Following World Values Day, Adamantia Velonis, Founder, Marmalade + Kindness shares some top tips for turning cooking into a ‘mindful moment’ with your children.
The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted everyone’s needs and made us consider what we really ‘value.’ Now, more than ever, as we assess what is fundamentally important to us, we have an opportunity to explain values to our children and how ‘values literacy’ supports their well-being. Following World Values Day, here are some of my top tips for turning any recipe into a ‘mindful moment’ with your children.
Choose a recipe that has personal or cultural significance
When cooking mindfully I like to encourage people to make treasured family recipes, because people’s strongest memories are often of foods they have made with family members when they were children. I have fond memories of tucking into a warm slice of Fanouropita, a traditional vegan cake from the Greek cuisine which speaks to my cultural heritage, after school.
You have an opportunity to encourage children to be curious about what foods they eat on special days and their significance, and to explore positive food memories.
Set an intention
Traditionally, before making a ‘fanouropita,’ we would think of something we’d like Saint Fanouris (the patron saint of lost things) to help us find. Like leaving cookies out for Santa Claus, the Greek community makes this cake to encourage the saint to help them find what they are looking for.
We could think of this as ‘intention setting’ and it’s something I do before I cook to ground myself in the present moment. It can be really simple, like bringing the feeling of love to the cooking process. When cooking with children, setting an intention encourages children to focus on the task and connect their actions to a wider context (like cultural traditions).
Find ‘teachable moments’ in the process
Cooking is creative and engages many skills that can be translated to other areas of life. Here are some ideas:
- Explore the history and origin of ingredients. Pick out a handful of interesting ingredients and do some research on them and their uses. Sharing their story or seasonal information can help children to appreciate where food comes from and to value the intricate processes that have made them available. In the fanouropita I explore the use of spices, dried fruits and nuts in European cooking.
- Discuss health and nutrition. Some traditional recipes use ingredients that people are allergic or intolerant to. This needn’t stop us from continuing these traditions, as there are often alternative ingredients that we can use. Putting ingredients into their nutritional context (like the anti-inflammatory benefits in cinnamon), and its impact on the body and mind, helps children make the connection between food and their physical well-being.
- Create mindful moments. Encourage your children to be aware of their senses during the cooking process – getting them to smell raw ingredients, appreciating their texture and colour. Rather than relying on modern kitchen appliances, get them to use their hands, stirring the cake batter with a wooden spoon, so that they can experience the physicality of cooking. You could even guide them through a raisin meditation or introduce mindful eating.
- Identify values. As the cake bakes in the oven, we are required to be patient. If we are unable to use an ingredient and we substitute it, we are being creative. Linking lived experience to values can help children see how these themes play out in their everyday life. Explaining that ‘good things take time’ might help children take this lesson with them when faced with other experiences.
- Invite reflection. Talk about what worked, and also what didn’t go to plan. For example, reflecting on how preparation makes things go smoothly teaches a lesson in organisation. And if things don’t work out, what could have been done differently? We can apply the attitudes of mindfulness to explore our judgemental mind (labelling things ‘good’ or ‘bad’) and seeing that the experience is just an ‘experiment.’ It’s not about getting it right the first time, but learning over time.
By exploring values and mindfulness through the cooking process we are giving children an opportunity to find out more about themselves, and create meaning and resilience along the way.
To mark World Values Day this year, Marmalade + Kindness hosted a cooking workshop with LA-based nutritionist, Ati Farmani, Founder, Ati Nutrition, to demonstrate how you can explore values and mindfulness with children through cooking. Watch on IGTV:
