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| Strawberries – Scottish, tasty and healthy. |
We do, is the short answer.
Boy One, who has just started S2, came home on Friday with a plastic tub of, what he called, spaghetti bolognaise.
He made it in HFT – that’s new-speak for home economics, stands for health and food technology. One of his favourite subjects.
A useful thing to learn to cook, I suppose. Handy, a spag bol – almost makes mince posh.
I asked him what the recipe was and he said: “Boil the pasta with salt in a pan.”
I nodded.
“Then put the sauce in another pan, with the mince and the carrots.”
“Eh?”
“The sauce in with the mince, which you have to bash ‘cos it’s all one big lump, and the grated carrots.”
“What sauce? What carrots? And what about onion, garlic and herbs?”
There then followed a very confusing conversation – conducted between Tebay Services and the turn-off for Lancaster en route to Camelot Theme Park to use the tickets we won in the Tots100 competition donkeys ago.
I was under the mistaken impression that what he was making was, in fact, sauce and he was trying to explain that the very bolognesyness came out of a jar – a sauce jar.
That ironed out, I tackled the carrot issue. Now I know that some chefs like it in their recipes, but it’s not really the norm, certainly not the only veg to appear. Mostly, if there’s carrot it’s in such a crowd of other good things that you barely notice it’s there.
Not so second year HFT students. Their bolognaise is a very carroty affair. Boy One is somewhat lump phobic and largely a veg refusenik, so he had tried to body swerve the orange stuff.
“I had to put it in. It’s in the recipe because of the Scottish Dietary Targets,” he said as if that explained it.
The Scottish Dietary Targets, Google informs me, began life in 1996 when the then Scottish Office decided to do something about the nation’s Sick Man of Europe tag. So it set down proscribed amounts of healthy stuff we’re supposed to consume and limits for the tasty bad stuff. I couldn’t (be bothered to) find many details about exactly what these targets are, although this study showed that in 2005 we were hardly giving cabbages cause for concern and broccoli can rest easy in its bed.
Obviously someone has had the genius idea of solving the eating-ourselves-to-death conundrum by teaching our children how to eat healthily. OK, admittedly, this sounds like a good idea. I have a fleeting vision of introducing our kids to fresh fruit and veg that is cooked beautifully and served alongside some other delicious and nutritious treat. We could take a leaf out of the book of the people who live on the Mediterranean – like the Italians.
Of course we could, but no. Instead, we’re teaching our children that opening a jar, bashing mince in goopy red sauce and adding grated carrots is a good thing to do to food. It is not. It tastes horrible – much like mince and carrots in goop – and will do nothing to educate our youngsters about either good food or healthy eating.
Tomorrow will largely be spent teaching Boy One how bolognese is really made.
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