The best things come to those who wait. Many consumers have finally realised that what they thought they wanted (everything being available all the time) is actually very crap and unfulfilling for one simple reason: nothing has any sense of ‘specialness’ or excitement any more, and there is consequently now a yearning to get back to a time when you had to wait for something, and then enjoy it all the more. When winter meant apples and oranges, summer meant strawberries and asparagus, lamb came in the spring, berries in the autumn and all the seasons were different and special.
Fashion. Love it or hate it, what’s fashionable does dictate how many of us live, and shopping locally is the thing to be doing these days, once again. This is one trend we should ALL be following if we are to start feeding our kids something real for a change.
Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom
Growing some of your own fruit and vegetables is an easy way to feed your family well. We all did it out of necessity during the war, and you don’t need a huge garden. Just a few pots for tomatoes, or a small bed for potatoes or runner beans. It’s very cheap and it also teaches kids where some of their food comes from.
The slightly less good news is that, while this local shopping and home growing is all very admirable, healthy and fun, we have to keep it real: shopping once a week in a big supermarket is just the easiest way for many people. End of story. When I stopped work to look after my kids at home I could shop locally every day and I even managed to tend the crappy vegetable patch we had – it was something for us to do for goodness’ sake! But now that my kids are all at school and I’m at work almost full time, shopping isn’t an option most days of the week. And for those who work more than me it’s nigh on impossible at any time other than the weekend. Quite apart from anything else, the big shops are actually open at a time people can get to them – local ones often shut at 5 p.m. or even earlier.
So what’s to do?
Shop in supermarkets when you have to, and certainly for the big basics like washing powder, tins and so on, and for the Mothers Emergency Kit of freezer favourites like fish fingers – honestly, who is really going to be bothered to make those every time? – but while you’re there try as far as possible to choose healthier, more natural options with less processing. The occasional big supermarket shops aside, try to make as many trips to local shops in between, for fresh seasonal produce like vegetables, as you possibly can. Saturday mornings are a possibility for many, and Sunday markets are open on … um, well, on Sundays, so that’s another day you can probably manage.
Until food manufacturers promise, promise, promise to stop filling our daily bread with sugar, saturated fats, and salt it’s going be very tricky to reverse the obesity trend and get the nation’s children back into their skinny jeans again. But Granny has another suggestion that we can all try out, and this time it means coming out of the shops, and back into the kitchen …
Just as I am wondering whether anything is safe to eat any more I am shown a newspaper cutting Granny has put aside to illustrate her next point.
‘Just look at this,’ she exclaims, waving the paper dangerously near my almost empty bowl. ‘Children at a school in Fife have been banned from bringing in home-made cakes to the School Fayre, in case of any allergic reactions. They’re being told to bring shop-bought ones instead. But what’s in those?’
I make a face that I fear sums up the words ‘Ummm …’ and ‘I don’t know’ perfectly. Granny clearly has no difficulty reading the look in my eyes.
‘Well, that’s just it: they don’t know either. They’ve no idea!’
Granny’s Pearl of Wisdom
When you cook food at home, you know what’s in it because you do it yourself. Flour, eggs, salt and sugar – and that’s IT! No hidden extras. If you buy everything from the shops your children consume a terrific amount of unnecessary things that are bad for them, without realising it.
Granny has finished her lunch now, but not her attack on the way we eat these days.
‘There’s nothing home made any more, like soup, or bread or a roast dinner, and many people don’t even know how to make them, and you know why?’
‘Because we’re all lazy and watch too much telly?’ Mmmmm, telly …
‘Well, there’s a bit of that, certainly, but it’s mainly because parents are both out at work all day, and haven’t the time or energy to cook when they get home. So they open the freezer and heat up any old shop-bought junk they find in it. Tins, packets, jars – you name it. I was at home looking after the family, so I had plenty of time to cook a healthy meal. That’s what the trouble is now. ‘
Aha – so this is how it feels to be one hundred per cent guilty of every charge thrown at you. Mummy works: guilty. Too tired to cook: guilty. Opens freezer and removes ‘any old junk’? Guilty. Crikey, she’s going to put me away for life.
As I struggle to reconcile the undeniable sensibleness of what Granny just said with the fact that it somewhat undoes most of what the Women’s Liberation Movement achieved and that allows me to be sitting in front of her at this moment researching my latest book, rather than chained to the stove baking cookies for my adoring children, she tells me a story of an American schoolgirl who came to stay with them as some kind of exchange programme, back in the 1960s.
One afternoon Granny was in the kitchen, doing something exciting with the aforementioned flour, sugar, eggs and so on. The poor, unsuspecting visitor asked Granny what she was doing, and received the swift reply, in a voice I can only imagine was so far beyond terse it was teetering on the brink of bone-crushing, that she was ‘making a cake!’ According to Granny, her American guest’s eyes nearly popped out of her head.
‘“Oh”, she said to me. “Do you mean you make them – from scratch? You don’t buy a packet and just add water before cooking it?” She’d honestly never seen anyone bake before, Elizabeth. And she was fifteen if she was a day. I’m sure she thought we were either very hard up or just strange! It was so sad.’
Now then, nobody but the disgustingly virtuous, irritatingly time-rich or bored beyond words can be expected to bake every loaf of bread and cake they eat. Even Nigella must nip down the in-store bakery once in a while! And nobody, least of all me, is asking that all mothers stop working to stay at home and bake! But making a simple, healthy meal from scratch needn’t take more than ten minutes, quick enough even for the busiest of us, and learning to cook is one of life’s absolute essentials – one we must, must pass on to our kids. If we never show them how to cook, or where their food comes from, what chance do they have to spot what’s healthy and what is a vacuum-packed heart attack in the making when they come to choose food for themselves?
FACT BOX
HOME COOKING VS READY MEALS AND FAST FOOD