Being creative in the kitchen is not one of my strong points. I keep it simple – find a recipe, follow the recipe, eat the recipe. This has always worked for me because as I was growing up, food was simple. My mother and my grandmother produced perfectly suitable meals of which none of us had to count our calories nor did we put on weight. Simple. How things have changed. I remember the moment when simple was no longer good enough. My daughter was in her final years of primary school, and suddenly her lunches were ‘boring’. So, I put on my Super-Mum cape and went in search of more exciting lunch options.
Diving into the internet world of ‘school lunchbox ideas’, my self-esteem came crashing down as not one recipe was ‘simple’. No longer do you throw in an apple from the fruit bowl. Oh no. Now you cut them out into shapes with a cookie cutter or put them on a kebab stick. Of course, this is after you have dipped them in a concoction to ensure they do not brown – heaven forbid they go brown! A simple cheese and Vegemite sandwich is no longer considered acceptable – especially when they enter high school. Recipes are for Wraps, Sushi, Buddha Bowls, and Bento Boxes. Seriously?
Over the years, I was determined not to give up. Every week I would take the extra time to hunt down foods I had not heard of and purchase containers for presentation just to discover lunches left in the fridge because the fantastic containers you felt obligated to buy do not fit in the school bag. My daughter would head off with the assurances of ‘Don’t worry mum, I will just buy tuckshop.’ Tuckshop? I just went to all this effort and money for you to buy something from the tuckshop?
It really knocked my confidence as a mother to think that home meals had become less about coming together as a family and enjoying a meal together and more about how much money can be made from pressuring us to provide a 5-star catering service and bringing stress and strain to the dinner table.
Whatever happened to a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch, Weet-Bix for breakfast, fruit for morning and afternoon tea? Dinner used to be meat and three veg, with ‘three veg’ being potato, peas, and corn, not kale, spinach, and zoodles. The presentation was easy – it was put on a plate. There was no professionally taken, photoshopped picture to compare your meal with once completed. Recipies were simply passed down by our parents, not ‘Foodies’ looking to make a quick buck.
I ended up drawing the line when sandwiches were replaced with wraps wrapped in baking paper and tied with a piece of twine. Seriously? Do parent’s not have enough to do than to run a Café for their children?
Now granted, there are those parents who love being in the kitchen and are perfectly content cutting their cheese slices into dinosaur shapes. However, to those mums who, like me, have other ambitions in life that do not include placing their self-worth on a lunchbox – life does not end if your cheese slices look like… cheese slices. It is time to ignore the ‘foodie’ hype, focus on simple nutrition and let go of the pressure to be a five-star chef so you can spend more quality time engaging with your family and looking after yourself.