and sampled) the chocolate chips, stirred, spooned the batter into the muffin tins and finally kept a close on eye on the baking treats so that we pulled them from the oven at just the right time.
in the end we had 30 cookie muffins, but zelda and papa each had one with a glass of milk for dessert after dinner and a bike ride last night.

zelda has wanted to be very involved with cooking these days. the other morning she helped papa cook her eggs for breakfast. she’s also patted dry a fillet of halibut and seasoned it to perfection, stirred the greens on the stove (with help and supervision) and the other night she helped me make this recipe almost from start to finish.it’s been challenging to figure out just how she can help, but after a few times, i think we’re getting into a nice groove and i’ve found some tricks, like providing a separate bowl for her to crack eggs into, just in case there’s shell or she misses, like here, so we can just scoop the egg from the counter into the bowl.
the eggplant meatballs were particularly great because there was no meat in them so she could handle the mixture without any concern about her putting her fingers in her mouth.these turned out quiet nice and we enjoyed them with noodles and sauce.