If you are a parent and your kids have grown up and moved on, take a look in the mirror and ask yourself: “How the hell am I still alive?”
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I have just read the NSW government’s advice to parents on the stuff they should be putting in their kids’ lunchboxes, and the associated warnings about what NOT to put in there. Stuff like – whimper – Vegemite.
Here are some of the suggestions which, of course, will make a busy parent’s day just that bit easier and more fulfilling.
- Sandwiches or wraps filled with salad/reduced-fat cheese/egg/lean meats.
- rice paper rolls filled with vegetables and tofu/chicken.
- sushi rolls with tuna and vegetables.
- vegetable frittata.
- pizza made with a thin crust topped with lean chicken, pineapple, capsicum and cheese.
- stir-fry with vegetables, chicken and rice/noodles.
- fried rice made with eggs, lean meat and vegetables.
- steamed dim sum dumpling – chicken and vegetable filling.
- spaghetti bolognese or lasagne.
- burrito/fajitas/soft tacos with lean meat, beans, salad and guacamole/salsa.
- uncoated falafel rolls with salad, hummus, tabbouleh.
- hamburger with wholemeal bun, lean beef patty, salad, beetroot.
- chicken burger on high-fibre roll, with lean chicken, salad.
- risotto – chicken/vegetable/mushroom.
I did not eat in a restaurant until the age of 16, and even then it was the local Chinese and I think I might’ve had fried rice and a deep fried spring roll.
In our town, we didn’t have even an Italian eatery until I was 18 and there are vivid memories of the first time I smelled spaghetti bolognese with parmesan cheese.
My parents could not pronounce “pizza” and even if they’d heard strange talk of burritos, fajitas and tacos, they may well have thought some fool was talking about small donkeys, far away warming devices and an instrument on a hoon’s dashboard.
Tofu could well have been something you found between your toes after a hot day in the school grounds. Guacamole? No idea. Salsa, ditto.
We lived on a daily school lunch diet of Vegemite, plain cheese, jam and lemon butter all on white bread, with perhaps a side serve of Teddy Bear biscuits or Monte Carlos if it was pay week. If you were lucky, on Mondays you could buy a pie.
They were all delicious and I do not recall dying even once. No, there was far more potential fatality in dangerous sounding things like frittatas and raw fish rolls. After school snacks were four or five potato cakes from the shop next to the bus stop.
The NSW Government says to use oils such as canola, grapeseed, soy, olive and sunflower instead of lard. Heck, I can remember recycling the Sunday chicken roast or lamb fat back into the tin that lived in the fridge at least four times before it was considered too old. Sunflowers, olives, grapes and similar were confined to the garden.
I’m not saying this was necessarily healthy, just that I reckon most of the kids I knew would have passed out gagging at some of these modern suggestions.
It’s an indication of how much the Australian diet – especially in the country – has changed in a generation. Now, at my age, I find many of those things very drool inducing.
But no Vegemite? That’s un-Australian.
WAYNE GREGSON
