The children are on a campaign.
The powers that be have recently introduced a new menu to those denizens of the school who are currently forced by their ‘evil’ (for this read: Katy and Jason) parents to have hot dinners as opposed to tepid sandwiches sweating in a tupperware box with a picture of Sportacus laminated on the side.
The new menu, according to our offspring, is evil incarnate. It contains such devilish food as brussel sprouts, slugs, lentils, the horned toenails of the seventeen legged snorgle beast and captured essence of old men’s farts. Nobody in their right mind would want to eat it. Nobody in their wrong mind would be very keen.
They are desperate to switch to sandwiches. So desperate that they have been lobbying for about three weeks incessantly.
They come home with eyes full of woe, moaning that they had to eat mince or gammon, or eyebrows on toast. They clearly don’t, because as soon as they get home, they fall on any food stuff that is left in their path like the ravening hoardes of beelzebub and pester me constantly about when dinner will be ready.
Every time they ask if they can switch to sandwiches I either say ‘no’, and walk away, or tell them to ask their father. You see, I am not entirely anti sandwiches. I have vile memories of our frankly woeful school dinners at primary school. I remember eating reconstituted mashed potato which tasted a lot like ground down chipboard mixed with fish glue, and being forced to eat rice pudding to the point where I was actually physically sick. For which I then got punished for making a mess.
I know Jamie Oliver has done wonders for school dinners and that turkey twizzlers are now a thing of the past, but it still remains depressingly true that prisoners in Britain’s gulags get more spent on their dinners per head than school children and hospital patients combined. I cannot believe that the dinners are that good.
On the other hand, Jason is quite rightly, fed up of our daughters’ namby pamby attitude to foods that are not coated in bread crumbs, white, or potato based. They are better than they used to be, but gourmet food tasters they are not. He has decreed that if they have sandwiches their repertoire will be even more limited and that they may well die of scurvy before they reach puberty. He thinks that the range of hot dinners will force them to try new things or starve.
This of course has been disproved by the fact that generally if all the potato wedges and garlic bread is gone they just starve and then fill up when they get home on frubes, bananas and crisps if I give in to their whining.
Last week he tried a new tack. He said that if each of them could come up with a list of twenty five different packed lunch options that they would eat, he would consider allowing them to switch to sandwiches. They have risen to the challenge with alarming gusto, which makes me think that they are probably right about the choice of hot dinners. I certainly wouldn’t have been delighted by gammon and pineapple at the age of eight, or thirty seven for that matter. I wonder if the new range is from the ‘Perfect Hostess of the Seventies’ cookbook? If so, I’d like to be there on the day they have prawn cocktail, but you can keep the melon balls and deep fried Brie thanks.
Tallulah polished off her menu in about half an hour. It is entirely incomprehensible except for the words ‘dry pasta.’ Why she thinks that she would be delighted to eat this at lunch time I am not sure. I am sure that she would not be delighted to eat it at home. Still, points for novelty I think.
Tilly has only just finished writing her list, and has raided the entirety of my two groaning shelves of cookbooks. I have yet to read what she has written, but I feel that it will probably be alarming and unlikely to fit in a snap lid plastic container safely. She has culinary delusions of grandeur brought about by watching too many reruns of Masterchef. Oh yes, she talks the talk. She just does not eat the eat.
Tallulah is now fixating on getting her five a day. This is interesting coming from a girl who loathes all fruit to the point where she will eat a banana, but only at gunpoint. She also hates all vegetables except carrots and peas and again, only eats them under protest. I nominate her for the child most likely to die of scurvy first.
She has designed a poster to try and boost her flagging morale and remind herself to eat fruit and vegetables. I present it for your delight and delectation:
I like the fact that you might not be sure that you have one pea inside you. Still, it’s easy to mislay the pesky little buggers I suppose.
I might get it transferred onto a t-shirt for her for Christmas, then she can remind herself as she’s actually eating the peas.
It is weird isn’t it, this food thing. Ibrought up two children on exactly the same food; one eats anything except meat. The other went the things in breadcrumbs route +chips and baked beans route and now eats mainly pizza, pasta, chips and crisps. Oh, yes, and chocolate. She now eats wraps with grated cheese in them for school lunch, I can get apples down her and peas. Occasionally, to humour me she eats sweetcorn and even carrot. Yet I know she eats any vegetables her boyfriend’s mother puts on her plate because she doesn’t want her to think she’s fussy!!
I have not found a way out of it so I ended up having to accept the situation.
Both of mine had packed lunches, mainly because I had such an awful experience with school dinners until I convinced my Mum to let me have sandwiches. However mine did eat a slightly wider variety of fruit and vegetables than your girls and would take little pots of salad in the summer.
Alienne
I am trying to accept and then every now and again I snap. I wouldn’t mind except that they are exposed to such a wide variety of food.
Sharon
Yes. Little pots of salad would be little pots of tantrums in this house.
not to mention that making box lunches for your particularly picky children will add to your stressful days — do you need to throw that in on top of driving lessons, OU and faerie tales? i think not.
i have one nephew who eats only macaroni and cheese, and noodles with butter and sometimes canned corn, and pizza. he is as fat as a house. he’s only 9. his parents do not even try to “make” him eat a variety of food and when he comes to stay with me occasionally he is the bane of my kitchen (cooking healthy, delicious food is a hobby). he winds up being extra hungry because of all the junk he eats. he gets whatever he wants.
i have another set of nephews and nieces whose mother was — to say the least — a casual sort of cuss in the kitchen. you never knew what there would be to eat — if anything. her kids (all adults now) would eat absolutely *anything* at least once when you gave it to them. they’d try any sort of new food stuff because, i think, they werent’ sure where the next meal would come from, or what it would be!
take a warning katyboo! feed a good breakfast and shove them out the door without a boxed lunch… maybe brussel sprouts and eyebrows will become fond memories in later years.
Bronxbee
I will my dear, I will.