Sara's Cooking Class: Spil Games Knows Tween Girls (Part 1)

Food is very important to me. Wait, that sounds dumb, doesn’t it? Because really, whether you eat to live or live to eat; food is important to all living creatures. But I love to cook, I love to bake, I love to eat out, I love to eat in other people’s homes. If you tell me you’ve gone to a particular restaurant, I will ask you what you ordered off the menu there, and, as my husband pointed out, will actively listen to your answer and even ask pointed questions.
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“You’re not just being pleasant,” he said to me, early on in our relationship. “You really want to know!”
When I go to another country, one of my favorite things to do is find the local supermarket and browse the shelves.  I know I get this from my mother and her identical twin sister. My father’s half-sister came to visit us once, and upon returning from a “quick trip” to the supermarket, she said to me, “My God, we were there for ages! And then I looked at them, and I realized, they’re window shopping in the local supermarket chain!”
In my experience, when you pop into the local supermarket, you will find chocolates, candy, and cookies that are interesting and unique to the culture – and you can buy them as souvenirs and gifts for friends back home. They will be much cheaper than the same product being sold in tourist areas. And it’s not just international. Oh no. Honey, I once killed a pleasant three hours in a Winn-Dixie outside of New Orleans while I waited for Delta to fly my luggage to the right city. Supermarkets say a lot about where you are visiting. And New Orleans had a plethora of indigenous products to gander at.

I cook a lot, and I involve my daughter as much as I can. We have a Learning Tower in our kitchen, and Vivi spends a lot of time up there at counter level, helping me make our meals, or treats. I want her to grow up knowing how food gets to her table, and understand what goes into the food she eats. At the beginning of Anthony Bourdain’s bookKitchen Confidential, he explains why food in restaurants tastes so much better than the food you make at home:monte au buerre. I think it’s important to know things like this, so you have an understanding of the work that goes into making a meal. When we cook something together and eat it, I always say that it tastes better because we are proud to have made it.
So I was intrigued when Spil games contacted me and invited me to Amsterdam to discuss, and be a part of the launch of their wildly popular game Sara’s Cooking Class on mobile devices. (In the interest of full disclosure, they invited fellow GeekMom Melissa Wiley, who had to decline due to previous commitments. She, weepingly, but graciously recommended me for the trip instead, and was rewarded handsomely with Stroopwafel.)
Source: Red Ball