This past Valentines Day I tried to express some love to my kids via this chocolate mousse chocolate ripple cake. The presentation wasn’t perfect but within 2 minutes of it hitting the table my kids had the cake all over their faces.
I cooked meatballs the other night – Mexican meatballs on rice. It was a presentable family meal if I do say so myself. My seven year old son told me “This meal is very nice mum but it isn’t really balanced. Next time you should add more cheese.” While I was pleased that for once he was actually eating my food his comment gave me pause to consider his television viewing.
My Kitchen Rules is a thing in my house. A thing with the males in the family, not with me. I allow my son to stay up late watching My Kitchen Rules in a desperate attempt to encourage an interest in food, in the hope he may expand his dietary choices beyond chicken nuggets and vegemite. It should be noted that he loves My Kitchen Rules. I am however torn. The ethos of My Kitchen Rules doesn’t sit well with this reluctantly domestic mum. Admittedly I don’t enjoy cooking. I do it for one reason – to feed my family. Certainly not to show off my kitchen prowess (which is decidedly lacking), or for recreational purposes. This article is my venting space – a place to share the gnawing thoughts I have about My Kitchen Rules as it dominates our evening television viewing. It is also a personal attempt to examine our own eating habits in our household.
Why oh why should there be love in my food?
I hear it again and again on My Kitchen Rules – either there is not enough love in a dish, or the judges could taste the love in the dish. There is love in my heart for my family, there is love in my arms when they enfold my kids. I am not overflowing with love though as I desperately try to pull together a meal after a day at work. The love doesn’t distill into the food as I wrangle with it while a toddler is grasped like a monkey around one leg and two primary aged children are oozing witching hour naughtiness. It is enough that I love my kids and I feed them. They don’t have to taste the love in the food, just eat the bloody food and know they are loved.
On what planet is it okay to sit around a table and critique a persons cooking?
Okay, I get it, My Kitchen Rules is a television cooking competition it is not real life. In real life however I expect my children to be gracious if someone has cooked them a meal. Whether the meal is to their liking or not. Whether the meal is balanced or not. Whether there was a hero of the meal or not. If someone has taken time out of their day and money out of their bank account to show my kids hospitality I hope they will honour this hospitality with graciousness. Teaching my kids graciousness is a battle that I have not even nearly won yet. I have to wonder what the food critiques we see from other contestants on My Kitchen Rules teach families about this though. Does it teach them to be grateful for their food and the hands that prepared it? I think not.
Presentation. Why bother?
I have a toddler and two young boys. Within five minutes of me serving a meal my table is a disgraceful mess. Calling it feeding time at the zoo would be insulting – to the animals. Yes, we can add table manners to the list of social skills I am trying to impart on my kids. Just saying though, what on earth does it matter what the food looks like when it hits the table when half of it ends up underneath the table?
Can’t you just be happy to have a decent meal in your belly?
According to the World Food Program poor nutrition contributes to the deaths of 3.1 million children each year. Please stop and consider that for more than a second. Three Million Children each year die as a consequence of not having enough food. It is so, so difficult to appreciate the tragedy of a statistic like that in a country like Australia where we all have enough food. Although, hold on, according to the organization Foodbank in Australia each year 2 million people rely on food relief. Hunger in Australia is largely a hidden social scourge. The odds are that my son who watches My Kitchen Rules and learns about flavors being balanced goes to school with kids that are hungry all day. If we are considering cooking an art form or a recreational activity it is too easy to forget these chilling statistics and to act necessarily to change them.
No matter how hard I try at least one of my kids won’t eat their dinner
If you have detected a frustration concerning family mealtimes you are not wrong. Two out of my three kids are picky eaters. I don’t mean “it drives me crazy that my kids won’t eat their peas” sort of picky. I mean fall off the growth curve, stunting, reliant on dietary supplements picky. Their pickiness is due to sensory issues, at least one of them fulfills the criteria for sensory processing disorder meaning there are some neurological and not just behavioural elements to the pickiness. Part of my family meal-time battles are about keeping my kids healthy in the most basic sense eg keeping them growing and not anaemic. Ultimately this is the reason that despite my misgivings I still allow my son to watch My Kitchen Rules. He is a little boy that has shunned food so his interest in a cooking show has to be a good thing. It may after all have prompted him to try my meatballs in the first place.
So what does all this My Kitchen Rules rant mean? I guess it means that I’m still struggling with my role as a food provider with picky eating children. It also means I recognize how far I have to go as an individual and a mother in practicing and teaching gratitude for our food. Ambivalence – as a working mum that is my middle name. Finally it means I haven’t really got a clue how to teach my kids meaningfully about food as a blessing and the real hunger experienced in Australia and around the world. Perhaps it is time for me to organize a family giving trip to a foodbank.
I totally hear you Danielle. I always tried my best to put something on the table that would appeal to both children. I used to love cooking before kids. Afterward not so much. My husband has always appreciated eating the food I put on the table and I don’t accept criticism well from the kids – especially YUK. So much so that my husband made a rule that they always said “nice meal mum”. It kept me happy and I guess the kids knew that I always tried my best to put something they liked in the meal. As they got older and more polished they became inventive, choosing some portion of the meal they liked to comment on and not mention the parts they didn’t like. When out they always compliment the cook on some part of the meal. I feel for you with your extreme picky eaters, that would be so difficult. Luckily MKR wasn’t around when our kids were small. Congrats on the meatballs at least they ate them! Our daughter always ate one thing and one thing only until she tired of it and then would move on to something else. She is now 29 years old and a vegan and she still eats one meal until she tires of it. She also has a thing about textures of food. When she was a toddler she ate beetroot for a week and her wet nappy was blood red. Being a Doctor Danielle you know the answer to that one, as did our Doctor. (There was no internet back then to ask Google) He enquired, “has she been eating a lot of beetroot?” What a relief!
Jan, good on your husband for making sure the kids were always polite about the food. It goes a long way and I just wish it was the case in our house. I’ve never seen any kids with beetroot stained wee but little ones that are eating lots of mashed pumpkin and carrot go a little bit orange like an Oompa Loompa. The parents don’t usually notice it because it happens slowly, it is other people that will comment on it.