1 . Experts on child development agree that children learn and develop through everyday experiences.    1    That’s why introducing cooking to children at a young age is essential to their experiential learning. Children like playing make-believe and enjoy inventing a variety of characters while immersed in (沉浸于) imaginative play. Cooking games area fantastic way to stimulate imaginative play.

Cooking games for kids train creativity. Free online cooking games encourage kids to try new things and think outside the box by letting them experiment with ingredients, recipes and preparation methods.    2    

Online cooking games promote math and reading skills.    3    It promotes the development of fundamental mathematical abilities such as counting, adding, subtracting and working with fractions. Additionally, many free cooking games online, such as Cooking Mama, require kids to read the recipes or lists of ingredients and then follow the directions, teaching them to read and improving their vocabulary.

    4    When kids take the initiative, finish a task or follow directions correctly, they feel good about themselves and proud of what they’ve done. When kids have trust in their own skills, they are more likely to grow up with a feeling of confidence, responsibility and independence.

Cooking games can improve social skills.    5    For example, playing multiplayer or two-player games allows children to interact with others, help each other, laugh together, solve problems in cooperation, and soon. This is especially convenient for kids who have difficulty reaching out to others in the real world. Online games can help these kids develop self-esteem and practice their communication skills, so they eventually feel more confident making friends in real life.

3 . It was a snowy day during the spring break when I walked into a great restaurant. In this blizzard weather, it was the only restaurant that remained open.

The restaurant has a long history in Hong Kong. Its owners, the couple, Peter and Michelle, have been running the restaurant since 2007.

“Things have changed a lot in the past 30 years,” Peter said. “Chinese students 20 years ago thought that a 70-cent bowl of rice was too expensive, but now a $20 meal is acceptable”. He also said that the new generation of Chinese students engaged with other students, bringing all their non-Chinese friends to visit the restaurant.

Peter takes great pride in his own cooking. He was curious about how the food was made and why particular foods or sauces had specific tastes. He chose to serve mainly Guangdong and Sichuan food at the restaurant, featuring the family-style Chinese dim sum or hot pot.

When I asked whether he would modify the taste of the dishes to suit the taste of most Americans, Peter said, “We are not like those American Chinese restaurants. We provide the genuine Chinese taste to our customers, and they will love it because it is delicious, and their taste will suit the taste of our dishes, not the other way around.”

“If I hear complaints from my customers, I will be so upset that I can’t fall asleep at night”, he said. “Luckily most of my favorite dishes received wide acclaim from my customers and it takes more than one person’s effort.”

He compares himself with the craftsmen in China who are proud of preserving ancient Chinese art and whose motivation is only on people’s enjoyment of their work and thought.

Such a spirit of craftsmanship has been remarkable and greatly valued in the past. The craftsman’s spirit with perfection, precision, concentration, and patience remains in Peter and his cooking.

4 . For the first 18 years of my life, my mom cooked Chinese food every day, all served family-style. But when it came time for me to teach myself how to cook, I didn’t ask my mom for help. Instead, like so many young people, I turned to the online recipes. By the time I got married, I could cook many dishes. What I didn’t really know how to cook at all, however, was Chinese food.

Part of the problem was that I only knew how to cook by following recipes. And up until maybe 5 or 10 years ago, the number of English-language recipes for Chinese dishes you could find in a cookbook or on the Internet still felt extremely limited —at least when it came to homey(家乡菜), everyday recipes written with a younger Chinese American audience in mind.

That was the experience, too, for sisters Sarah and Kaitlin Leung. Like so many other ABCs (American-born Chinese) and younger first- and second-generation Chinese immigrants(移民), the Leung sisters reached a point in their adult lives when they started to love to eat the food they’d grown up on, but found it really difficult to learn how to prepare it.

As it turns out, though, the Leung sisters were uniquely positioned to do something about it: Their father had spent years cooking at his family’s Chinese American takeout restaurant. Their mom had deep knowledge about traditional Shanghainese cooking. Meanwhile, the two sisters had grown up in New York, eating their parents, food, but also immersed(沉浸)in America’s own food culture.

So, in 2013, the Leungs started a food blog “The Woks of Life”. What made their blog different from other blogs was that the intergenerational transfer of knowledge that the Leungs were so eager for was baked right into the concept: The four family members took turns posting recipes, each sharing their own favorites. In that way, Sarah says, the blog reflected — and continues to reflect — the diversity of the Chinese diaspora(华侨).

5 . Three Cooking Myths

As a child, one of the unbreakable rules was “no swimming for 30 minutes after eating”. This was like a gospel(福音、信条), seriously not to be questioned. Turns out, there was actually nothing true about this “truism”. But for many years, children sat around, unhappily, awaiting the end of the 30-minute torture.

I only bring this up because there are a few kitchen truisms that I thought we might investigate, just for fun.

For Kezia Whitaker, cooking has always been a big part of her life. She spent her childhood in the kitchen with her mum, learning about the flavors and skills needed to make an amazing meal. So far Kezia     1    (become) the first winner of the BBC cooking competition Young Master Chef. She cooked Jamaican and other Caribbean-style dishes, which     2    (describe) as “sunshine on a plate”. Whittaker loves to share her passion with friends online, showing young people     3     interesting cooking is. “I’m so addicted     4     cooking,” she said. “Anything food related, I’m running towards it.”

9 . Join Sandra Oddo as she shares a variety of tips and skills for making wine at home using elderflowers and elderberries.

Items	Elderflower Wine Recipe (食谱)	Elderberry Wine Recipe
Ingredients	● Elderflowers (at least one quart); ● 1 gallon of boiling water per quart of flowers; ● 2 to 2-1/2 pounds of sugar per gallon of liquid; ● 2 lemons per gallon, juiced; ● 1 packet of dry wine yeast (酵母) per 5 gallons of liquid.	● Elderberries (at least 2 gallons); ● 1 gallon of boiling water per 2 gallons of berries; ● 3-1/2 to 4 pounds of sugar per gallon of boiled-down liquid; ● 1 packet of dry wine yeast per 5 gallons of liquid.
Instructions	● Cut a quart of flowers from the stems; ● Pour a gallon of boiling water over the flowers; ● Let the tea soak three or four days with the flowers pressed down under the liquid (they turn brown and ruin the color of the drink if they’re left in the air); ● Strain off the fluid and heat some of it to dissolve 2 to 2-1/2 pounds of sugar per gallon; ● Add the juice of 2 lemons per gallon along with yeast; ● Let the mixture work in a container with an air lock.	● Pick nice fat berries about two days ahead, remove them from the stems and smash up the fruit: ● Pour boiling water over the mixture, soaking for about a week; ● Keep the container covered with a towel to protect the working “must” from dust and the odd yeast floating around in the air; ● Strain off and save the juice and mix 3-1/2 to 4 pounds of sugar into each gallon of the liquid.