A Pirate Cookbook by Sarah L. Schuette

In keeping with the pirate theme I’ve had going the last couple posts, I would like to share with you a great, non-fiction recipe book for kids, A Pirate Cookbook. This is such a nice, wonderful, bright, easy cookbook for kids, and they will love it. You can use it if you are a parent, a teacher, a tutor, or in a homeschool setting. Let’s look at a few of the recipes:

• What you see pictured on the cover are Sea Swords, of course. The intro is: “Swords were popular with pirates. These celery stick swords will help you fight off hunger.” This is basically tuna salad in the celery with goldfish crackers. And a tip: “Pirates had one thing right. Eating fish is very healthy!”
• We all must try some Chocolate Gunpowder! It’s basically chocolate pudding, whip cream, and crushed Oreo cookies, of course. “This dessert looks like gunpowder, but don’t be fooled!”
• Peg-Leg Pickles are one of my favorites. You just need some ham, cream cheese, and a baby sweet pickle. Roll up the pickle in the cream cheese and ham, and there you have a symbol for the poor pirates who lost their legs in a battle.

One of the best things about this book is the step-by-step directions with photos on how to do each part of the recipe. I also like the beginning material which has a metric conversion chart and explains different cooking tools and techniques. It’s just a great book to use with your pirate lovers either in the classroom or at home.

I love using recipes to reinforce math skills and to learn life skills, too. You can double recipes for math skills. You can talk about how many of a certain dish you might need if you were having a party with a certain number of guests. You can even discuss how important sequence is when cooking. Do you have to do step A before step B? And when you can do all this learning dressed as a pirate, that’s even better. Right, mateys?