[00:00:00] Angela Smith: There’s a pride of ownership that comes with it. When they see, not only that they’ve created this thing from scratch, but when they see other people around the table enjoying it, it really elevates their spirits when it comes to going through this process. They want to get in on the fun of enjoying the food as well as cooking the food.

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[00:00:26] Gretchen Roe: Good afternoon, everyone. This is Gretchen Roe, and it’s my delight to welcome you to the Demme Learning Show. I am so delighted to welcome Angela today to talk about Inquisicook. We met last year in Texas at a homeschool conference, and I have waited for months to be able to do this episode with her because food is the language of love, and she brings so much to the table. I’m going to let her give you her background.

[00:00:54] Angela: A big thank you to you, Gretchen, and to Demme Learning for hosting me today. I too have been looking forward to this for months. You’ve been such an enthusiastic supporter of our concept, and I can’t wait to share it with your community. Inquisicook is my company. It was founded– I’ll tell you the background of that. I live with my husband just outside of Athens, Georgia. We have four children and 11 grandchildren. We started homeschooling in 1992, and we continued all the way until the last one left for college.

When that youngest one was about– I don’t remember the exact age– 9 years old or so, she wanted cooking to be one of her school subjects. Of course, we were already cooking together just as a matter of lifestyle, but she wanted it to be an official subject, and I said, “Okay, we will do that, but we are going to make it the science of cooking.” I just really never understood why the science that’s right under our noses was never a part of official science curricula. I thought I was going to go out and buy a few books, reel in a few resources, and be off to the races. As it turns out, that was not the case.

Of course, this was in the earlier days of homeschooling, so there weren’t quite as many options as there are now, but the things that I did find were just not a good fit for homeschooling. Some of them were just like random acts of science that didn’t really translate to a longer-term objective in the kitchen. Some of them were a little too quirky for my taste, just like a very narrow breadth of what was covered, and some of them were too complex. All of it and everything that I had was going to have to be translated down to lesson plans and lessons and ways to measure progress and put together in a way that achieved comprehensive learning. I decided that if I couldn’t find what I wanted, that I would create what I wanted.

[00:03:06] Gretchen: The true mark of a homeschool mom.

[00:03:09] Angela: Exactly. We’re nothing if not innovative. It took a very long time. It took a long time for me to finish homeschooling my own kids and get in gear as an empty nester, which is what I did. I didn’t get it done in time for that child, but I did get it done in time for my grandchildren, and now my grandkids are some of my best cooking buddies. We have a great time in the kitchen, and it’s just been a joy to share this with the homeschooling community and be so well-received and see so many families that are really interested in returning to having a knowledge of what’s going into your food, having control over what’s put onto the table, and also, achieving scientific literacy as a part of everyday life.

[00:03:57] Gretchen: I think one of the things that drew me to your concept in Texas was my adult daughter who was with me at that conference. She’s an amateur chef. She was wildly excited that you had connected the dots between science and cooking, and that made such a tremendous difference. She was the one who said, “You have to go talk to this lady.” From there, it’s been a serendipitous relationship. Tell me now a little bit. You have a presentation. Why don’t we launch into that and let you– We’re going to pray over the technology a little bit today, because those of you who are joining us live, it has been an adventure.

[00:04:45] Angela: I’m just going to give a brief overview of our guiding principles in Inquisicook before I go into that. We focus on scratch-made cooking with real ingredients. In our recipes, there’s no refrigerated biscuit dough. There’s no cans of cream of mushroom soup. Not that we’re necessarily opposed to that, it’s just not what we want to teach. We focus on family-friendly recipes that you’ll be glad to see on the table. We don’t go in for gimmicks. We don’t make things that fizz and bubble for the sake of fizzing and bubbling. We don’t do edible slime. We do try to get a balance between savory and sweet. Of course, a lot of students, they just want to start baking cookies and pies and muffins, and we do that. We also bring in the proteins, the vegetables, the starches, and teach them the science of that so they can cook a wide breadth of options.

[00:05:39] Gretchen: Do you find that if a child is engaged in the cooking process, they’re more likely to eat what they have prepared?

[00:05:47] Angela: 100%. There’s a pride of ownership that comes with it. When they see, not only that they’ve created this thing from scratch, but when they see other people around the table enjoying it, it really elevates their spirits when it comes to going through this process. They want to get in on the fun of enjoying the food as well as cooking the food.

[00:06:10] Gretchen: I know that from a personal experience because I taught all six of my kids to cook, and they’re all terrific cooks, which has been a tremendous blessing for me. I often say to parents, when you have a child who eats a very limited menu, if you can get their buy-in to prepare the food, you’re more likely to get them to try the foods.

[00:06:36] Angela: Absolutely. Yes. We also keep things budget-friendly, so we don’t call for exotic ingredients that you would have to order from a specialty store or expensive ingredients that you would not be able to feed, let’s say, a family of six with. We are averse to waste. We try to minimize waste. In fact, we go to great lengths on that. Most of our lab materials are food that wind up as a prepared dish on the table. Instead of doing a science experiment and then throwing everything away, the science experiment becomes part of the food preparation process.

[00:07:13] Gretchen: I bet I speak for every homeschool mom who says, “If I could get my kids to help me cook dinner, it would change the game entirely.”

[00:07:23] Angela: It absolutely will. I will give you some tips and share some ideas on how to make that a smooth transition to start involving them in that process. With that, I will go ahead and get started. I’m going to share ways that you can use culinary science starting tomorrow, if you wanted to, without having to go to any great lengths and buy a bunch of books or educate yourself on the front end. You can just make it a natural process. Here we go.

A lot of people don’t know where to begin. There’s so much information out there. There’s so much science. There’s so many recipes. Everybody’s constantly making noise on the internet about do this, do this. I recommend starting with the familiar. For instance, you could just go to your refrigerator and open it up and see if it inspires any questions. Have your kids go to the refrigerator? Is there anything in there that you’re curious about? On our blog, the page that gets the most traffic is an entry that I wrote on the coating on pre-shredded cheese.

We get all of these random visitors to the website because people are googling what is the coating that’s on pre-shredded cheese. There’s a lot of curiosity waiting to be explored inside your refrigerator. For instance, why do pickles last so much longer than cucumbers? What is the science that causes them to be edible for so much longer? What is that gray stuff on the outside of ground beef after a few days? Does that deteriorate the quality? Does it mean that it’s spoiled? Is it safe to eat?

You can also do forensics on a less-than-perfect outcome of your own cooking. Why is my meatloaf so dry? What is that white gelatinous stuff that forms on salmon sometimes when you bake it or hand sear it? You can do sensory evaluations on the foods that you’re already cooking. Sensory evaluations are a core part of Inquisicook. They sit down with your families and evaluate their results. They rate them based on appearance, flavor, texture, and aroma. We ask them to be specific about their responses.

This not only causes students to think critically and analytically about their outcomes, it also gives them a pathway to craft improvements or variations for future attempts at the recipe. If they would prefer that the cookies be crisper or they would rather have pecans in the macaroons instead of coconut, they can jot that down and this becomes a learning journal for the student. One option would be to take something that you’re already preparing, have everybody in the family do a sensory evaluation, and then find ways that you could alter it for future attempts at that recipe and then bring that into your process.

[00:10:32] Gretchen: That’s wonderful and really amazing. You know what? We should be seeking feedback from our kids, although that’s a two-edged sword in my family because everybody has an opinion. I’ve given birth to six firstborn children.

[00:10:47] Angela: It also gives us an opportunity of how to graciously accept criticism or less glowing comments. That’s something that students really need to learn that every comment can’t be glowing positivity. Sometimes we have to grow when we get feedback that’s not great.

[00:11:09] Gretchen: Absolutely. We cooked a recipe on Sunday night that we were less than impressed with, and I’ll leave out the details, but my son said mom you’ve tried 12 recipes from this creator and 11 of them were home runs. Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater, this one just didn’t work. [laughs]

[00:11:30] Angela: An excellent point. Another option that is really fun is to explore the perfect version of a favorite dish. What makes this interesting is that everybody has a different idea of the perfect version of a dish. America’s favorite comfort food is macaroni and cheese, and there are a lot of variables at play in macaroni and cheese. The most obvious would be your choice of pasta. Do you want typical elbow macaroni? Do you want to go with something else that’s tubular but a different shape?

Also, the choice of cheese can be explored. Cheese science is very fascinating. Young cheeses have an open protein matrix that melts more easily than aged cheeses. Moist cheeses melt more easily than dry cheeses. You have some give-and-take there, but young moist cheeses tend to be less flavorful than dry aged cheeses. The flavor difference between a parmesan and fresh mozzarella is about as far apart as they get. You have some choices to make on your types of cheese, but the one that I usually focus on is what goes on top of that macaroni and cheese.

Should it just be cheese or should it be something crunchy, possibly mixed with butter, that forms a crumb crust? Whether it’s potato chips or saltine crackers, goldfish crackers, panko. When I ask this in workshop audiences, it’s usually pretty evenly divided. Now I’m in team no crust. I think that toasted cheese is one of God’s great gifts to the human taste buds, so anything that would interfere with toasting that cheese is a no-go for me. If it’s panko, it’s a definite no-go because I do not understand panko.

I know a lot of people like it, and they say, “Oh it’s so crunchy.” Yes, like shards of glass or grains of sand. I don’t know if my mouth is too tender for it or what. That’s one of my little quirks. This is something fun to get feedback on the family of how you could alter macaroni and cheese. Another one that’s fun is chocolate chip cookies. Some people like them thick and moist and chewy. Some people like them very thin and crispy. Some people like them crispy on the outside, chewy on the inside.

When you learn the science of cookies, which we include with Inquisicook 2, has a unit on cookies, you come to understand that you can manipulate that texture and thickness through things like using brown sugar instead of white sugar. You can actually use physical force to cause the cookies to deflate during baking, it’s called pan banging, where you bang the pan or partially baked cookies so that the leavening collapses in on itself. You can do that repeatedly to get a very crisp cookie.

Also, changing the fats drastically changes the texture of a cookie, versus if you use real butter, if you use margarine, if you use shortening. These all have very different outcomes in terms of cookies. Now this is a high-interest approach. I can’t imagine that a family would say, “Okay, it’s time to do science. Let’s bake some cookies and you’re going to get groans.”

[00:14:55] Gretchen: This is true.

[00:14:57] Angela: Probably not. This is another one where it’s interesting to try subsequent batches and see how tweaking things, even tweaking baking powder and baking soda will change the leavening, but also how cookies brown. There’s a lot of fun science available in the cookie realm. Another approach is to go with the seasons. This is one that also becomes somewhat budget-friendly in terms of agricultural seasons. Here’s an example. This is a centerpiece that I made a few years ago for Easter.

My inspiration was I just had a color story that I knew I wanted to put on the table. I went to the farmer’s market and selected all the vegetables that I thought fit into that color story, and then I made the centerpiece. Then after Easter, I still had all of these vegetables available to cook with. Afterwards, you can turn this into science projects. For instance, in this one, the color story could become part of the science story. When you learn about what causes coloration in vegetables, the different antioxidants and anthocyanins and things like that, you can study the science of vegetable color.

You can also have classification exercises where you can, say, teach about the brassicas, teach about the alliums, and the vegetable classifications. Which vegetables in this centerpiece are brassicas, so on and so forth. For younger children, you can turn it into a botany lesson where they’re learning to figure out which of these items are stems, which of them are leaves, which of them are fruits, and for instance, the artichokes, that’s a flower bud that has not yet formed and bloomed.

They can be learning about the parts of a plant. Then, of course, you can head to the kitchen and prepare them. They get to taste them. They get to see them. The great thing about culinary science is that it does engage all of the senses. Research suggests that the more senses you engage during a learning exercise, the more securely that information sticks in the brain. This is one of my favorite agricultural approaches.

[00:17:14] Gretchen: I love that. I love the fact that you are creating something creative, but then using it, and it’s demystifying it for kids, who might never have seen an artichoke.

[00:17:28] Angela: Also, going with the seasons, there is so much fun science in fruits. We do a strawberry science workshop that is a big, big hit. It’s just really fascinating. The same with apples. The same with blueberries. These things come into season. A lot of us have access to U-pick farms, so you can have a little field trip going to the farm and seeing how it grows, and taking them home, and then delve into the science. Now, some people may be concerned about, “Okay, where do I find the science?” It’s on the internet.

You will not have any problems googling strawberry science, blueberry science, apple science. You will get the results that you need, and you can give yourself a quick primer, put that together, and have a family fun adventure exploring fruits. I also like to lean into the holidays for themed explorations. Valentine’s Day is coming up, and that is a perfect time for chocolate science. For instance, in the center here, we have natural cocoa and Dutch cocoa, and that changes the pH of the cocoa, which changes how you formulate a recipe.

That would be a fun thing to explore the process of, first of all, how chocolate is made, how it goes from a cacao pod to ready-to-eat chocolate, exploring the different types of chocolate. What’s the difference between white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate? What happens when you temper chocolate? Why does it become shiny? What does chocolate bloom, if you’ve ever had chocolate that has that white coating on it? What is that? How does that happen? How do I prevent it? Does it harm anything?

You could explore potato science for St. Patrick’s Day. We cover this in our starches and sauces unit in Inquisicook 2. There’s tons of interesting science surrounding potatoes. You could also do a little rabbit hole into the Irish potato famine and causes of that, and teach about the importance of biodiversity, and not relying on one varietal of any particular agricultural product, and not relying on just one type of food to sustain a community.

Easter is a great time to study the science of boiled eggs, and boy, it’s a very controversial subject if you look online or in books. Everybody’s got an opinion on the best way to cook them, and what makes it easiest to peel. I put that in with religion and politics, so things not to discuss like company because people get very dogmatic about it.

[00:20:03] Gretchen: Absolutely. As somebody who has 60 chickens and I am asked all the time, I say, go experiment and see what works best for you because what I do may not work for you, so.

[00:20:16] Angela: Exactly. When it comes to eggs, certainly, why does the white turn from clear to opaque? What is it that causes that green ring that sometimes forms around the yolk? What is that dimple that forms in the bottom of older eggs when you boil them? Why is that there? That’s just the start. You can go very deep on this. For Cinco de Mayo, you could have a family project of how to engineer the perfect taco. If you think about eating tacos, there is something about the eating pleasure that’s dependent upon the way that it’s formed. Now, when I look at this taco, I think it’s a perfectly fine taco.

It’s certainly photogenic, but that’s not the way that I would make a taco because I think those shreds of cheese should be down on top of the warm ground beef. Then I would put the tomatoes on top of the cheese because they’re best at room temperature. Then I would put my cold stuff, probably I’d put my lettuce, and then I would use the sour cream as a glue to hold everything in place. Other people might want it differently. If you had soft shells, you could actually do it horizontally where you would have, on one half of the taco, a layer of everything, and then the taco folds over, and then you get a bite of everything in every bite, if that makes sense.

Then finally, the holidays, I don’t even know where to start there, but you could cook your way from Thanksgiving to Christmas. What’s the best way to roast a turkey? Should you stuff it? Should you not stuff it? Should you brine it? Go into the science of sauces. You’ve got yeast breads that are usually a part of that. You could also investigate a phenomenon, and my favorite one is popcorn. What causes popcorn to pop? There’s a certain amount of moisture percentage that has to be in that popcorn. You heat it to a certain degree, a certain temperature. Then that gelatinizes the starches.

They puff up. It splits the kernel. There’s 300 pounds of pressure in a popcorn kernel that’s popping, and there are all kinds of learning extensions that can go along with this. You can investigate the smoke point of oils. You can investigate what makes a good topping that will make a sprinkle-on stick without making the popcorn soggy. Again, popcorn is almost a universal favorite, and it’s inexpensive. Now I’m going to share just some teaching tips to help the process go well very quickly.

I encourage you to build good habits from the start. Practice good kitchen safety. Teach them to turn pot handles in, to not have appliance cords dangling down where they might get snagged on a drawer. Wipe up spills quickly, so on and so forth. Pay attention to food safety. Keep cold food’s cold and hot food’s hot. Avoid cross-contamination. Label things clearly when they go into the refrigerator and freezer. Teach kids to handle knives with precision and care. Show them a proper grit.

[00:23:08] Gretchen: I think some of those things that you’re identifying are things many of us as moms do intuitively, but it’s really helpful to have them point it out to us if we haven’t thought about it.

[00:23:20] Angela: Teach them to clean up after themselves and to do a proper job of it. If they’re doing it halfway, gently correct them because it will really pay off in the long run. Finally, mise en place. This is a method where everything is measured out and prepared in advance of the actual assembly process. I know it sounds like a big hassle and you do have a few more dishes to wash, but kids are not as good at multitasking as they think they are. This will make it a lot less likely that they grab salt instead of sugar or baking powder instead of baking soda, or don’t have a spatula at the moment that it’s time to flip an egg.

Now finally, I want to move on to deciding on your methods. We try to take abstract concepts and make them concrete by creating models, usually using food. This is a model of how emulsifiers work. I will spare you the details, but if you just google “emulsifier diagram,” you’ll see an explanation of how emulsifiers work. We teach this in our salads and dressings unit. Usually, we come up with our models by looking at diagrams, scientific diagrams, and saying, “How can I recreate that with food?” It becomes three-dimensional and it becomes tasty.

In this particular instance, we use these ingredients to create a salad with an emulsified dressing after we’re done. We’re also big on narration. We think that it’s a great diagnostic tool for parents to find out if students have understood what they’ve learned. For instance, if you were to ask me about a spark plug and how it works, I would say it’s a plug and it sparks and it has something to do with combustion engines. If you ask my husband how spark plugs work, he could give you the full story and explain way more than you ever wanted to know.

That’s just to illustrate that you can’t describe in your own words something that you don’t truly understand. That’s why we love narration. We also love batch comparisons where you make two versions with one pivotal difference and then taste them side-by-side. If you tasted these mashed potatoes made with russets versus Yukon Golds side-by-side, you would think they were different vegetables. If you’re just doing a different one for each meal, you don’t really pick up on that difference.

Of course, experiments. An experiment is not the same as an observation. We think it’s important to think like a scientist, engage in analytical food conversations, ask questions, predict outcomes, and analyze the unexpected. Even little kids, you could ask them, what do you think is going to happen? They’ll give you an answer. Then they can see if they’re right and try to figure out if they were not correct.

Finally, we encourage students to act like a scientist, to manage samples wisely, to use a control when it’s appropriate, to only change one variable at a time, to measure time and temperature and ingredients accurately, take the time to preheat the oven, take the time to scoop and sweep your flour, and to keep good records, to take notes, to doodle pictures, and to take photos, like our phones have become the greatest documentation tool ever. There’s no reason to not have really, really good records of what we’ve done in science.

There are a lot of resources out there that are inexpensive or that you can borrow from the library or are available free online. You don’t have to invest a lot of money to try this out with your family. If you’re sold on the idea and you’re ready to jump in, but you just don’t have the time or the desire to do it yourself, of course, we offer courses. We’ve got Inquisicook 1 and 2 are available. Those are for middle school and up. We’ve got Inquisicook Junior that’s going into production in about two weeks.

We do all the teaching. You don’t have any books to buy. Each course has 75 self-contained lessons. We also have optional recipes that we call for further eating. We have video demonstrations of every recipe that students are asked to prepare. The platform is easy to use, easy to navigate. We also have all the instructor resources you need so you will know what the marks have done this are, what the student’s answer should be. We have all the answer keys. If you want to check out the types of food your kids will be preparing, you can visit our recipe gallery and see just how crave-worthy science can be.

[00:27:49] Gretchen: This has been terrific. One of the things that you said in the portion of presentation is that if we can bring as many senses to the table as possible, it increases our ability to retain and synthesize that material. That is the hallmark of Demme Learning products. We seek to do that with all of our products. This is sort of a little bit of a marriage made in heaven to be able to now extend that into science and the kitchen. We had some terrific questions here. I wanted to ask you, how do you encourage a child to try foods from different food groups?

[00:28:32] Angela: There are a couple of different approaches to this. Some of it depends on whether they have food aversions or they just are reluctant to try. If they’re reluctant to try, actually for both really, I suggest turning the tables and having them be the cook. A lot of picky eaters have been catered to all their lives and had special things prepared for them or recipes manipulated to suit them. If you do this sensory evaluation process and you have the rest of the family explain what they want in a dish, and you ask your picky eater to make that dish, then they are learning how to manipulate processes and ingredients to change the outcome.

Now instead of being served, they are the ones serving and they are the ones learning to change the outcomes. In that process, you’re not forcing them to try something. They’re presenting it to everybody else and watching them enjoy it. They have to be able to assess their outcomes. Most likely, they are going to try it and maybe they like it, maybe they don’t, but they won’t know if they’ve hit the mark or not unless they can assess their own outcome. I recommend turning the tables and just bringing them into that process of making changes to suit others so then they can learn to make changes to suit themselves.

[00:29:57] Gretchen: Sure, that’s a great idea. When a child has a food aversion, sometimes that’s lifelong. I had a food aversion to olives as a child and as a young adult, and now I can’t get enough of them. It does change over time. I think as parents, we need to open avenues for our children that they might not even conceive of following. The question that I found the most fascinating was, what are some practical ways to include those busy lessons in a homeschool life when you are just– I know most homeschool moms are burning the candle at both ends. How do you recommend that we include this as part of our homeschool experiences without overburdening a homeschool mom?

[00:30:55] Angela: I think that involving the kids with the cooking process and accepting that your results are not going to be as easy or as perfect as if you did it yourself is the first step to just being okay with imperfection. As far as the busyness is concerned, actually, if you do this as part of your school day, you’re replacing a subject with food preparation. You’re actually doing double duty. That’s one aspect of it. There are other ways to do that.

I do something called progressive dinner, where if you– Let’s say we’re making a ham and cheese quiche, and we’ve got green onions to slice, cheese to shred, ham that needs to be diced, a pie plate that needs to be prepped. You can write down all of those processes on individual post-it notes and just line them up in a stack and have each kid take a turn when they have a break in school. “Okay, time to shred the cheese. You’re available, you go shred the cheese. The cheese is shredded and ready to go into that quiche.” Then they pull their ticket and then the next one at the top is the next process that’s done. You can have everybody pitching in to whatever their skill level would dictate, and you can have all the prep work done for you.

Then when it’s time to bring it together, you can of course dish out those responsibilities as well. If you know that you’ve got a kid that can get most of it done or just do the mise en place, just go into the kitchen and do all of the measuring for you. When you come into the kitchen, if you’re the one that’s going to finish it up, it really does feel like you’re on your own cooking show when you have all that stuff laid out like that. You’re just dumping and mixing and it just frees the mind to enjoy the cooking process. I would say consider it double duty and then divide the labor so everybody can do something.

[00:32:52] Gretchen: That’s a great idea. I love to divide the labor. We didn’t do it that way at my house. I had a different kid help me cook dinner every night. In a way, what you have recommended gives them a degree of independence that they might not have on their own, which to me is very attractive because our goal is to raise independent adults. That’s really tremendous. This question made me laugh, and I think it’s terrific. It says, “How do you get boys interested in cooking, not just cookies?”

[00:33:27] Angela: [laughs] I would start with some of their favorite foods. You don’t want to create too many barriers to entry at once. You don’t want to make everybody eat only whole wheat and also, make sure that there’s, let’s say, some exotic food that they’re not used to. Also, then the processes are weird. If you take something that’s familiar and use that as your launch pad, you do pizza, you can do tacos, whatever is a family favorite. Then just start with baby steps. They don’t have to prepare the whole meal the first time.

I can learn the basics of browning ground beef, setting the temperature controls right, letting it brown all the way on one side before you flip it to the other, and then chunking it up properly and when to salt it or when not to salt it, how to add the seasoning. You can just do the ground beef this time. Someday you may learn to do homemade tortillas, which actually are not that hard. Again, you can just do the basic kitchen skills of shredding the cheese, slicing the lettuce, dicing the tomatoes. Those are basic kitchen skills that can translate to all kinds of things. Then maybe you try chicken tacos or you want to do tacos made with carnitas or whatever. You start with something familiar, teach it incrementally, and then start branching out.

[00:34:54] Gretchen: I love that. That’s really a brilliant idea. I love this question too. It says, “Can you review briefly which knife is really best for which cutting job?” I’ve been in the kitchen since I was 10, which is a lot of years now, [laughs] but I have one knife that is my go-to knife for everything. I know that someone who was culinary trained would be absolutely appalled seeing me use this one knife for everything. This is a fascinating question.

[00:35:27] Angela: I think it’s actually pretty good to be adaptable and use what you have on hand. We don’t expect parents to go out and buy a full set of knives. We want the students to be able to use what’s in the kitchen. I have a very large collection of knives, and they are very nice knives, and I have two that I use all the time. I have a chef’s knife. It’s actually shorter than most chef knives. It’s a five-inch chef knife. I have a paring knife. For 90% of the jobs that I do in the kitchen, a chef’s knife and a paring knife will get the job done.

Exceptions would be if you are slicing bread, you would want a good quality bread knife. I finally broke down and bought one from Mercer and it changed my life. I was like, “I’ve been tearing my bread to pieces like a caveman all these years.” Now it’s all good with that knife. Then if you’re slicing roast beef, slicing hunks of meat, like ham or roast beef or whatever, you need a longer blade that’s really sharp. Beyond that, I think the rest is just– it makes it nice, but not necessary.

[00:36:35] Gretchen: That’s great. I love that idea. The other thing that’s important about knives is they need to be sharp.

[00:36:43] Angela: Yes, absolutely. Teach your kids to handle them sharp. They make those safety gloves that the kids can wear on their non-cutting hand, their grasping hand, that will save a lot of nicks and cuts. Then they can really get used to using a sharp knife.

[00:36:59] Gretchen: Sure. I’m looking at all the questions that we were asked and so many of them are interesting to me. I love this idea is how do you get a strict recipe follower to loosen up an experiment? I would drive a strict recipe follower nuts because everything is an experiment in my kitchen. [laughs]

[00:37:27] Angela: I would say pick one thing in the recipe. Select one thing that has to be changed. Make sure there’s something that can be changed. You don’t want to remove the leavener from a baked good or something like that. Change the type of protein, change the type of starch, change the type of flour. This is where the scientific investigation comes in. You need to have them look into the effects of that change if it’s going to be a structural difference. I would say change one thing at a time. Again, keep good records, jot down what that change was and what the outcome was, and then next time either do a completely different change and revert that one back to the original, or do an additional modification.

[00:38:16] Gretchen: Now you said that earlier about keep good records and that piqued my interest. What records are you keeping? Are you saying here’s the recipe and I changed the second ingredient and you’re making notes on that or what are you doing?

[00:38:33] Angela: The way that I personally do it because I don’t like to use devices in the kitchen actively, because a lot of times my hands are messy, I do like to print out recipes and I have a colored pen that I keep on the counter while I’m cooking and I jot down the alterations that I make. Of course, now I’m doing this professionally so there’s more to the process than this that I later take those notes and I integrate them with my knowledge matrix.

I’m actually jotting down those things, and then for each future attempt at the recipe, I have another one that goes into that file and I put them all in three-room notebooks. I also keep the sensory evaluations for all of these. I see how it’s adjusted. Now students are probably not going to want to do that, and I get it. They might want to use notes on a digital phone. Taking pictures. You can take pictures of so many– [crosstalk]

[00:39:32] Gretchen: That never occurred to me but that’s a brilliant idea because that way, you have a memory. My phone bank with my photographs is how I remember things. My husband asked me, we raise hogs here, and he asked me what year we got the first hog and so going in and searching when the first picture of a pig was and my phone was how we figured out when we got our first one.

[00:40:04] Angela: Yes. We can apply that to the kitchen processes and take picture of it, not just the finished product, but also anything that might be noteworthy in the process, or even videos.

[00:40:16] Gretchen: Another question was kitchen math skills. Talk to me a little bit about what kind of math skills you need, and how can we meld math and cooking? You can’t get away from cooking without using fractions, I know that. What do you do with a child who’s a little bit math-phobic, but you want them in the kitchen and learning those skills?

[00:40:43] Angela: Obviously, measuring is the obvious choice here. Learning, first of all, equivalents. How many teaspoons are in a tablespoon? How many tablespoons are in a cup? How many cups are in a gallon? There are a lot of teaching devices available for that. There are like Mr. Gallon, there’s the Mr. Gallon diagram that you can be able to find online that creates a figure that displays those equivalents. Really, when you’re cooking, the food becomes your manipulatives.

If you’re measuring tablespoons and teaspoons and things like that, the counting and adding becomes a natural part of it. For little bitty kids, when we’re cracking eggs, we’re going to count out loud. One, two, three, four, five. For measuring cups, they have those fractional measuring cups that actually show the portions of a circle. A quarter cup is going to be a quarter circle when they measure it, and then that becomes the four parts of the cup. Those are helpful, especially with students that have learning challenges.

Making things as concrete as possible really helps. Sometimes that means printing things off and cutting them out and like, “Okay, here’s, you can have this many of this,” and then they can use those as markers. Then scaling recipes is a great way to teach practical math skills. A lot of our families are larger than the four-serving typical recipe size. We need to double this. If you double this, if we double a quarter cup, what’s that going to be? If we needed one teaspoon, obviously, it’s easy to add one and one.

Scaling recipes can become an entire math system unto itself. If you’ve got older students that want to do culinary math, we will probably eventually put out a culinary math program but that’s way down the road. In the meantime, the Culinary Institute of America has a culinary math workbook that they can work through. This is all so good for students that are doing fine at math, but they want to learn more practical math.

[00:43:05] Gretchen: Do you have any recommendations? I know a couple of parents who registered after I sent you questions asked if we could recommend an app for recipes. My son gifted me with Paprika for Christmas and I’ve seen a lot about recipe. My son was laughing at me when he was here at Thanksgiving because he’s like, “I just gifted you with this app and here you are writing out a recipe.” I said, “Yes, because that’s how I’m going to get it in my head of the order that I need to do things.”

[00:43:41] Angela: Yes, I love Paprika. That’s my recipe app of choice. Now I’m not one that goes out and explores and tries to see all the apps and pick the best one. I belong to a few Facebook groups and Reddit subs and things like that where I just do crowdsourcing of what people think about them. I settled on Paprika. I love the way that it’s got an internal browser that you can find recipes and then immediately download them. It’s easy to scale. I love Paprika.

[00:44:14] Gretchen: Yes, I haven’t even figured out all the things to use with it thus far. Usually, I’m halfway through a recipe and I’m like, “Oh, I want to put this in Paprika.” [crosstalk] That’s a little bit interesting.

[00:44:28] Angela: For recipe indexing and quick recall, I love Paprika.

[00:44:34] Gretchen: This was an interesting question. It says, “I don’t know, how can I become an intuitive cook?” Some of my children are fabulous intuitive cooks. Some of them are, like we described earlier, that I’m not going to deviate from the recipe kind of kid. None of my children are kids. My youngest is 19. How do you create that intuitiveness? Is it through the process of experimentation?

[00:45:10] Angela: I don’t even think you need to necessarily experiment to be an intuitive cook. This is going to sound self-serving. If you learn the science, you will become a more intuitive cook. If you learn that steam is the enemy of browning and that if you don’t dry your vegetables that you’re trying to roast to get a little char on them, get a little browning on them, they will steam in that pan instead of browning.

Once you learn that, you know that you need to dry your vegetables before you roast them. You need to pat your, whatever, chicken thighs dry before you put them on the grill if you want that skin to crisp up. The more science you know about cooking, the easier it’s going to be to have that click in your head when you’re in the middle of a process and say, “I can do this,” or “I shouldn’t do that.” Honestly, learning the science is the best way to become an intuitive cook.

[00:46:06] Gretchen: That’s terrific. I love it. I knew that answer, but I’ve never articulated that answer as far as wet vegetables don’t crisp. You’ve said a lot of things today that I’m like, “Oh yes, I do that,” but I don’t think I’ve ever articulated any of that to my children. That is amazing. I cannot believe, oh my goodness, this time has gone so quickly. We’re almost at the top of the hour. What would you recommend to someone who has found what you have talked about compelling? What are their next steps?

[00:46:45] Angela: I would say just set some goals, make them achievable. You’re not going to do it every day, but just say one day this week during lunch, we’re going to explore grilled cheese science or something. Start with one thing and maybe you say to yourself, “Okay, we’re going to do this once a month. We’re going to do this once a week.” See how your students respond. See if it’s really enriching your homeschool experience. See if it’s really enriching your family life.

Then once you get a little bit of traction going there, you’ll be amazed at how you can take off and fly on your own. I will try to get those recommended resources either shared with you or posted elsewhere because there are a lot of resources you can bring in that will give you some starting points and spoon-feed you the science so you don’t have to go out looking for it. Getting hooked up with some of those things and just start small and get some momentum going. I think families will find that the kids look forward to it, that it’s not something that’s burdensome and expensive and a big hassle. They may be the ones asking you.

[00:48:00] Gretchen: That’s terrific. In these closing minutes, what would you say is the most important thing for a parent to take away from our conversation?

[00:48:10] Angela: Science is part of life. Practical science actually changes the way that you live. What happens in your kitchen matters. Having students who grow into adults who can cook what’s on sale, what’s in season, and what’s in the fridge, those are skills that will serve them for the rest of their lives. It will also make them more adaptable. We learned during COVID that we won’t always have access to everything that we have access to today. Being able to pivot and use what you have on hand, it increases food security, it increases confidence, it makes you a better manager of your budget, and it just makes you a better steward on this earth.

[00:48:58] Gretchen: Absolutely. I love everything that you’ve said. Angela, tell us the website again so that we can go find this information.

[00:49:06] Angela: Okay. It’s Inquisicook.com. That’s with an S in the middle, not a Z. It’s basically inquisitive, only with cook instead of -tive. We’ve got sample lessons. You can watch full-length videos. We’ve got information on all the different recipes you’ll prepare. You can get a feel for us. I hope that people have come away with this with a new enthusiasm for making cooking their ultimate applied science.

[00:49:34] Gretchen: I have one more question for you, and that is, I loved your modules. Would that be an appropriate gift for a young adult? I know you’re gearing this toward middle school, high school, but if I had a hesitant cook in my knowledge base, but they wanted to be more knowledgeable, would one of your course materials work for adults?

[00:49:59] Angela: Absolutely. We’ve actually had adults go through the course. My mother went through the course when she was 83 years old and was so enthusiastic about learning new things. She’s been cooking all her life that. There’s always room to grow. Yes. We do actually plan to enter the adult learners market in a few years because there is a lot of confusion and a lot of demands and a lot of people are turning to– I don’t have anything against YouTube or TikTok or any of that, but I think that, again, random acts of cooking is not a good way to build a comprehensive knowledge base. Also, there’s so much stunt food prevalent, just like doing weird things for the sake of getting attention, that it’s easy to go down unhelpful rabbit holes.

[00:50:52] Gretchen: I have a child who has recently discovered that they sort of have a dairy intolerance. We’ve been looking for recipes that don’t have dairy in them. I found a recipe that said, “This is the creamiest soup,” and it was made with cauliflower. I beg to differ. We’ll just say, no, not really. It did not make a cream soup. I think unless you do that, unless you do those kinds of experiments, you don’t know what’s good and what fails.

Absolutely. Angela, I want to thank you so much for this time. If you would give me some resources that we can post in the show notes, that would be amazing. It has been such a pleasure to spend this hour with you. Thank you so much. I just have enjoyed it thoroughly.

[00:51:44] Angela: It’s been a delight and I’m really thankful for the opportunity.

[00:51:47] Gretchen: Wonderful. Wonderful. We’ll look forward to seeing you– You said you’re going to be at several homeschool conferences this year. In closing, can you tell us where you’ll be so parents can find you?

[00:51:59] Angela: Yes, we will be at the Great Homeschool Convention in Greenville, South Carolina, and in St. Charles, Missouri, and in Columbus, Ohio. We will be at Teach Them Diligently in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. We’ll be at the FPEA Conference in Orlando, Florida. We’ll be at THSC in Houston, Texas. We’ll be at Great Homeschool Conventions in Round Rock, Texas, and we will be in the newly launched Lynchburg, Virginia, conference for Teach Them Diligently.

[00:52:32] Gretchen: Wonderful. That’s wonderful. I hope many of our audience members can find you at those conferences. It is worth stopping by your booth because I learned so many things about science in the 15 minutes that we had a conversation that it was definitely worth it. Thank you so much for today. I really appreciate it, and we’ll look forward to hearing from you soon.

[00:52:54] Angela: Thank you, Gretchen.

[00:52:55] Gretchen: Take care.

Thanks again for joining us. We’re glad to be a part of your educational community. You can help us grow our community even more by rating, reviewing, and subscribing to the show wherever you may be hearing this. Don’t forget that you can access the show notes and watch a recording at demmelearning.com/show or on our YouTube channel. We’ll see you again next time. Until then, keep building strong foundations for lifelong learning.

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