What does your 1 year old do while you're cooking?

Ours is 20 now so this is from memory. One low kitchen drawer with only steel things in it: katoris, a ladle, a small dabba with a lid. He'd sit on the floor and bang them for a surprisingly long time. Loud, but you're right there.

I run a small daycare at home, so I see this every day. At one year they won't sit alone long, ten minutes is good. What works for my little ones: a low basket with five or six things, changed every few days. Old spoon, cloth, empty box, a ball. Too many toys and they don't play with any. You can also keep her in the high chair near you with a few pieces of boiled carrot or peas to pick. Picking keeps them busy and you are talking to her the whole time.

Same age here, and same problem haha. The only thing that buys me fifteen minutes is a big cardboard box with a hole cut in the top and a pile of things to post into it. Lids, blocks, an old phone case. She stops the moment she realises I'm not watching, so I keep up a running commentary about the onions.

Something I wish I'd known earlier: she doesn't need to be entertained while you cook, she needs to be near you. Talk to her, tell her what you're chopping, give her a wooden spoon and a steel bowl of her own. At that age the play comes in short bursts and gets longer on its own if you don't interrupt when she's absorbed in something. It took months with mine, not days.

We're in Gopanpally, so not far from you. When my younger one was this age, what helped was sitting on the floor with her for ten minutes first, tea in hand, before getting up to cook. If she'd had her fill of me she let me go more easily. If I went straight from the door to the stove, she'd cling. Also, chop the vegetables in the morning if you can. Cuts the evening job in half.