It suddenly occurred to me the other day that I am not a big fan of vegetables. Despite my desperate attempts to maintain a flourishing vegetable patch and my joy at feeding the children our home-grown vegetables I am ashamed to admit that I am more of a frozen pea kind of girl. I religiously encourage my children to eat their five-a-day. I regularly tell them how much faster they will run and how they will crack their times tables in record speed if they eat that large sprig of broccoli.
Our village school recently decided to hold a ‘food tasting’ day for the children. The objective was to encourage every child to try a selection of fruit and vegetables that they might not have tried before. A good idea I thought and a relief to have conquered the five-a-day consumption by lunchtime. The school were looking for some volunteers to help prepare the food. I jumped at it, along with some other mothers, thinking it would make a nice change from loading the washing machine.
We arrived to find large crates stacked full of pumpkins, papayas, sharon fruit, celeriac and countless other produce. It was our good friends at Waitrose who had come up trumps and generously decided to support us. We all marvelled at the food and even I had to admit that it looked quite appealing. Our headmistress popped her head round the corner and casually dropped in that the tasting would be at 10.30am. That gave us one hour to peel, chop and in some cases cook 160 portions. We searched the small school kitchen for peelers, knives and chopping boards and then began our monumental task. Whilst peeling 35 parsnips with a blunt peeler and very sore fingers, I decided that parsnips were definitely axed from the Christmas lunch menu.
We accelerated our chopping at an impressive rate as the countdown began. This was ‘Ready Steady Chop’ personified. Finally, we hit the deadline and the children began their tasting. Thankfully they all enjoyed it and I am told the sharon fruit was a big hit with the aubergine not being quite as appealing to 160 small taste buds.
That afternoon my children arrived back from school chatting excitedly about the Tasting. They both keenly asked what we were having for supper. “Please can we have parsnips,” said my six-year-old. “No, it’s frozen peas tonight,” I quickly replied.
