Cooking with Kids: Spaghetti Spiders

I love cooking with my daughter Stella.  It is one of my absolutely very favorite things to do with her.  She is 3 and has been raised doing lots of cooking in my kitchen.  She also has been on some of my Twin Cities Live segments since she was a baby.
Stella (5 months) and most recently (3 years)
I let her explore tasting ingredients and using my kitchen tools and gadgets (supervised).  I think I make my husband nervous sometimes-recently Stella showed him how she knew how to operate the blender.  I can also say that she loves cooking and in that respect also loves grocery shopping for ingredients.  The other day I asked her what she wanted to do that day and she said very excitedly, “Go to Kowalskis!!”  For those not in Minnesota, it is one of our very best grocery stores stocked with beautiful produce, cheeses and specialty items.  I should add that her participation in the kitchen has also lent to her being an extremely good and adventurous eater.
It is challenging though to try and prepare meals with a toddler or baby (or both) in tow.  Recently Wes my son was sleeping and Stella was having rest time and I thought I’d quick whip up a batch of cookies.  After she had discovered I had cooked without her she was quick to scold me and tell me, “Mom, next time you make cookies, you need to tell me so I can be your helper.” Point taken.
I thought this would be a fun recipe to do on Twin Cities Live for their Pinspiration week.  The photos make really fun pins, but it is actually something you can do (which sometimes becomes a challenge on Pinterest).  It is easy, cheap, fun and the kids love it.  When Stella was eating the spiders she looked at me and said, “Mom, this is so awesome!”  My husband and I laughed out loud.  But you know what? It really was.
Ingredients:

Sausage (fully-cooked)
Uncooked Spaghetti

Directions:
Slice sausage.  Break uncooked spaghetti in half.  Let child skewer sausage pieces.

We did four noodle pieces per sausage-it creates 8 legs for the spiders (4 on each side).  Then take spiders and place into boiling water.

The sausages are already cooked so you just need to cook the spiders until the noodles become soft.

You can serve the spiders plain or with sauce.

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