Chef Aseem

Aseem is very tactile. Touching is believing for him. One great outlet for this has been cooking and baking. He loves to help Manisha and me in the kitchen. Whenever Manisha is baking something, he is the first in line to help. Yesterday they baked banana breads. Aseem helped Manisha measure the honey and butter, crack the eggs, mix the dough and finally pour it in the pans. He stayed with the process right to the end. Today they are planning to bake cranberry breads to take with us to Orlando, and he is already at Manisha, "When are we baking? When are we baking?"!

I recently wrote about making chapaatis. That is of course heaven for a tactile person. Aseem (and Supriya, surprisingly) is eager to roll out the dough and then put it on the hot tawaa. He is not yet ready to do the whole thing by himself, but I think he is going to be rather soon.

Where Aseem really shines (so far) is making an omelette. He cracks the egg in a bowl, mixes it with a fork and pours it on the pan - all by himself. As one side gets cooked he flips it over with a spatula, and then lifts it up and puts it on his plate. The drive to learn came from Aseem, and Manisha let him learn by getting out of the way. He made mistakes along the way, got eggs everywhere, and became really good at it in the process. Letting go continues to be my challenge and I am learning a lot about that from Manisha.