I Tested This Affordable Kid-Friendly Cooking Kit with My Family, and Each Meal Was a Huge Success
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Little Passports
My family meals often feel rushed, especially around the holidays. While we try our best to sit at the table together between work, school, playdates, and errands, it doesn't always happen.
Dinnertime usually consists of my husband or me making a quick meal and ensuring that our busy 3-year-old eats first. While keeping our child fed and entertained, my husband and I switch off taking spoonfuls of our dishes before they get cold — it's not exactly quality time. So when I had the opportunity to try a kid-friendly cooking kit that promised to make mealtime an activity everyone would enjoy, I was curious to see how it would go.
Little Passports creates kids discovery-themed subscription boxes and explorative products across science, art, culture, and geography. Its Kitchen Adventures collection has kits containing kid-approved recipes and small craft activities inspired by dishes and cultures around the world. (Psst: We have an exclusive promo code to save you 40 percent on these subscription boxes, which are available in monthly, six-month, and 12-month plans.)
Little Passports
Buy It! Little Passports Monthly Kitchen Adventures Subscription Box, $17.95/month with code FOODIE40 (orig. $29.95); littlepassports.com
My family received Kitchen Adventures' Rome, Italy-themed cooking kit, and it was even simpler to follow than I anticipated. Which, as an intermediate home chef and toddler mom, I greatly appreciated. The box included four colorful recipe booklets with photos conveying select steps and a shopping list on a handy compact card (the subscription boxes do not include ingredients), which were all enclosed in a tri-folding flavor journal with fun food facts about Italy. This Kitchen Adventures box also contained kid-friendly tongs and a marble maze craft activity, which my son found entertaining.
Each recipe included lists of ingredients and required kitchen tools. It also informed us of the serving size and total time to prep and cook. My family loves pasta and seasonings, so luckily, I already had a handful of the ingredients in my pantry. And since these are kid-friendly recipes, they were broken down into clear and thoughtful instructions.
For example, the pizza bianco/focaccia bread recipe had a dedicated page just for making the dough. I found it helpful to know how much time I needed to set aside for the dough to rise because it gave me a better timeline for the rest of the recipe. It was fun watching my son (of course, fully supervised) pour the flour and ingredients in the mixing bowl — I could tell that he felt as if he was truly a part of our cooking process. Not to mention, the bread came out absolutely delicious.
Along with the bread, we made cacio e pepe, bucatini all'amatriciana, and for dessert, chocolate semifreddo, over the course of a weekend. Any time the recipes called for cooking on a stovetop, my son kept himself amused with the marble maze or asked me questions about the ingredients as I cooked. The included flavor journal was filled with facts about Roman dishes, pastas, and the city, which I read off to him. There was even a recipe notes section to reflect on our experience with this kit.
After trying each dish, my son's favorite was definitely the bucatini (zero leftovers), especially with the pancetta, which was a noted substitute ingredient for the original guanciale. The chocolate semifreddo was a huge hit, and we had plenty to keep in the freezer afterwards.
I would recommend this Little Passports subscription box for families with kids of all ages. As a parent, this was such a memorable experience, and I saw how much my son loved cooking together. Next time, I'll go for one of the recipe subscription boxes inspired by the culture and meals from Argentina, India, Greece, or China.
Save 40 percent on Little Passports Kitchen Adventures subscription boxes with code FOODIE40 — the easy-to-follow recipes and fun activities would make a great gift for the holidays.
Little Passports
Buy It! Little Passports Monthly Kitchen Adventures Subscription Box, $17.95/month with code FOODIE40 (orig. $29.95); littlepassports.com
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