This Is Not My Hat by Jon Klassen

Cooking Skill Level: EASY

Once again we have a book by one of my very favorite authors, Jon Klassen.  He’s so good at what he does.  Again, the story features a hat.  One that doesn’t belong to the fish that’s wearing it. 

The menu for this was just so obvious to me.  Hats, two sizes of fish, crab on a log, underwater plants to hide in and maybe a bit of seascaping (shells).

This is how I built the story:

First, I worked on the underwater plants.  I love to give the boys different lettuces since they grew some the summer before last and they remember that it comes in all shapes and colors.  The little “Artisan” lettuces that you can find these days are so wonderful for landscaping/seascaping a story.  I dressed this with a tiny bit of balsamic vinegar and oil.

 

 Then I added the logs; celery and cream cheese.  I needed the cream cheese to keep the crab’s claws in place.  The claws were made of mostly stripped thyme twigs.  I saved the stripped leaves for later.  For the body of the crab, I cut a cherry tomato in half and stuck it onto the cream cheese between the claws.  Make sure you play with the claws, you can turn them to face the hiding place (lettuce), or have them waving at the kids, or even covering the crab’s face. 

 

Next I placed my two fish on the plate.  The big fish was simply a fish stick.  The little fish was just a piece of a fish stick.  Of course I had to put a hat on the little fish.

 

Orecchiete again for the hats, this time blue.  I found some organic all natural food coloring on the Internet, but decided I’d use what I had for cake decorating.  At first, I used way too much.  Obviously…

 

 So I tamed that a bit and added in some pasta shells so I could use them in seascaping the plate. 

I added some mozzarella perlini, tiny little pearls of cheese, to the shells to look like all the bubbles you see throughout the story.

 

Dessert was some blackberries (which could look like hats if you squint hard enough) and whipped cream.

 

When we sat down for dinner, I got a high five from the oldest.  He was very proud of how Grummy is learning to cook for boys.  They were all impressed that their tongues and fingers turned blue, but it didn’t stop them from eating and talking about the story.  The middle one wasn’t sure whether he liked this story or I Want My Hat Back better.  He definitely likes fish stories, but we didn’t get carrots with this one Grummy.  Fish don’t like carrots like rabbits do.

Making conversation was sometimes a challenge when we started these dinners.  The boys’ attention was often scattered.  With time, they have become experts at discussing books, themes, food, and ideas.  Plus, I know they will always remember these times and hopefully do the same with their own children and grands.

 

Title	This Is Not My Hat
Author	Jon Klassen
Illustrator	Jon Klassen
Publisher	Candlewick Press
Highlights /Tie in	Blue Hat, Fish (one big, one small)
Reactions to the Book	·         The oldest caught on immediately that this was a book by someone we “knew” – “A HAT? Grummy, ANOTHER HAT” ·         Swim practice on the couch – no winners in the race, they pretty much stayed in one place just waving limbs around
Meal	·         Hats: Orecchiete (blue) ·         Fish sticks ·         Shell pasta ·         Salad that looks like water plants (good for hiding)(sort of) ·         Crab on a log
Reactions to the Meal	·         Pasta hats on each finger, old news (old hat?) ·         The big fish stick chased the little one into the salad.  The littlest grandson chewed on the stick of thyme for a while, then gave it to me.  Sharing is nice. ·         A lot of time spent on putting the perlini “bubbles” into the shells