Caroline has gone on strike. At least, as far as cooking is concerned. Her case for downing spatulas is that she’s been cooking steak, chicken and bacon for my three sons and me for the best part of 25 years and, as a vegetarian, she’s had enough. Henceforth, she’s going to prepare vegetarian meals. If we’d like to share those with her she’s happy to make enough for all, but if we want something meaty we’re on our own.
Now, I wouldn’t mind the occasional nut cutlet and sweet potato – I can even stomach tofu and scrambled egg. But for Caroline, a ‘vegetarian meal’ consists of a fried egg on toast and some spinach leaves. It’s what my sons and I would call a ‘snack’ – and a pretty dreary one at that. We have plenty of snacks in the fridge in the form of mini pork pies, cold sausages and salami. So what Caroline’s industrial action means is that either I cook or we have to plump for a take-away. Neither is particularly straightforward.
The difficulty with cooking is that I have a very limited repertoire and my sons are now bored of the menu. I can do three things: chicken risotto, chicken biryani and chicken paella. Only the last is greeted with any enthusiasm these days, possibly because it includes chorizo. I guess I could learn some new dishes, but the attractive thing about all the above is that the prep time is only about ten minutes and once everything is simmering away you can leave it for 40 minutes and get on with something else. (I know that’s not how you’re supposed to cook risotto, but that’s the ‘Toby method’ and I’m sticking to it.)
There are two problems with take-aways. The first is the eye-watering expense, meaning I can rarely get away with spending less than £45 – and that’s just for me and the two children still living at home. Then there are the arguments. I like Thai, 17-year-old Freddie likes Chinese and 16-year-old Charlie likes Indian. Often the only way to break the deadlock is if two of us can agree on one cuisine, which usually means Freddie and Charlie opting for Kentucky Fried Chicken. The last time I was bullied into this I decided to try the ‘double down’, a sandwich made with two pieces of fried chicken instead of bread, with a filling of bacon, cheese and an unidentifiable sauce. It was the most revolting thing I’ve ever tasted, a toxic cocktail of life-shortening chemicals. If Alastair Campbell still entertains hopes of discovering those ‘weapons of mass destruction’, I suggest he looks in the Acton branch of KFC.
I have a very limited cooking repertoire and my sons are now bored of the menu
I could go back to ordering meal kits every week – and HelloFresh sends me emails every day trying to lure me back. But the reason I stopped is that we never managed to get through them all, and as the new ingredients arrived I’d find myself throwing the old ones away. At one point I thought about getting a pig so we could feed him all this food waste, but it seemed easier to just cancel my subscription. The reason we didn’t eat the food quickly enough is that I’m only home for dinner about two or three times a week and I’ve never succeeded in persuading the children to try making the meal kits, even though the recipes are idiot-proof. The most they can manage is to stick some chicken goujons and frozen chips in the oven, a meal they’ve miraculously never got bored of.
My older two children, both at university, have started to cook, and when they’re home for the holidays they sometimes make meals for the whole family, which is a joy. Sasha, who spent her gap year in Mexico and is now spending a year in Colombia as part of her degree, is particularly fond of Latin American food, which we all love. Ludo, just coming to the end of his first year at Manchester, used to have a half-Polish, half-Omani girlfriend and she taught him how to cook some fantastic dishes, including meat soup. When they’re not here, we sit around pining for those meals.
Perhaps a live-in housekeeper is the answer – an idea I flirted with when the children were younger. My fantasy was a middle-aged Thai woman who’d previously been a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant, but when Caroline and I looked into it we concluded it was unaffordable. Even with room and board thrown in, we’d still have to pay her about £1,000 a week – probably more now. It would also mean converting my garden office into a granny flat, and I don’t want to part with it.
Soon Freddie will be off on his gap year so it will just be Charlie and me left to fend for ourselves. At that point, takeaways become a bit more affordable. If I can just persuade him of the merits of tom kha gai and green chicken curry with sticky rice, we’ll be sorted.
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