Lousy Lunch Lady

I am a mean mom. I deprive my kids. Daily. And they are more than happy to elaborate the awful, torturous details to anybody who may feign the slightest interest in their torture and neglect.

Let me explain.

I pack my kids each a lunch to take to school everyday. Which is already a whole lot more than what my mother did for me. 

When I was at school, I had to make my own sandwich if I wanted anything to eat at school. It was such a pain in the bum getting up a few minutes earlier everyday to smear the peanut butter and jam across whatever wheat-based product happened to be in the bread bin at the time. If I was feeling energetic over a weekend, I would butter up a loaf of sarmies - mostly Marmite flavoured, wrap them in wax wrap (which I just never got the hang of, so my sandwiches tended to unwrap themselves between the time they were "wrapped" to the time I opened my lunchbox at break-time),  and chuck them into the back of the freezer (which generally meant that my badly wrapped sarmies lost their covers and got freezer burn by the time they were needed). Leaving for school in the morning, I would grab a ready-made (rock hard) sarmie, throw it into my bag only to retrieve it a couple of hours later, neatly thawed between my Maths homework and a Geography textbook. This sort of worked for a while, until someone (and I do suspect my siblings to be the guilty party in this regard), started helping themselves to my ready-made meals. So it was back to the early morning frenzied sandwich assembly. By the time I was in secondary school, I stopped eating at school in a desperate attempt to be skinny. While this did save me the morning sandwich making stress, it did nothing for my weight. (As a side note: I never had enough will power to be anorexic - I could not resist food for long enough. This has been my greatest obstacle in sticking to any kind of diet, actually. If it tastes nice, I'm going to eat it. And not just enough to get a taste, I'd rather finish it, thanks.)

Back to present-day child abuse: I pack a fruit (apple - skinned and sliced, banana or grapes - destalked) and a low GI whole-wheat Bovril (can't stand Marmite anymore - also can't imagine why not..)) sandwich (cut in soldiers, triangles, or, sometimes, hearts and stars - thank you Tupperware cookie cutters!) for my kids' lunches. Everyday. Sometimes I'll add some raisins or a couple of nuts. Not often. Just sometimes.

Today my curiosity got the better of me and I snuck a peak at what other kids are getting in their lunchboxes. 

Should have done it when Air-Bear was inside. She stood beside me with big, woeful eyes as I gazed upon the feast of biscuits, pretzels, fruit rolls, marshmallows, flings, ham and baby tomato skewers, squeezy cheezies, yoghurts, fruit dainties,  corn chips, cocktail viennas and pineapple and guava fruit salads.

"Mom," she whispered so as not to disturb the holy aura of this wonderful smorgasbord. "I don't like my sandwich."

I swear there were tears in her eyes.

I felt awful. My poor deprived little darlings! The torture of munching on a seedy, dry sarmie when all your table-fellows are gorging on MSG and sugar laden treats. (OK, so maybe they weren't all unhealthy meals - but I am trying to make myself feel a little better for trying to be healthy, albeit boring.)

Here I was thinking that I was being so much better than my mother had been to me, when there were all these children who's mothers (? I think there may be a handful of au pairs and grannies in the bunch) were going to all the effort of making fancy little meals for their darling offspring.

Not wanting to go the fast food route, and aiming to keep my kids' lunch-boxes healthy, I hereby dedicate myself to the inclusion of at least one non-boring "treat" in their lunch-boxes each day.

Suggestions welcome. And needed. Please.