Lunchbox pressure

The children’s love of puddings with custard means that I only have to do them one packed lunch a week during term time. School holidays, however, mean holiday club for this first fortnight and holiday club means packed lunches. For the boy this is easy (if dull) – he would happily eat hummus and ham sandwiches for every meal for the rest of his life and if you throw in a banana and a Mr Kipling’s Cherry Bakewell he is in heaven. His sister, however, has different ideas. Worlds away from my 1980s packed lunches of Monster Munch and toffees from my friend’s parents’ corner shop, she has suggested sushi (I knew her life was ridiculously middle class when she told someone, aged three, that “bulgar wheat is my favourite kind of couscous!!”) Sushi is unlikely but I am driven to dig out an unopened Annabel Karmel this weekend for inspiration. AK fills me with a huge sense of nostalgia for the days of weaning and recording each organic purée in my little notebook – a habit that quickly stopped when I had a second child and, at height of his early months of endless screaming, I gave my eldest Quavers for her tea. Life is definitely easier now we all eat the same meals all together but I have to admit to looking forward to thumbing through a kid’s recipe book again (and maybe I will find some inspiration for my own packed lunch which, as an adult, still seems to mostly consist of crisps…)