Reviewed by
Roxie
Penny and I were recently sent our first Foodini Club Postal Kit. Foodini Club is an award-winning cooking club for chefs 3-12 years, delivered to your door! The monthly packs are full of wonderful ideas and ingredients to get your little ones exploring, making, baking and creating in the kitchen.
My little girl, Penny (3), is a fussy eater and Foodini Club is a brilliant way to get her trying new flavours and textures, as well as develop her understanding of where food comes from. The packs are designed for children to follow the instructions with minimal involvement from grown-ups in order to help them gain confidence and independence in the kitchen.
Her pack contained the dry ingredients, shopping lists and instructions for two recipes: Summer Cups (fruity granola cups) and Pea Pockets (pea & potato flatbreads), as well as a little kit from ‘The Botanical Badger’ containing dried Chamomile, seeds, tea bags and instructions on how to harvest and make chamomile tea.
As Penny is so little, she did require a lot of help but that’s to be expected. First of all, she helped me wash her hands and all the fruit – a small task that she took so much pleasure from. She helped cut the strawberries with a dull, rounded knife with her own chopping board for our jam, make patterns with sunflowers seeds on the baking tray, mix all the ingredients, squeeze in the honey, spoon in the chocolate, layer all the ingredients in our summer cups and, perhaps the most important job of all, lick the chocolate and cream covered spoons.
The Pea Pocket recipe was a little tricky but she enjoyed cutting the spring onions, mushing the peas and rolling out our dough. I let her sniff the garam masala which she describes as smelling like ‘stinky socks’ and then she helped wash the dishes afterwards.
I often underestimate Penny. Yes, she’s only 3 but it’s when doing activities like this with her that I really appreciate how much she knows and how much she is capable of. This was a brilliant activity for us to do together and it ignited so many interesting conversations about why we wash our hands, where honey comes from and how we make jam.
When Lockdown is over, I’ll be sure to give Penny the shopping list included in our pack and help me find the ingredients in our local shop too. We are also going to plant our Chamomile seeds soon too. The instructions provided are clear and concise, the ingredients were high quality and our discovery pack was bursting with ideas to develop her understanding of the world around her.
By Mary 
