This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of COUNTRY Financial®. All opinions are 100% mine.
There are a few things that are a staple in my kitchen: flour, eggs, and Scarlette dragging a little white chair across the room and propping herself up on it next to the counter. She’s been helping me bake since she was knee-high to a grasshopper and mixing things together is one of her favorite pastimes. This means I spent the better portion of the last few years picking pieces of eggshells out of all my batter.
Now at almost six years old she can break an eggshell cleanly into the bowl and given the amount of time we spent in occupational therapy attempting to get her wrists to function properly I can’t tell you how proud I am to see her tap and break and whisk the yolks.
Cooking is sort of her “thing” and if her five year old self is any indication she’ll grow up to either be a chef or the star of Saturday Night Live. She keeps us on our toes, this one. If our television is on it’s turned to the Food Network and she dashes around the room mixing things together as she mimics what’s on screen. She asks me almost daily when she will be old enough to compete on Chopped Junior and last year she wanted it to be the theme of her birthday party.
The other night my husband cooked us a fancy steak dinner and Scarlette took a bite, put her finger to her cheek, paused thoughtfully, and remarked,”Daddy, your FLAVOR profile is very tasty but you need to focus a little bit on your TEXTURES.”
One of my goals in life is to invest in my children by giving them the space and opportunity to cultivate the things that they are passionate about. One of Scarlette’s favorite things to do right now is to pull out a bunch of ingredients and experiment. Then she plates her creations and brings them out for us to judge. Which might not sound like a huge investment but let me just tell you when you take a bite of chocolate-pumpkin-maple-syrup pudding only to discover that the secret ingredient is half a bottle of cloves and you keep a straight face, that’s pretty much all in.
When I daydream about the future I think about how I would love to travel the world with Scarlette and introduce her to cuisines from other cultures. As part of it’s dedication to serving families, COUNTRY Financial® is hosting an Own Your Future Challenge and giving away $10,000 to help make life a little easier for parents! (Which, coincidentally, is also the amount of money you get if you win Chopped Junior.)
If you won $10,000 from COUNTRY Financial® to #OwnYourFuture, what would you do with it? I think I would make those tasting travel plans and then tuck some away in case my tiny girl grows up and finds herself with aspirations to attend culinary school.
Want a chance to win $10,000 for your family’s future? Here’s how to enter the contest:
- Step One: What inspires you to #OwnYourFuture? Find or take a picture that represents what #OwnYourFuture means to you!
- Step Two: submit your photo & caption! Upload your photo to the contest website and write a short note about why that particular picture symbolizes how $10,000 could help you and your family own your future.
- Step Three: When voting opens, start sharing your photo with your friends and family so that they can vote and increase your chances to become one the 10 finalists
It was so fun to look back over these photos of cooking with Scarlette and see how her love of being in the kitchen has grown in it’s intensity as she grows in years and inches. I hope her future always finds her following her passions.
Disclaimer: To qualify as a winner, you must reside in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, North Dakota, Nevada, Oklahoma, Oregon, Tennessee, Washington, Wisconsin.
Kayla Aimee Writes is not affiliated with this contest or responsible for its entries and/or prizing.
