Ready, Steady, Lunch!

Friday’s packed lunches are always depressingly sparse.  One of us does the food shop (also known as The Big Shop)on a Friday, which means by Thursday night when I make the lunches for the next day (really, who has time to make it in the morning?), there are slim pickings.  Not for Daughter, of course.  She has the same every day – sandwich (egg or ham on strict rotation, and the exotica of egg has been a fairly recent addition), bear crisps, a mini chocolate bar that is apparently approved by mums due to the high milk content, apple juice and until recently a well-travelled pot of grapes.  It was well travelled in that she very rarely ate them and they went back and forth.  The lunch-box police would probably take me away, but they want to try living with a fussy eater.  So of course there is always everything that she wants, and let’s face it, I’d do a midnight run to the supermarket in my slippers if I discovered something missing for her.  Substitutes will not be tolerated!

But for me, it’s like a much scaled down version of Ready Steady Cook.  I empty the fridge of potential lunch fare and try and put something together.  Last night revealed a serious lack of salad and fruit, but at least there was enough to make a sandwich.  I was drooling during a text to L before, who was having a jacket potato with beans and salad.  The food of kings!  I have no access to a kitchen at work and so I’m pretty limited to sandwiches and sophisticated pots of noodles that you can make with water.  Not those!  I’ve got a degree, thank you very much.  My noodles come in cardboard containers for that extra bit of sophistication.

When I lived with my parents (or ‘at home’ as I still call it occasionally), my very wonderful Mother made my packed lunch for work.  Yes, work.  Those were the days.  There was never two days the same, and there was never a make-do day.  How?  She worked full time and did everything (more appreciated now than at the time, I think) and yet still had enough sandwich filling on a Friday.  And I’m no stranger to having discovered ham, soft cheese and grapes in between my granary.  The imagination!  The effort!

I don’t think Daughter will look back as fondly on her lunches.  How misty-eyed can you get over a boiled egg sandwich?!  To be fair to myself though, I do cut them into a heart shape.  I do hope she will entertain a ham, soft cheese and grape sandwich at some point, but I think I will be resigning my packed lunch maker role the day she leaves school.  Primary school.  No?  Grr.

I’m off to pester L with texts now while she has her jacket and beans. Ha ha!