Made with Love

‘Yuck Mum, it was disgusting! All the kids were looking at it and pointing at it, and saying euwww!’ That was the reply I received when I asked my son how he enjoyed the mini-quiches I had so lovingly crafted for him on my Sunday afternoon so that he could enjoy them in his lunch-box the next day. ‘Did you even try it?’ I asked. ‘I had a little bit Mum, but I didn’t like it.’ When I was a kid a disgusting lunch was a stinky warm fish-paste sandwich (before cooler packs were invented), or your tomato had made the bread soggy and inedible and leaked into your maths homework, or your yoghurt had gone off and smelled like baby-sick (how is that possible…yoghurt is already fermented – is that what you call lacking culture?). Felix has always been my kid with an appetite for the new – the adventurous one. He will try anything, be it a spicy hot curry or a pimento-stuffed olive. He would place it delicately in his mouth, thoughtfully chew, and then give it a rating somewhat akin to Matt Preston on Masterchef (minus the purple cravat and lemon yellow suit). When other super-Mums spoke proudly of how their children happily chose the seed of the organic juju berry grown in the remote alpine regions of Tibet over chocolate, or only consumed smoothies made simply of sprouted seaweed, holy water thrice blessed by the Pope, with a touch of truffle oil I took a small degree of comfort in the fact that at least my Felix would try anything. On the other hand, not so long ago my daughter would once only eat rice, pasta, bread, and an assortment of vegetables as long as nothing on the plate touched or looked squishy/crunchy/wobbly/geometric/soft/hard or had any aroma. I don’t know where it all went wrong – when I was pregnant with her my diet consisted of hotter than hot home-made spicy chicken vindaloo with lots of spinach, and mashed pumpkin with copious amounts of cayenne pepper. And when she started solids there was the steamed green beans, sweet potato, and lentils.

But no, from about the age of three it was all over – tenacity is a greatly valued trait, but boy that kid could hold out for weeks before she would consume anything not on her pre-approved list. So today, I sadly accepted defeat, now my boy, my lover of all things edible drove that gastronomic dagger deep into my heart. ‘Buddy, I feel very sad, I made those quiches for you, I put my love into them’ (oh gees Masterchef look what I’ve become). ‘But Mum, I ate all of the bits with the love in them – I gobbled them up, and left the rest!’