The Day My Son With Autism Learned To Cook.

Hi, my name's Shyllo, and I have an Autistic son named Adrean, who has a passion for cooking. It all started with my son's fascination with the show Master Chef Jr., when he was nine years old.

He would beg us to let him watch the show, and then one day I decided to set up prompted recipes on our fridge. I wanted to see how eager he was to learn this new skill.

I first had Adrean learn how to make cold food recipes, like salads, sandwiches, and deserts. After he mastered those step by step instructions for each recipe I started him on learning how to chop and prepare the food for learning to cook hot food using the stove, indoor grill, and oven.

When Adrean finished mastering all the prep, I explained to him that he is going to be cooking our dinner for the 4th of July barbecue. I laid out choices for meat, salads of fruits, veggies, and pastas, and dessert options. He struggled with making choices due to having so many favorites to choose from. So to help narrow it down i put recipes in a big bucket and have everyone pick a recipe for him to make for each category.

For our meats, he will be making Caribbean jerked Chicken Shishkabobs skewered with onion, red and yellow bell peppers, and chunks of pineapple.

Then the second item will be Tequila Lime grilled shrimp with red cabbage slaw, served with a chunky Mango Salsa consisting of mango,cilantro,red onion, pineapple, papaya,chopped serrano chillies,mint,, and honey.

Then the third meat choice will be T bone steaks, marinated in Jack Daniels to cook on the indoor grill.

As for our salads our choices will be Antipasto pasta salad, Blt Ranch salad, and a roasted beet salad with blue cheese crumbles. Last will be our desserts wich are Ambrosia fruit salad, Pineapple Lush jello, and a tropical fruit and mellon ball salad with fresh mint, honey, and lime juice.

One would think that all this would be to overwhelming for him to do, but since I broke everything down. In stages through out the week it made it easier due to everything being color coordinated on trays and veey well organized for less confusion. That and I had pictures of everything and the amounts to be used. He did an acceptable job and our 4th of July barbecue was a hit!