Making A Meal Of It
I'm convinced that children are born with a selfish gene that mutates as they grow and causes those outbreaks of self-centredness like the terrible twos and even more terrifying teens. Where else would they get their uncanny ability to take everything around them for granted? Whether it's the clothes on their backs, food in their bellies, someone to tidy up after them, or exclusive rights to the remote control, children expect all that, and more, from their parents as part of their birthright.
Many parents attempt to combat this selfish gene by preaching to their children how cushy their lifestyle is compared to their own childhood. My wife and I did think about doing that - telling them how tough it was for youngsters in our day. How children were seen and not heard. How many a Saturday afternoon was spent locked in the car outside a family-unfriendly pub (let's face it, most of them were back then) with only a good book (in my case, a Jules Verne), a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps (the ones with the blue sachet of salt) to keep you company. But preaching like that simply goes in one ear and out the other, or it would if they didn't have the earphone from their MP3 player permanently glued in it.
Instead, Gillian and I have developed a simple-to-understand set of house rules that seem to have served us well over the years. Here they are:
1. If you drop it, pick it up
2. If it's dirty, place it in the wash basket
3. If you get it out, put it away
4. If you switch it on, switch it off again
5. If you lose it, search for it yourself
At times we've had to temporarily extend the list to cover one off events. For example: If you draw in Biro all over your pine bed head, you scrub it off, and If you sit in the wardrobe scoffing the entire box of chocolates you find there, you will be sick...all over Mummy's shoes.
Of course that was when the little darlings were little darlings. As they got older and wiser, they invented their own rules:
1. If you drop it, blame your brother
2. If it's dirty, wear it again
3. If you get it out, claim it wasn't you
4. If you switch it on, say it's your sister's turn to switch it off
5. If you lose it, make sure it's valuable enough for your parents to find it for you
Bethany is now fourteen and Christian eleven and, to be fair, they've turned out to be great kids; instilled with a strong sense of morals that occasionally extends to helping out around the house. But being helpful and well intentioned is one thing, having the necessary ability and experience is another, as we found out last week with sticky consequences.
Our family is good friends with another local family, the Stantons, and our respective children love playing, shopping, and even going for walks on the local Common together. Sleepovers are regular events and we often have informal family dinner parties at each other's houses. Hence, last week, when the Stantons returned from a summer break in Scotland, our children pestered us to invite them all round for dinner. My wife was sorting her classroom at the school where she teaches, and I was cleaning out our garage so the thought of dropping everything to go food shopping and spend the evening cooking didn't appeal.
'We're too busy,' I told them, 'and I'm sure the Stanton parents will be too after a fortnight away. If you really want to invite them then it's up to you kids to do the cooking and prep.'
I assumed that would be the end of it but, after a huddled conversation and several text messages, Bethany and Christian said, 'Okay. Provided we don't have to pay for the food.' It seemed like a good deal to me.
By seven o'clock that evening, our dining table had silver service place settings for eight diners, menus had been printed, dips and nibbles served and our respective children were dressed as cooks and waiters - complete with aprons and fake moustaches. We had roasted sunflower seeds with a herb coating and the aforementioned dips as a starter, homemade pork meatballs with spicy potato wedges for our main course, and dessert was fruits of the forest with ice cream - served in meringue nests whisked and cooked to perfection by Bethany and Ella, the Stanton's daughter.
To say the adults were impressed would be like saying the Michelin Guide dabbled in grub. We couldn't believe our kids had cooked such a stunning meal, served with all the frills of a full-blown adult dinner party, at their age. The evening was a total success and the kids loved hosting it as much as the adults loved being guests with nothing to do - if you didn't count the massive clear up operation afterwards.
In fact it was such as success that the children volunteered to do it all over again; this time at the Stanton house. Unfortunately, things didn't turn out quite so well. Perhaps the kids were being a little over-confident when they chose a theme of 'Food from around the world', and the warning signs began when their multi-cultural ambitions doubled the previous food budget and took twice as long to prepare. As the adults sat chatting in the lounge, we also guessed things weren't going to plan by the fact we were nibble- and drink-free.
'They won't let me in the kitchen,' said Alison Stanton returning from checking on the progress of our drinks.
'Maybe they're a bit busy?' suggested my wife.
Alison nodded. 'I caught a glimpse of the table before Ella closed the door and there were bowls of steaming pasta and rice on it, so they must be about ready to call us.' Twenty minutes passed, still no drinks, and no sign of our waiters.
A dry house deserved dry wit. 'Maybe they've double-booked and we're on the second sitting,' I said. Alison's husband, James, offered to go check what was happening but the lounge door burst open before he could make a move and in tumbled four giggling children.
'We've had an accident,' said Christian.
'But we've switched the electricity off at the socket,' said Ella.
'And mopped it up,' added Bethany.
'But it meant we had to use water for the hot chocolate,' said Lewis, the Stanton's thirteen-year-old son.
'And we could be a bit short of curry,' said Christian, 'as half of it's on the walls of the microwave.'
'But we mopped it up,' added my daughter helpfully.
'And we might have overestimated the amount of rice a bit...or a lot,' admitted Ella. 'Even without what we dropped on the floor.'
'But we mopped it up,' said Bethany with a grin.
'It's ready now, though,' said Lewis. The children disappeared through the doorway as fast as they'd arrived. We gave them a second or two before trooping after them.
Our arrival in the kitchen was met by a smell of burnt milk in the air and sticky patches of milk residue on the floor, and on the kitchen surfaces, and on the wall tiles behind. Being hungry we decided to ignore that for the time being and focus on the dining table laden with food at one end of the kitchen. Closer examination revealed enough dishes of wild rice to feed the five thousand, a bowl of previously-hot-now-cold pasta topped with a tomato and herb sauce, a plate of steaming un-crusty rolls fresh from the microwave oven, a ready meal tray of chicken korma (half full), a tureen of hot chocolate (apparently they serve it like that for breakfast in France), and a teacup of poached salmon flakes sufficient to feed the five thousand provided only one person liked fish, and a platter piled high with cheese flavoured Doritoes. Quite which food related to indigestion in which part of the world wasn't clear, but hey, they were our kids so we ate it.
During the clearing away after, Alison asked the children how they'd managed to spill milk everywhere.
'It bubbled over when we heated it,' said Ella.
'That's funny,' said Alison. 'It seems to have gone everywhere but the cooker.' She leaned over a sticky patch on the kitchen worktop and sniffed. 'And I can't tell what detergent you used on it.'
'We didn't,' admitted my daughter looking a sheepish. 'We sprayed it with Lynx deodorant to make it smell better.'
'And we didn't boil the milk on the cooker,' said Ella. She looked at Bethany, who shrugged. 'We used the kettle.'
No wonder they'd mentioned switching the power off at the socket. I'd thought they meant the cooker switch.
'The instructions just said to boil some milk,' explained Christian.
'And kettles boil things,' said Lewis, speaking as if it made perfect sense. Thinking about it, if you were our children's age and didn't know better, I suppose it did. 'But then it kinda boiled over, and wouldn't stop,' he added. 'It went a bit brown inside too.'
Being responsible parents, we did some poe-faced tut-tutting and warned our children not to experiment in the kitchen in future, and to always ask an adult for help. The kids listened to our advice, shrugged it off and ran upstairs to play.
The Stanton parents looked at the Barley parents and the Barley parents looked back. Then we all burst out laughing and found it difficult to stop.
That is...until we wanted coffee.
It was worse for me. I like mine black.
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