Preparing vegetables

I do the cooking now, but she wants to help. Tonight I asked her to wash some potatoes and slice them in small pieces. She stood there not knowing how to start. Finally she said, "I don't know what to do." I said, "First, wash the potatoes." She snapped, "I know that." So I backed off. She picked up a potato and started peeling it. I said no, don't peel it. Wash it and slice it. She froze again. No matter how many times I said, "Wash the potato," she never made a move toward the sink. I asked her if she were going to be able to do this and she said she didn't know.

Finally it occurred to me that maybe she could copy me if I did it. I washed a potato and sliced it. She seemed to understand, but reached for a potato without washing it. So I said, maybe if I washed and you sliced, we could do this. She nodded. I washed the potatoes one-by-one and handed them over to her for slicing. From time to time she would point to what she was doing and ask, "Is this how you want them?"

I moved on to start cooking the potatoes and pointed her toward an onion I had placed next to the cutting board. She held it up with an inquisitive look. Chop it up, I said. She went to work on it, checking with me every few minutes to ask if this was how I wanted it. It went a little better with the broccoli, and she had it down pat by the time we took on the red pepper.