‘Vile’: Mel Buttle on her unforgettable dinner
Parents have it tough at the best of times but this Aussie mum reckons she knows the hardest thing of the lot.
I get it now. Why my mum had four easy meals on high rotation, and would bat away my dinner suggestions that I’d gleaned from Geoff Jansz.
“No, I’m not making laksa, look at the ingredient list, it’s a mile long, when would I ever use those spices again?”
My four meals are different to hers but the goal is the same: mindless, easy meals that have the ability to conceal vegetables.
Let me walk you through my menu: We, of course, do a spaghetti bolognese, a chicken curry, tacos and a gnocchi tray bake.
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I can cut a zucchini so small it’s undetectable to a toddler’s eye or palate. Where’s that series of MasterChef? MasterChef: Toddler Dinner.
My mum’s four high-rotation meals were tuna pie which I found vile, apricot chicken a favourite, spaghetti bolognese a stand out and chicken supreme, which is supermarket hot chook in a white sauce on rice, which I was indifferent to.
I used to hear stories from aunties about how my mum was a great cook, I’d compare their praise to the stodgy, white dinner before me and it just didn’t add up.
They’d rave about her pork and celery stir fry. I’d never seen such a dish … I think the closest we ever got to one of those was a jar of Kan Tong over some chicken breast.
So, as the circle of life continues, I’m now up to the bit of parent life where I’m over cooking. I no longer see it as a joyful task and an opportunity to be creative, it’s now just another chore that creates mess and washing up.
My mum used to drop hints that she didn’t want to cook dinner. She’d start off by telling us that she ate lunch late at work and isn’t hungry yet. Then when that didn’t work, around 6pm she’d yawn and say she wouldn’t mind going to bed soon.
If you were looking at Tracy Grimshaw hearing comments like that, you’re looking at a toasted sandwich for dinner.
She’d sometimes even lay the groundwork on the drive home from school. “I think I just feel like baked beans on toast for dinner tonight,” she’d say, waiting to see how I’d react to such a suggestion. I learned, though, after a while, this sort of talk from her meant that with some gentle manoeuvring you could upgrade your beans on toast to a far more exciting takeaway, particularly if it was near the end of the week, or even better, payday.
I’m a huge fan of fish and chips on a Friday night; I always have been.
I’m talking about old school chips shops here. I love those preserved fish and chips shops that still have a gumbull machine, pineapple fritters and hamburgers with the lot. Waiting outside the fish and chips shop as a kid, filling in the 20 or so minutes it took for your order to be ready felt like an eternity.
There were no mobile phones, you had to amuse yourself with the out-of-date magazines, or be happy swinging around the pole out the front of the shop until your mum called out, “That’s enough, you’ll make yourself sick.”
The worst was when a kid you didn’t know from the same school turned up and your mum would start talking to their mum. I’d eyeball the counterman, pleading with my eyes for them to hurry our order up, that’s Matthew Kent, he swallowed a Hot Wheels tyre once for attention and had to go to hospital.
“Number 57,” the teenager working the counter would call out. “Not long now, we’re 61,” Mum would say. “58, 59,” would echo through the shop.
I’d be ready to burst with excitement and ready to go and trade our paper number for a warm parcel of fried deliciousness. But then somehow, “62”. How? How? I’d be baffled how this was even possible, didn’t the chef know we were 61, legally we were next and I was starving here.
Eventually our number would be called, and I’d sit with the fish and chips on my lap on the drive home, it would be burning my thighs but I didn’t care, I was minutes away from not having to eat tuna pie.
