Loving Cooking Games

Cooking games are a great things, both online and off. When you play cooking games, you’re getting a nice set of benefits whether you realize it or not.

Cooking games online can help you with fine motor skills. If you find your attention drifting, pull out some cooking games and you’ll be engaged with the game and you’ll be forced to move rapidly as well. The end result is rapid hand and eye motion, and how can that be a bad thing?

Cooking games give you time together with family. When you play cooking games at home, you might invite your sisters or parents to play with you. Try new experiments and pull out new recipes to use for dinner that night for a bit of family adventure

Cooking games introduce you to new foods. Why not try some new foods? Cooking games give you plenty of options of things to try that are both delicious and fun to make as well.

Cooking Games and the Holidays

Cooking games are a natural part of the holiday season. Many families come together to make cookies or treats for teachers and other family members. When you share the experience of the cooking games, it’s easy to really get to know everyone without the pressure and the drama of the shopping malls or the even the grocery stores.

This holiday season treat your family to a real event in your household. While everyone is away at school or at a friend’s house, make a huge batch of cut-out sugar cookies. Then mix up icing in a variety of colors and arrange it into bowls. Sit your kids down after dinner and have them start decorating the cookies. Make it a rule that nobody can get up until every cookie is decorated. Even if your teenage children don’t get into as much as you’d like, they might still enjoy the experience and you’ll have given them a chance to enjoy a fun holiday treat during the most important time of the year.

Cooking Games and Family

Cooking games are a great way for families to spend time together. When your family is playing cooking games together, you get endless amounts of time in a real activity. Not only will you have plenty of stories to tell about how the activity actually went, you’ll have a chance to get through to your children in a non-awkward kind of way.

Cooking games tend to not be as staged feeling as some of the chats or talks that parents have with their kids. Instead of the kids all sitting still while mom and dad lecture them, the family is all involved in making dinner or cutting out cookies for the family dinner or dessert. When you’re working side by side, it’s much easier to have a natural conversation with a kid – especially your own kid. Keep everyone’s hands busy and you’ll soon have some serious family cooking games to cherish.

The 12 Cooking Games of Christmas Part 2

To continue the ideas I have for the 12 Cooking Games of Christmas:

Day 4 Cooking Games – I’m going to make some Rice Krispie treats with some holidays marshmallows blended into for some extra colors.

Day 5 Cooking Games – The plan for this day is to back off the sweets again and go for a salty treat. I might make Chex Mix or I might bring up a simple dip and chips for everyone to share.

Day 6 Cooking Games – Back to the yummy sweets! This day is for fudge – the original chocolate kind complete with walnuts.

Day 7 Cooking Games – We’re going to scale it back this day and get a bit simpler again with some peanut butter cookies.

Day 8 Cooking Games – It’s time for a bit of meat, so I plan on making a sausage tray with cheese and crackers – snacks that are easy to share, but that have a bit of heft to them as well.

Day 9 Cooking Games – After all that meat, it’s time for more sweetness, and it might be a plate of gingersnaps rolled in cinnamon.

The 12 Cooking Games of Christmas Part 1

I’ve decided to give my special someone a unique gift this year. I’m going to use my cooking games and skills in the kitchen to bring him the twelve cooking games of Christmas. He works in an environment where there are plenty of other guys around and he’s there for long stretches of time during the day. What this means to me is that I can make him a different yummy treat every day and take them up to his work for him to share with friends. Here are the ones I have in mind so far.

Day 1 Cooking Games – I plan to make some chocolate chip cookies. You can’t go wrong with the original, right?

Day 2 Cooking Games – I’m going to be making some trail mix with festive colors of M&M candies mixed in for good measure. I might even individually package it up for some friends or put it in a big festive bowl for everyone to dip into and share.

Day 3 Cooking Games – It’s time for more sweets, and this time it’s going to be cupcakes. I’ll make him a dozen of his favorite type – vanilla with vanilla frosting and deliver them in Christmas wrapping.

Cooking Games and Pot Luck

There is no reason pot lucks have to be on formal occasions at work. If you have a group of friends who like to eat together, why not have a standing pot luck event every week or every couple of weeks? You can give each potluck a name or just make them a standing ritual. To have a pot luck cooking game, you only need to have a few friends to join together to make something yummy. You might want to divvy up the styles of foods to bring for each friend as well.

For example, the first week of the cooking games, you could bring the main course in a crock pot. Another friend can bring a salad, the next a side dish and the fourth a dessert. The end result is a nice meal that everyone can share. It’s much better than a frozen meal and it’s not much more expensive than your meal would have been otherwise. This is especially true if you bring the main dish only once per month when you do this weekly. A side benefit is that the food can be used again the next day as delicious leftovers.

Cooking Games and Personalized Cookies

To help celebrate the holidays with good friends, why not have a cookie decorating event? While this might sound more like something kids do, there are more than a few adults who would love to have a chance to smear around some icing and play with sprinkles. Invite your friends over for this cooking game, and you can make it into a casual tea party. Make a pot of tea and set out a platter of plain cookies on the table. Then, use a bit of icing to decorate each one.

If you’re like you can have a contest before everyone starts devouring the yummy treats. Another option is to make large cookies decorated especially for each of your friends. Take a message from the cookie companies that decorate cookies like real cakes. Use icing to create a picture on a large cookie. Or just write some initials and use some sprinkles to jazz things up a bit. When you arrive at work or school with all of your cookies in tow, you’ll be the hit of the crowd.

Cooking Games Online

One of the most interesting games to play online are the cooking games. With the cooking games, you’re doing much more than just trying to get from one point on the screen to another. You’re not shooting anything or driving a car. The point of the cooking games is to get orders correct as if you’re a short order cook. With the cooking games, you are a cook or chef in a busy establishment. Orders start coming in and it’s up to you to determine the best way to cook everything to get the orders finished up and out the door.

To get the cooking done correctly, you’re in a constant battle against burning certain food items and getting others on the griddle in time. As things are ready, you move them along and the game continues. Naturally the cooking games increase in difficulty as you play, making them more challenging while also making them plenty of fun, too. You might even become inspired to put down the mouse and pick up a spatula of your own to create a yummy feast all your own.

Cooking Games and Popcorn Balls

What could be better for fall than popcorn balls? You can make these simply cooking games at home on a cold fall afternoon, although you should plan to eat them right away. Popcorn balls don’t last long and can get harder over time if they are not wrapped or eaten immediately.

To make the popcorn ball cooking games, you’ll start with salted popcorn. You can use unsalted, plain popcorn, but it makes everything a bit bland. Pop your popcorn and put it aside. Melt half a stick of butter in a very large pot and then add ¼ cup of brown sugar. Stir the sugar and butter together before adding 4 cups of marshmallows. Melt the marshmallows and stir very well. Turn off the heat and then add the popcorn. Stir it gently until all of the popcorn is covered in the marshmallow mixture.

Press the balls into shape by hand and wrap or eat immediately. Letting the balls sit will make them dry out almost immediately.

Cooking Games and Fires

The colder season is the perfect time to fire up the outside fire pit for some fun cooking games. And with the fire pit you can have a bit of fun with your children and even by yourself. Grab some long sticks and a few hot dogs and marshmallows and roast yourself up something nice. The fire pit is a great way to keep warm on a cool night, but you can easily spend some time on the weekend enjoying the fire pit during the day even if the weather isn’t that cold.

Build a fire and let it burn down enough that you have some nice embers. When it’s lunch time or just time for a bit of fun, haul out the hot dogs and sticks and teach your children or just enjoy roasting your own hot dogs. Get creative with the fire and cook other things as well on various sticks. Marshmallows are an easy choice, you can also cook cans of things like chili in the fire or even potatoes if you really want to get serious about open flame cooking. Always practice fire safety, of course, in these sorts of cooking games.

Cooking Games and Ooey Gooey Brownie Sundaes

If there is anything better than ice cream, it’s ice cream over a brownie. Brownie ala mode or really just a brownie sundae is easily one of the most delicious ways to consume countless calories while practically passing out in ecstasy. It’s for this reason that I truly love cooking game – you can make such delicious desserts.

When you make an ooey gooey brownie sundae, you can’t start with just any brownie. You need fresh brownies, preferably thick ones that are heavy. Don’t use the “cake-like brownies” in your recipe – you want the richest ones you can make. Once you have the brownies baking, take them out of the oven just a minute or two before they are well and truly done. You want them to be on the verge of being under baked so that they are extra moist and gooey.

Cut a hefty square of brownie and then dump a large scoop of ice cream on top. Cover with caramel and fudge sauce and top with plenty of whipped cream and cherries. The result is delicious, messy and rich. Yum!

Cooking Games and Dinnertime

Even if you enjoy cooking games, dinner time can be a challenge depending on the time that you normally eat. If, for example, you like to eat dinner early because you have young ones to put to bed, even the best cooking games can’t be done in the fifteen minutes you have to whip something up. You’ll need more time to dice and cut and prepare than you can find on a typical Monday afternoon. The solution to this is to not cook on a Monday night.

Cook on a Sunday instead. Make Sunday your family day to cook and then freeze or put away food items that you can pull out on a moment’s notice to prepare. Grab the casserole dish and reheat it on Monday. Use the crock pot on Tuesday and just dump in the basics before you leave the house. Wednesday is ideal for leftover and Thursday might leave you with the seasoned meat and potato dish you created. It’s hard to make cooking games fit in before dinnertime, but if you’re savvy, you can make it all work beautifully .

Cooking Games and Football

Football season is a great excuse to cook. You can create all sorts of yummy treats during football season that you can’t always get away with during the warmer months. If you like fall cooking games, invite a crowd over for a football game and you’ll be in business. Start with the main dish for the meal – it should be something relatively easy to eat while seated on the couch. Bowls of chili are nice and warm or sandwiches are easy as well. Perhaps create giant sandwiches to cut and share.

Your snacks are the central part of the game, of course. You can start with pretzels and chips, but then expand into things that are more fun for everyone. Pigs in a blanket and different kinds of pastries. Dips are always a huge hit and you can enjoy plenty of cooking games if you start to incorporate all of the fun dessert options as well. Cakes, pies and decorated cookies – there’s something for everyone during football cooking games.

Cooking Games and the Grill

In some areas, you can use your grill all year long. But in other areas, the grill is really only useful in the warmer months of the year. It’s unlikely that the grill will be pulled out in the middle of a snowstorm, so you’ll need to prepare your grill for the long winter.

As the weather cools down, cook one last delicious meal on your grill and then start taking steps to clean and protect the grill over the month. Turn the grill on as high as it will go and let it heat up fully to burn off all of the old food. Let it cool completely before using a scraping brush to remove any of the remaining items. Empty all of the ashes and food from the bottom of the grill if possible.

Before pulling on the cover, screw the top of the gas canister completely closed and store the canister in an area where there won’t be a risk of frost or freezing – the garage or basement, for example. Completely cover the grill and move it into storage if you’re able before settling into the winter.

Cooking Games and Fall Foods

While there is certainly not a rule about the best foods for fall, it’s commonly accepted that the fall cooking games are ones that provide hot, hearty foods for the colder days. As the days cool off, the meals heat up in a big way. Some of the best cooking games for fall include:

Chili – Hearty, meat-filled and nutritious, chili is a great staple in the fall. It is a meal in itself, but can be used as a supplement to other meals as well. Top a baked potato with a ladleful of chili. Take your chili and crumble some cornbread on top. Add some beans and cheese to give you extra flavor.

Soups – Hot soups are a hearty meal option in the fall that will help you warm up from the inside out. The soups are filling, but they aren’t as heavy as some other options in the fall.

Pie – Hot pie is good all year long, but some of the richer pies are best in the fall. Pumpkin pie, pecan pie and various meat and berry pies are delicious in the fall. The warm pies topped with cream are easily the favorite fall cooking games.

Cooking Games and the Family Barbecue

A family barbecue is a fun way to relax with your family while playing cooking games. You can have a family barbecue with just the people closest to you or by inviting some friends over to enjoy the meal with you. The more people that come over, the more festive your family barbecue will become. In the cooking games, you’ll always want to make sure that there is enough food for everyone and that you have something to use as you prepare the food.

For example, don’t fire up the grill before you check to be sure that the steaks aren’t frozen at that the hot dogs have buns to serve them with. Your grill should be clean and ready for preparing food, while the kitchen is an easy place to get the side dishes ready. You can even cook sides like corn or beans over the grill as well to cut down on the mess inside. Pull the meal together, and then enjoy the company as everyone sits around a picnic table to enjoy it together.

Cooking Games and Progressive Dinners

One easy way to have fun with friends, especially a large group of friends, is to arrange a progressive dinner. In the progressive dinner, you’ll take your friends from one house to the other to offer them different course. These cooking games let many different people be involved in the production of the food and it gives all of your guests different scenery and surroundings as they move around the neighborhood.

If you have enough people that can drive, you can spread out across town, but even a group of walkers can have fun if you keep things centralized in a single location – like a neighborhood where a few of you live. As you serve up the food and fun with these cooking games, introduce some fun games as well to keep everyone interested. Try to make sure everyone is in the same room while you play to be sure everyone is included in the fun.

Cooking Games – The Perfect Fireside Snack

Now that the summer is wrapping up, it’s time to start thinking of autumn nights and perhaps the first true cold front of the season. As the weather cools down, the kitchen can start to heat up – make yourself a delicious fireside snack to enjoy on your first cold night this autumn.

A hot drink – The perfect snack has to start with a hot drink. Whether you like hot chocolate, hot cider, tea or coffee, plan to brew up something how and steamy. Top it with a cinnamon stick or some marshmallows, use a big over-sized mug and then plan the rest of the snack.

Savory foods – The fire means it’s time to savor your foods. To do this, you’ll need something hot. Nachos are a great savory item that is easy to pull together. Chips, beans, cheese and tomatoes are all cooked together to be a hot, yummy snack. Warm bread, hot sandwiches and small quiches are also easy things to pull together or heat up to snack on.

Something sweet – Finally, you’ll need something sweet to snack on. A warm piece of pie is delicious by the fireside or opt for some cake to settle the sweet tooth. Hot brownies are delicious as well – get creative and enjoy the delicious nature of food on a cold night.

Cooking Games – Tips for a Perfect School Lunch

These days I’m relegated to making school lunches instead of playing real cooking games. Of course, school lunches need love, too, and I’ve come up with a few plans of attack on how to pull together a nice lunch in a pretty speedy way.

To make a school lunch, I always start with a frozen juice packet. The frozen juice acts like ice to keep the rest of the lunch cool, but it also melt over the course of the morning so that you have nice, cold juice to drink at lunch time. This works with a small water bottle as well.

I then include something easy to eat with your fingers. I’ve discovered that packing something that resembles a real meal often means I forget to include silverware, so I’m stuck. Better to throw in some cheese and crackers or a sandwich than risk having pasta without a means to eat it.

Finally, I always include a sweet snack. Even if it’s just a single cookie or a small candy bar, it’s important to have a little treat throughout the day. It’s just as important, of course, to find a treat that is small – you don’t want to ruin your supper, after all.

Cooking Games in 10 Minutes or Less

I need to start some new cooking games in my household. By the time I get two boys home from gymnastics, I’ll be looking for something to fix very quickly before it’s time for some homework and bed. Our days fly by during the school year, but I don’t want to always eat out for simplicity’s sake. I want to be able to feed my children something that is at least mostly nutritious at home, although I’m sure I’ll forsake cooking games at least once in favor of take out.

But I can at least try to make some 10 minute meals for the kids. The best bet are things that are simple foods. Pasta is a simple food and goes over well in my household, especially since the boys don’t like sauce. Basic meat dishes are easy, too, since they don’t need to roast. A baked chicken breast feeds us easily and a steak can actually be pretty quick, too. The trick will be to do the prep beforehand as much as possible so that I can just throw everything together as I walk in the door. Tricky, but it can be done.

Cooking Games and School Lunches

I recently realized that I’m overdoing my cooking games to make school lunches by actually making them. To make school lunches, you’re apparently supposed to buy everything preassembled and chunk it into the lunch box. I’ll admit I like this idea a lot. I also think it will work well for my two kids – or at least one of them. One of my boys would love a packaged lunch every day. The other one is a bit of a picky eater. He wouldn’t eat anything in those packaged lunches.

So that means that at least my morning cooking games for school lunches is simplified by one. I can grab something and chunk it into the youngest’s lunch box. And then I can take the few minutes necessary to assemble the food items my oldest requires to eat at his lunch time. Once everything is there, it will be delicious and hopefully at least marginally nutritious. But then, you just never know how these things will turn out. You can use your cooking games to make a very special lunch and the kids wind up drinking the juice and eating chips. It’s always a gamble.

Cooking Games and Chocolate Bars

There are so many ways you can use a chocolate bar. For such an innocent piece of dessert, that lovely chocolate bar has brilliant existence in some of my favorite dishes. When you’re playing cooking games and making desserts, consider if a crushed chocolate bar or other candy bar could make the dessert even tastier. Here’s an example:

You’re making a mousse. The mousse is lush and rich and you’ve topped it with a layer of whipped cream for effect. While beautiful in a triffle dish, it would be even lovelier if you were to take a Heath Bar or even a regular chocolate bar and beat the dickens out of it. Then take all of those delicious chocolate crumbs and sprinkle them over the top of the dish. The final effect is one of a complete dessert that also has the added bonus of a bit of extra delicious flavor.

Cooking Games: Hot Dog Grill

Last night we pulled the grill off the patio and make hot dogs. While not a glamorous meal, it was yummy and it reminded me of all the fun cooking games you can do with the grill. There are many, or perhaps even more, ways to cook over fire than there are ways to use your stove or microwave. When you make hot dogs on the grill, you’ll want to follow all basic fire safety rules.

- Your grill should be away from the buildings and away from major traffic patterns.
- The grill should be cleaned before starting the fire. If you leave grease or bits of old food on the grill, you risk the chance of a fire.
- The grill should always be watched. Never leave the grill alone while you’re cooking, you’d be risking a very serious situation with an out-of-control fire.
- Always cook food thoroughly. Use a meat thermometer to be sure that anything you cook on the grill is hot enough to kill off bacteria and is safe to eat.
- Let the grill cool off before touching it. There’s no need to get a silly burn by trying to pull the grill over too soon.

Cooking Games Online and Sheer Boredom

I’ll admit that there have been times in the past that I was bored. I was bored trying to find things to for entertainment, but those days are past. The cooking games I’ve been playing have livened things up for me considerably. I like anything to do with food, of course, but playing cooking games online lets me put a bit of my brain to use trying to keep the games organized and it lets me use some memory and balancing skills to get orders right without actually having to get up and soil my own kitchen (that would require clean up.)

To play cooking games, you simply try to keep up with orders as they come in. The “customers” in the cooking games will ask you to make things like barbeque or pizzas and you have to work the grill or the ovens to get the orders right each time without fail. The cooking games let you practice your hand-eye coordination and require you to be organized or you’ll start burning the food that you’re supposed to be preparing. All in all, the cooking games online are addicting yet still more than amusing to play.

Cooking Games and a Clean Kitchen

If a kitchen is clean, it’s not being used properly. Should a kitchen be clean at the end of the day? Sure. But if you have a kitchen that stays clean all of the time, you’re not putting it to good use. Try some cooking games to liven things up in your own kitchen and you’ll see just how much fun you can have with a few mixing bowls and spoons.

Start small if you’d like by choosing some cooking games that are low key – perhaps some fruit salad that just involves cutting things up rather than actually cooking anything. But then move on to something better – perhaps some cookies or a pan of brownies that will let you mix, bake and then eat. Cooking games don’t have to be complicated to enjoy them, and once you start experimenting with the different cooking games, you’ll realize just how much fun it is to create delicious things and you might just branch out into using all of your appliances.

Cooking Games – The Lemonade Stand

Having a lemonade stand is as classic as it gets. You can approach the lemonade stand in a few different ways. The basics of the cooking games are simple – sell disposable cups of lemonade to people walking by your house or corner. This means you need to have lemonade on hand to sell, and if you want repeat, happy customers, your lemonade needs to be pretty tasty, too.

There is always the option to make the lemonade from scratch by pressing lemons and adding sugar and water. If this is more labor intensive than you’d care to tackle, you can also use a frozen concentrate to make lemonade. Much like frozen orange juice concentrate, the frozen lemonade tastes authentic with pulp and a rich flavor. Powered lemonade is the easiest and least expensive to make, but it will also be the most basic lemonade offering available – perfect for a hot day, but perhaps not as awe-inspiring as a glass of icy cold hand-pressed lemonade might be.

Cooking Games – The Cookie Cake

An easy, but very delicious, cake to make for a friend is a cookie cake. The cookie cakes they sell in the mall and specialty shops can get pretty pricey, but a cookie cake is much less expensive and even better since it comes from the heart. The cake starts with a basic recipe for chocolate chip cookies. The Nestle Tollhouse recipe is a classic and classics are great for this particular situation. Make the cookie dough as directed and then, instead of putting it in small balls on a cookie sheet, press the dough into a jelly pan.

The jelly pan has raised sides that will hold the cake’s shape as it cooks letting it fill in correctly for a uniform appearance. Once the cake is cooked and totally cooled, bust out some icing and sprinkles and decorate it to your liking. You have total freedom with your cookie cake in how you decorate it and if you want to personalize it. The final results of the cooking games is a fun cake that is easy to transport and delicious to eat – yum!

Cooking Games and Pot Luck Specialties

I’m not sure how other people live, but we live for pot lucks around here it seems. Every time we have a gathering of family, we wind up bringing along dishes to try and feed the crowds of people that show up. Unfortunately for everyone else, I’m not a whiz at cooking games when it comes to making something authentic and homemade. I’m a whiz with boxes and instructions, however, so I usually do pretty well at least pulling that sort of thing together. But when it comes to cooking games for pot lucks, I usually rely on a favorite specialty – the fruit salad.

Fruit salad is accepted around the calendar and around the clock. If you have a brunch, bring a fruit salad. Having a picnic? Need fruit salad. A bit holiday dinner? Why not bring fruit salad. You can do so much with fruit and a few choice serving dishes. For summer fruit salads, I make a watermelon basket and fill it up with melon balls and berries. For a brunch, I bring a dip bowl filled with bright berries and a creamy whipped dip. For a special dinner, bust out the crystal serving bowl for a collection of exotic fruits. Simple cooking games? Absolutely – but it’s also absolutely delicious.

Cooking Game and Muffins

I’m not sure what it is, but the summer months make me want to make muffins. It’s become almost a tradition around my house. When the long days of summer roll around, we roll out of bed and pad around the house for a bit in our pajamas. A few short weeks ago we were rushing around to head out the door, but not anymore. Now we eventually plod into the kitchen to make muffins.

We aren’t fancy. Our cooking games for muffins are simple enough – we grab a box we like and use the ingredients that are required. Sometimes though we get a bit creative about the size of the muffins we make. With the same box of muffin mix, the cooking games can make six large muffins like you might get in a deli or you can make twelve small muffins that have a bit better effect on your waistline than the larger variety. With the muffin cooking games, however, you can also decide to ditch the muffins altogether and make a loaf instead. Think of the moist loaves of banana nut or cinnamon bread you can make for breakfast and I’m sure you’ll understand our fascination.

Cooking Games – Iced Brownies

One of the most delicious desserts out there are iced brownies. Cake is yummy, but when you combine the gooey deliciousness of brownies with a coating of cream cheese or chocolate icing, things are perfect – how can you get better than gooey chocolate coated with more gooey chocolate. To make these delicious iced brownies, you need only two things – brownie mix from the store and a container of icing. They sell brownie mixes that have them both, but I find it’s more fun to create your own mix and blend by picking out a richer brownie mix and your own icing.

Once you have your icing and mix, make the brownies as instructed. You’ll need to wait for them to cool completely before you try to put any icing on top, so plan to wait about an hour or so. Then, simply pull out that icing and a spatula and get to lathering. Brownies can take a lot of icing and still be good, but you don’t want to overdo it – these aren’t cupcakes after all. When you’re finished putting the icing on the brownies, cut them up and serve – be sure to provide napkins, of course. These gooey treats can be a bit messy!

Cooking Games – Ice Cream Party

Now that the months are warmer, you should absolutely focus on having fun with friends, and what better way to have fun with friends than with an ice cream party. Playing with ice cream is a great way to stay cool and a nice way to treat yourself to a delicious summer party idea. To have an ice cream party, you don’t need much outside of a few friends, some decorations, and of course, plenty of ice cream.

To plan the ice cream party, take yourself to the store to see what you can find in the way of fun summer party decorations. Then, you’ll want to head to the grocery store to gather up plenty of ice cream flavors and toppings. Look for lots of different sprinkles and candy choices as well as some fresh fruit. When you get home, arrange it all in a pretty way around the serving table – use your new party bowls to display the choices and let everyone make their own ice cream sundaes. Then, eat to your heart’s content and enjoy their company as well.

Cooking Games and Picnics

Picnics are a staple of the summer months, and planning for a picnic can be a lot of fun. To really plan well for a picnic, you’ll need to account for the main courses and have plenty to choose from when it comes to side dishes, drinks and desserts. If you’re looking for a no-cook picnic, you can’t go wrong with a few staples.

Sandwiches – You can opt for the basics if you have some peanut butter and jelly, or you can get much more elaborate with special breads, meats and cheese. If you have a sandwich with meat, cheese or mayo, be sure it’s refrigerated to keep from spoiling.

Bottled water – It’s not glamorous, but it’s the best drink you could choose on a hot summer day. While it’s best cold, of course, you can just throw a few bottles into the basket without chilling them if you need to to be sure everyone stays hydrated.

Fruit – Whole fruit won’t need to be kept cold making apples, bananas and grapes easy to transport and healthy to eat, but you’ll need to keep fruit salad chilled if that’s what you opt to create. Either way, fruit is cold, delicious and perfect for cooking games at picnics.

Cooking Games and Little Kids

Teaching young children to use the kitchen properly can be a serious chore. It’s not only dangerous at times, but there is always a considerable clean-up job left after your little brothers and sisters leave the kitchen area. If you’re ready to play cooking games with kids, be sure you think ahead of time to simplify things as much as you can – including the clean-up.

The best cooking games for young children are those that don’t include baking or any heat. Making instant pudding might seem simple to you, but it can be a grand adventure to a three-year-old. Hand over the wire whisk and let him beat that pudding to a pulp until it sets. You can expect a mess from anything, and this is no exception. If pudding isn’t your thing, you can precut fruit and have the little people in your life make a fruit salad by dumping it all together. A fruit smoothie works the same way, but with the added step of blending it all up. Regardless of what you wind up cooking, just be sure to have fun!

Cooking Games: Summer Smoothies

As the weather heats up, it’s time to find the best smoothie recipes out there. I like to experiment over the summer with various forms of recipes and creations to find a recipe that I can enjoy depending on my mood of the day.

Some of the smoothies I make include ice cream or frozen yogurt which make them taste and feel much more like a milk shake than anything else. Others are more health conscious with only frozen fruit blended together with a bit of fresh juice.

To make it easier to play these smoothie cooking games, I keep a collection of frozen fruit in my freezer. When my bananas start to turn, I slice them up and freeze them. Strawberries are frozen easily and so are all kinds of berries. To make the smoothie, I only need a handful of this and that along with some milk and juice and a cold, healthy snack is ready and waiting.

Cooking Games: Fruit Salad

I love fruit salad and it’s such an easy item to bring to a picnic or to another formal gathering. Fruit salad is generally well liked and there are so many different varieties of salad you can create, it’s easy to find something suitable for every occasion. This is why making fruit salad is one of my favorite cooking games.

Berry Salad – A berry fruit salad is simply a tossed collection of berries. Strawberries, blackberries, blue berries and raspberries are all gently washed and tossed together. I prefer to serve mine with a sweet dipping cream, but it’s not necessary.

Fruit Bowl – The watermelon fruit bowl is a personal favorite as well. For this one, I use a collection of melon balls and perhaps a few mandarin orange slices to keep things fresh and fun. The melon balls are easy to make and this is a pretty easy one to make as well that doesn’t cost much but looks wonderful.

Cooking Games and Breakfast

Of all the online cooking games, my favorite is easily the breakfast one. I am a terrible cook in reality and can barely make toast, but online I am a cooking whiz. I can whip up a delicious breakfast without blinking. And I can do it again and again. I start with the hot griddle. Then I start tossing on the important things – pancakes, eggs and hashbrowns. Then comes the bacon and ham. All of it cooks at once while I start filling plates.

It’s tricky to stay on top of the orders, but I have it down to a science. I cook and serve in the online cooking games until I just can’t keep up anymore. The first time I played, I didn’t even get two order out the door – I cooked the wrong things that burned up accidentally. But today I could probably play for close to an hour just moving up the levels and storing up points who who-knows-what. Fortunately, it’s not the points that matter in this game – it’s the amount of fun you have playing it!

Cooking Games and Cleaning Up

The worst part of playing cooking games for me is the clean-up. Nobody wants to clean up at the end of the day, but unfortunately, it’s just one of those things that has to happen – especially with my version of cooking games. When I cook, I’m a bit hard on the countertops and pans. I make a huge mess. But then, if you ask me anyway, what fun is cooking if you don’t make some sort of mess? It’s just part of the process of cooking games.

But with the messes I make, I know full well that I have to be responsible for what happens next. I have to clean it up. While not the most fun I could have in a day, I realize that cleaning up is a fact of life. To clean properly I load up the sink with the dirty dishes and then attack the countertops. Once the counters are clean, I load up the dishwasher and start it. Then, as the last step, I sweep up anything that might have fallen to the floor. It seems like it takes forever, but the full cleaning process really only takes about fifteen minutes tops.

Cooking Games and Simple Foods

A lot of the meals we see being made on cooking shows and in cook books are complicated recipes that include a large number of ingredients. While these cooking games are a great deal of fun, there is also much to be said for cooking that that just use simple foods. As much as possible we should be eating foods in their natural forms. This means instead of steaming carrots and dipping them in rich sauces, we should just grate the carrot up and put it over lettuce.

When you eat simple foods, you are getting the closest thing you can to put nutrients. The foods aren’t rich and they are filling. Imagine a meal as simple as a banana, a hardboiled egg and some whole wheat toast with crushed fruit topping. That’s a full meal, really, it’s simple to prepare and the ingredients are simple. Not only are these sorts of cooking games easy to prepare, they are easy for your body to digest as well.

Cooking Games and Picking Strawberries

I think one of the most important parts of cooking games is preparing for them adequately. If you’re doing something fun like a strawberry dessert or making strawberry jam, preparing for the cooking games can be as simple as going out to pick some strawberries yourself. If you don’t live in a hugely urban area, or even if you do, search your local listing for farms where you might be able to go out and pick your own strawberries.

This is the season for strawberries and they freeze very well making them easy to use later, too. When you pick the strawberries, find ones that are very ripe but not soft. You want firm strawberries that are bright red and ready to be used. When you have a nice collection, take them home and use some immediately with some cream or in a dessert. But then take the rest and freeze them up for use later. It will be nice to have fresh strawberries for your cooking games in the winter, too.

Cooking Games and Cookies

There are so many lovely types of cookies out there it’s hard to pick a favorite. But with the many varieties of cookies, one of the most delicious varieties has to be the frosted sugar cookie. Loaded with sugar and often covered with sprinkles of designs, the frosted sugar cookies are very special treats and are incredibly easy to make.

Start with a pack of sugar cookie dough – I prefer the preformed balls as they cook so uniformly, but other dough forms will do. Make the sugar cookies and then, while they are cooling, start mixing your icing. You’ll want at least two different colors of icing to complement each other – one can be vanilla and a bit of food coloring will make another shade for you.

Spread a thick layer of icing over the top of the first cookie and put it aside. Then frost another and so on, being sure to get a thick layer of frosting evenly over each. When you finish the last cookie, go back to the first and start decorating with your colored frosting. Make designs, circle each, draw pictures or anything that makes you smile – after all cookies should absolutely make you happy.

Cooking Games and Fresh Herbs

What better way to enhance your cooking games than by using fresh herbs right out of your own garden. If you’re not certain about growing your own plants or think you don’t have the space or the ability to do so, you’re wrong – growing your own plants is fun and easy. Once they get large enough, it’s even easier to include them in your food.

Start with some easy herbs that are fun to use like basil and parsley. These grow easily in containers or in a raised garden bed. Look for a starter kit in a nursery or home improvement store. Using the starter kit will give you the edge on growing if you’re not already familiar with how to plant the plants and care for them. Simply read the instructions, follow them and you’ll be in business.

Once the herbs are growing and thriving, you might branch out into other areas. Tomatoes and other small vegetables are common in backyard gardens and having your own produce is absolutely a fun way to teach kids or yourself about how to raise plants and care for them properly.

Cooking Games and Saint Patrick’s Day

There are so many different things you can do to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day with cooking games. After all, Saint Patrick’s Day is all about the green, so if you focus on color in your food selections, you just can’t go wrong.

My personal favorite to make on this very green holiday is the green cake. You can make green cupcakes as well, of course, following the same recipe. Start with a box of cake mix in either vanilla or angel food. I prefer golden vanilla as it’s a richer taste, but it’s entirely up to you. Make the cake per the instructions on the box and then drop in a liberal dose of green food dye.

Mix well and bake the cake as you normally would. The end result is a bright green cake. Top off that green cake with vanilla icing dyed to a lovely shade of green as well and put some green sprinkles on top of the whole thing. It’s a green confection of pure deliciousness.

Cooking Games and Easter Eggs

It’s almost that time of year again for Easter eggs, and I am thrilled. I already have my dye cups ready to go and it’s just a matter of dropping in the colored tablets and filling the cups with water to create beautifully dyed Easter eggs.

The first step of dying Easter eggs is to boil raw eggs until they are hardboiled. Hardboiled eggs are less fragile than raw eggs and can take the handling that often accompanies the dye process. Once you have your eggs hardboiled, drop in the tablets of colors and get ready to start dying.

Use the special metal scoop to dip the eggs into the dye cups. The longer you leave the egg in the cup, the more dye will seep into the shell and the richer the final color will be. Pull out the egg and place it in a special hole in the box similar to an egg cup to dry. When dry, arrange your brightly colored Easter eggs in a special display basket and enjoy them!

Cooking Games and Pretzels

Pretzles are one of the most delicious ways to spread the holiday cheer. They start off so delicious with their salty goodness, but you can make them even more delicious by adding chocolate and toppings. Start with a bag of long pretzel sticks, chocolate melting drops in both dark and white chocolate and some gourmet toppings – crushed almonds, coconuts, tiny candies, sprinkles and mini chocolate chips are easy ones.

Put the toppings into quart sized bags and put them off to the side, careful to not let them spill. Then melt the first batch of melting dots in the microwave. When the dots are smooth and melted, dip the pretzel into the batch and then quickly dunk it into the bag of desired toppings. Shake the bag around a bit to coat the pretzel evenly and pull it out. Hold it for a minute to let it cool off enough to not be dripping or gooey and then place it carefully onto a wax paper sheet to dry completely. Package the pretzel sticks carefully and share them as the perfect gift for teachers and friends.

Cooking Games and Sundae Parties

One of the easiest yet most enjoyable ways to treat yourself is to invite your friends over for a sundae party. Setting up the party isn’t even that expensive. Start with some tubs of ice cream. Get a bit crazy with the flavors, but be sure to keep at least one basic flavor to avoid traumatizing picky eaters. Then get a huge number of toppings to include on the ice cream. Buy everything from fresh fruit to candy bars to nuts to gummy bears. Then display it all beautifully on a picnic table in the backyard. (Sundae parties get messy, and you’ll want to keep that mess outside.)

Once you’re prepared for the party, invite your friends over and get started dishing up some delicious treats. Have brightly colored bowls and fun, funky spoons to use and let them serve themselves. You’ll see the conservatives with their vanilla and chocolate syrup and then the outlandish who’ve made huge sundaes with all of the best toppings. Enjoy the company of your friends and the deliciousness of the treats on the special day. Best of all, you’ll have all of those leftovers to enjoy, too.

Cooking Games and Grilling

The grilling cooking games were supposed to be easy, and they seemed that way until I tried to play them. Playing cooking games is often straightforward. You have to cook certain items in order so that you can fill customer orders at a staggering rate. If you don’t move fast enough, food starts burning on the grill and you lose points. You can’t move food off the grill until it’s time to put it on a plate and you can only arrange the food in order of plate – no skipping ahead.

The first few times I played the grilling cooking games, I failed miserably. However, as I played a bit more I got a better handle on it and started to do tolerably well at least. I’m certainly not a pro, but I can hold my own when friends and I decide to have a contest to see who can do the best with the cooking games. So far I haven’t won a single contest, but I have dreams of some day doing well enough to be considered a grill master.

Cooking Games and Making Pizza

One of my favorite cooking games is one where you make pizzas and rush them out to waiting customers. The first few times I played I was pretty terrible. In fact, it took my two tries to realize that you can’t just make any pizzas you want, you have to make the pizzas that the customers are requesting if you want to progress and win the game – oops!

But once I had the basics figured out I got pretty good at playing cooking games and making pizza. You’re given an order and you have to start slinging ingredients and popping those pizzas in the oven if you’re going to make it in time. You have to time the removable of the pizzas with the orders being placed which requires essentially being in two places at once. Or at least doing two things at once. Once you get going though you fall into a pattern which helps you finish the game and move from level to level easily enough. Fortunately the challenge is a fun one.

Cooking Games and Making Breakfast

I’ve determined that making breakfast is the best part about the day. Of course, in full disclosure, I almost never get to make breakfast in the beginning of the day. I’ve started cooking it at the end of the of the day so that I can enjoy it properly. Breakfast in my house is eaten as supper most often, and when trying to throw something together in the few minutes you have between walking in the door and being confronted with hungry children, eggs and bacon sound great.

Breakfast has some of the yummiest items on our daily menu and prepared correctly, there is a huge amount of nutritional value in a well prepared breakfast as well. Bacon and pancakes aside, having eggs, steak and fruit is a nice start to the day, especially if you stir in vegetables to the eggs or make an omelet with other healthy items. Even bacon can have merit at times and pancakes can hold fruit such as bananas or blueberries and nuts for an added dose of healthy protein. Get creative and make breakfast the yummiest part of your day – at the very end of the day.

Cooking Games and the Toaster Oven

I’m not a huge chef in the kitchen, and in fact, I’m pretty pitiful at time when it comes to slicing and dicing. But I do have a certain edge when it comes to one instrument in my kitchen. I am a whiz on the toaster oven. I have a very nice model of the toaster oven. Mine is a stainless steel convection oven large enough to cook a dozen cookies or a full frozen pizza. It’s really an oven that sits on the counter, which is good since my “real” oven is about thirty years old and not the ideal.

Using the toaster oven, I’m able to make toast, bake cookies and broil French fries. The convection feature on the oven helps it to cook evenly and is now a standard for everything that goes into the machine. Want to bake cookies? Use convection settings. Want to heat up pizza? Confection. It actually browns things more naturally than just baking alone, especially in such a small setting. If I could have nothing else in my kitchen, I’d bring along a mini fridge, a small microwave and a confection oven. I’d be set, at least until I needed to wash dishes in a sink I didn’t bring along.

Cooking Games: Super Easy Queso

That yummy melted cheese you get at your favorite Mexican restaurants isn’t hard to make at home. In fact, it’s simple. To make queso, start with a small crock pot or a microwaveable bowl. Take a small package of processed cheese such as Velveeta and cut it into small squares. Then put those squares into the small crock pot or bowl.

Next, you have a few options. One super easy option is to take a can of tomatoes and peppers and empty it into the cheese. Heat until the cheese is smooth and melted. Another option is to use salsa or picante sauce instead of the canned tomatoes. And still a third option is to cut in your own tomatoes and them to add any other items you might like such as chorizo or browned beef to give your queso a meaty edge.

Serve your queso with chips for a yummy appetizer or make yourself nachos using large tortilla chips, beans, meat and tomatoes and then top with the queso to make a hugely delicious mess of cheese, chips and meat – yum!