Foraging

Rachel could find food anywhere. On the school run she can often be found having pilfered snacks from other mums, far tastier than the ones I am offering. In fact, I have succeeded in putting my children off biscuits, just by having a constant supply of them in my handbag.

“Not biscuits!” they cry, unless there is a change in type or brand, perhaps a rich tea, instead of the usual crumby digestives and broken custard creams that have been knocking around in my tupperware biscuit box all week. Bizarrely, they are more excited about a stick of plain French bread.

Rachel now turns her nose up at what I’ve got and says nonchalantly;

“I am going to get something else off someone else.” She knows she only has to hang about around another family at school pick up time before she is offered some of whatever treat that mum has brought.

The children are all very good at helping themselves to food. I know this is not encouraged in some families, but in mine, if they get it themselves, it means I don’t always have the constant demands to get food for them.

This 'help yourself' policy definitely applies at the weekends, and by the time we parents get up, the remnants of their foraging are spread around them where they have been camped in front of the TV. The evidence of eating might include apple cores, grape stalks or other fruit debris, several flattened frube yogurt packets, empty yogurt carton and spoon, or plastic bowls of dry cereal. Often I will find the tell-tale stalk and seed ball of a whole red or yellow pepper that is Rachel's snack of choice.

Sometimes, they will have made their breakfast properly and eaten it at the table but generally only foodstuffs that can be got quickly and be consumed in front of the TV will do. Edible and portable seems to be the chief criteria.

One night in the run up to Christmas, I did a late shop in the 24 hour Tesco to beat the crowds. I unpacked all the shopping at midnight and went to bed. When I surfaced the next morning, Rachel, (possibly with help) had eaten two entire punnets of strawberries. Fortunately they were unessential and had not been factored into my Boxing Day meal.

Ben has been known to make a sponge cake from scratch and then eat it all, just because he felt hungry. At least it got to the cooking stage though, I remember as children, my sister and I making the cake mixture together, not in order to make a cake, but just so we could eat all the mixture.  The paltry scraping of the mixing bowl our mother allowed us was not nearly enough apparently and merely whetted our appetite. 

I like to think this free reign in the kitchen encourages their resourcefulness. Also, it helps that I know that anything really tasty and unhealthy, is either in a secret location or out of their reach. Those few more precious moments we get lying in bed in the morning are worth every morsel they can scavenge.