Curly pasta (fusilli apparently, but not in our house) with bolognaise sauce for supper. Smells good and tastes better, but it instantly attracts complaints because it’s not straight.
Daniel: You never cook spaghetti anymore
Me: Mmm
Jamie: And why’s it always brown?
Quite simple, because my mother was right (see Exams, revision and aspersions) and when it comes to food for the boys, I need to pull out any stop I can reach on the sly, manipulative and devious scale.
The boys have always reacted to food as if I were tying them across the railway tracks and setting the points. The number of airplanes they swatted away as babies would have heartened King Kong, and some days I’m not sure we’ve progressed. Ironically, fruit and vegetables seem to be the only things they’ve always eaten without dispute.
At 14, Jamie has recently started eating pasta, having worked through the following stages:
1. dry and uncooked
2. cooked and dipped in chocolate
3. cooked but totally plain
4. finally with a little (teaspoon little) bolognaise sauce
Not recommended by the Fussy Eater books, but if you’re able to write an entire cookbook for children, you obviously haven’t got kids that won’t eat.
Whilst Daniel’s been gobbling pasta for years, he also dodges the sauce and behaves as if he’s on a rescue mission, extracting the pasta piece by piece from its contaminated lake.
So back to the curly stuff. Quite simply, it’s a better conspirator. The sauce hides in and clings to the sides like a frightened mollusc, so the boys end up eating more sauce than with scrapable clean spaghetti.
As for the wholemeal pasta, it’s payback. I prefer it and until they eat everything they’re given, it’s brown pasta, brown rice, brown bread and anything else that has a brown version.
This does mean that (brown) chocolate slips through as well, but I try to save them from it and get there first.
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