No such thing as too many cooks!

One of the surprising positives to come out of the lockdown has been that I am no longer in sole charge of providing food for the family. Hooray! I have a love-hate relationship with cooking. I love spending time creating something delicious for us all to enjoy, whether it’s a warming casserole, a nutritious salad or, my favourite, a cake for a special occasion. (I made this one for Christmas but we were away so I forgot about it. It certainly helped beat any lockdown blues!)

What I, like many other parents, find difficult is the daily demand to produce a meal which everyone will enjoy and won’t take hours to prepare. Throw in the fact that I am really trying to reduce the meat, boost the vegetables and limit the amount of refined carbohydrates we eat, and it can all become a bit of a headache. Lockdown has taken the pressure off a little. There are three teenagers in our house and I realised that getting them to take responsibility for at least one meal a week would be a good way to give me a bit of a break and, let’s be honest, get them to put down their screens for an hour or two.

I have been surprised and impressed with how it’s been going so far. I am still having to do a fair bit, but they’ve all risen to the challenge. Where possible, I am trying to give them a choice about what they make, which means the whole eating less meat thing has gone out of the window. I figure it’s a price worth paying if we have three extra cooks in the house by the time everything gets back to normal.

So far, we’ve had tortilla wraps, fish curry, spicy chicken thighs, moussaka and burgers.

Tonight, we’re all joining in for a family pizza bake, something we haven’t done since the children were little. Back then, they just helped with the toppings, but today they’ll be making the dough too. It’s great to see the sense of achievement they have when their dish is served up, and I love the fact that they’re already talking about what they’ll make when it’s their turn again, and how they’d like to cook for their friends when all this is over.

It’ll be interesting to see how long the enthusiasm continues. I expect once the schools reopen and normal life resumes, there will be an expectation that I will take charge of the kitchen once more. I am going to resist that as long as I can. Sharing the cooking has also helped me to enjoy it again. And I’m fairly sure the thought of me experimenting with the jackfruit and banana leaves I found in the supermarket when all the other tinned food had sold out will be enough to have them reaching for a recipe book and offering to make something a little more meaty.