Читать книгу The Yummy Mummy’s Family Handbook - Liz Fraser - Страница 49

Cooking alone can be very satisfying and therapeutic: the radio is on, everything is relatively under control, your kids are otherwise occupied pulling each other’s hair out upstairs or trying on all your make-up, and a warm ‘Nigella’ glow softly envelops you for a few minutes. Aaaaah.

Then you burn the chicken, there’s a blood-curdling scream from upstairs followed by one of your offspring entering the smoke-filled room clutching a handful of hair, with black mascara all over his cheeks, and all is back to normal again.

If this kind of solo cooking is the only way your family’s meals are ever prepared then not only can it become quite lonely for the chef, but it also means that your children never get to see, feel and learn anything about food at all. This is a shame on a scale way beyond that of Sienna Miller chopping all her hair off or Opal Fruits suddenly being called Starburst. Teaching kids how food works, what it is, where it comes from and how it turns from packets of this and that into a finished meal, albeit a slightly burned or tasteless one, is an absolutely crucial part of their education that will stay with them forever.

Asking a class of eight-year-olds where honey comes from and getting the answer ‘From Tesco’s, Miss’ or being met with blank stares when requesting the simplest recipe for a cake is hardly something we should be proud of as a nation. I realise that few of us have much time to spend watching our kids hacking carrots into huge, irregular chunks with a blunt knife or sloshing milk and flour all over the hob in an attempt at junior béchamel sauce. But how many of even the busiest parents can honestly say they couldn’t cook one meal a week, from start to finish, with their children?