I love cooking.

I love spending time with my girls.

So, I often put the two things together and voila... We have child labour!

My girls know how important it is to eat healthy and they know I go to great lengths to make sure I always cook our dinners from scratch and try to make them as healthy as possible, without being a vegetarian (Brazilian-vegetarian is an oxy-moron, so I won't even go there...).  So they love to help me and see what goes "in" the food that I "make" them eat.  Sometime after Christmas I had a serious craving for won-ton soup.  The "I-know-exactly-what's-in-there" kind. So I pulled out my trusty recipe book (the one with all the fingerprints all over it) and off we went.  This is a good recipe for rainy days like today and the great thing about it is that you make a great big batch and then freeze all the extra won-tons for another rainy day!  Not to mention the fact that it's an activity you can do with your kids...

Enjoy! And please leave me a comment! 

Won-Ton Soup  

Won-tons 

1 lb ground pork (I always ask the butcher at Sobeys to grind some for me)

1/2 cup water chestnuts (they're not a nut, they're a vegetable!)

4 stalks of green onions, chopped

1 Tablespoon freshly ground ginger root

1 tsp olive oil

3 cloves garlic ( I always triple this amount, but that's just me)

Salt and pepper

1 package of won-ton wrappers (found in your grocer's fridge, usually with the veggies)

Mix all ingredients above using your hands (that's right, get dirty!).  Then using a teaspoon, spoon the mix into the won ton wrappers and using little fingers (see image below) wet the edges with water, then close the wrappers in a triangle shape. 

Soup 

For the soup part, I just mix together a couple of liters of Chicken Stock, some green onions, and some dried mushrooms and whatever other veggies you like to have in there, or whatever you have in your fridge.

Once the stock boils, drop in the won-tons and cook for about 20 minutes or so, to make sure that all meat is thoroughly cooked.

You can flash freeze the extra won-tons by placing them on a cookie sheet, then once frozen move them over to a ZipLoc bag so then don't get freezer burn!

Enjoy the assembly images below.

Here, Sabrina shows us how to wet the edges of the won-ton wrappers... 

 Here are my two little helpers making sure supper gets done in a timely fashion!

Ps: I have been cooking with my kids for years, and if I can give you a little advice it would be to let them come and go as they please... If you insist that they finish what they started, they'll get turned off and won't want to do it again. But that doesn't apply to getting them to clean their room... They better finish THAT job!