Why I hate being a parent

My eldest son was born almost ten years ago and one of the first books he was bought as a present was The Tiger Who Came to Tea by Judith Kerr.  If you haven't read it, you should.  It has a quality that I haven't found in that many young children's books.  Namely it is ever so evocative of a serene and gentle former time.  The story is simple.  A little girl and her mum are disturbed at tea time by a tiger who comes to their house for tea.  The tiger eats all the food in the house and drinks all the drink, including all the water from the taps.  When daddy comes home, they have nothing in the house to eat or drink and as a consequence, they have to go out for tea.  They go out and its dark and all the cars have their lights on and all the streetlamps are lit and they go into town to a cafe where they have a lovely tea.

Now maybe it's because I am a child of the seventies that I find this so evocative.  When I was a child, if we had nothing in the house to eat, then the only option would have been to go to a cafe.  There was no such thing as a fast food restaurant; there were no Pizza Huts or KFCs.  There was a fish and chip van that came to a car park near by every Friday but that was all.  We did have a cafe nearby that sold fried teas with cheap sausages, chips, beans and mugs of tea.  I have no memories of ever going to a cafe for tea but every time I read The Tiger Who Came to Tea, I felt that I had.  Something about the words and the illustrations gave me such vivid memories of a simpler time.  A time when food wasn't available any hour of the day or night.  When there were only three TV channels and they all shut down in the mid afternoon and at night.  There was no internet, phones only came attached to the wall, nobody had ever heard of blogging and there was no such thing as twenty-four hour news.  News bulletins were short and news stories were confined to the important issues of the day.

Now don't get me wrong, I love the modern age we live in.  I am a technogeek of quite limitless proportions.  From our first family computer (a Commodore PET 2001) in 1978, I was hooked and I have embraced every advance in home computing since.  I love my phone and the fact that I can text friends who live in the United States or New Zealand literally thrills and amazes me.  I will never be able to take these things for granted because I have strong memories of a time when none of these things were even conceivably possible.  I am also a news junkie.  I consume much of the twenty-four hour news culture with a vigour that approaches an addiction.  Radio Five Live is on wherever I am whenever possible.  My Browser homepage is BBC, I get a little buzz of excitement when a news story breaks and word spreads over the Twitterverse.  However, I must confess that I also find that much of what I see, read and hear drives me nuts.

It is surely an accepted fact that there isn't enough real news to actually fill twenty-four hours of news broadcasting.  It is a feature of the modern media age that our news providers are often forced to create the news.  They will foster and fan the flames of debate in an effort to generate discourse and fill air time.  They will latch onto the lives of people who are of no public importance to provide further fuel for discussion and disagreement.  The publication of minor government reports are sometimes flagged as significant events and scientific studies that would once have been confined to the pages of obscure journals only are brought to our public attention with the science removed and the conclusions distorted or altered in an effort to generate sometimes debate, sometimes concern and sometimes just panic.

Another feature of the 21st century media is the desire to classify and judge people.  People who appear in the spotlight are often very quickly judged for maybe the one thing that they've done that has earned them their moment of fame.  Sometimes perhaps, the judgement is justified but often it isn't.  I could provide many examples of this but I'm not going to because that isn't my point.  My point is what is coming next.

The temptation to judge and classify is a 21st century condition that has spread throughout society and to a greater or lesser extent, we are all guilty.  In an ideal world, we would all be comfortable in our own skin and be able to justify our positions to ourselves but that is simply not the case and as a result, many of us are left feeling judged and angry as a result.  I do not remember such things ever bothering me though, until I became a parent.

The moment one becomes a parent, one becomes a member of a club and from then on, everybody is going to pigeonhole you and judge you and here now (at last) are some examples.  It starts straight away.  Some mothers breastfeed and some don't.  Those who don't may be judged as neglectful or in some way a failure by those who do.  Those who do breastfeed and do so publically may be thought of as intrusive for doing so whilst they may see any attempt to stop them from breastfeeding in public as an infringement of their rights.  Ask yourself, have you ever looked at somebody else's child and thought 'What on earth are they wearing?'  I know I have and I know the same has been said of my children.  Adults who don't have children are also so often judgemental of those who do.  On one occasion when my middle son was just over a year old, we were in a local restaurant with him and although he was being fairly well behaved, he was occasionally being noisy (as one year olds often are.)  I remember receiving the most angry and venomously disapproving stare from a young woman who was at a nearby table trying to enjoy a romantic Sunday lunch with her boyfriend.  I may be wrong, but the expression I read said that she felt my child was ill controlled and I had no business bringing him out for lunch.

Of course, when children go to school, the potential for judgement and disapproval increases a hundredfold.  Non-parents (I've heard them do this) curse at the parents driving their children to school because they clog up the roads.  Some parents call others too pushy, whilst others are judged as neglectful.  Some do too much with their children and others do nowhere near enough. Some take too much interest in their children's education, always pestering the teacher with questions and suggestions whilst others are too laid back, taking no interest in their child's education at all and leaving everything including discipline to the school.  But the biggest thing, the issue of the moment, the thing that got me going in the first place and woke me from my blogging hibernation, the thing that has led to this stupidly long ramble that I'd be amazed anybody is still reading, the real thing, is diet.

'Only one in a hundred lunch boxes meet government nutritional standards' it was announced last week and this little report was latched onto by various arms of the media and for a day, it was the subject of debate on the radio, on television and online.  On at least three occasions during that day, I heard, saw or read the suggestion that a parent who makes their child an unhealthy lunch has no excuse for doing so and is, in short, neglectful.  In other words, (and a man on a Five Live phone in said exactly this) if you send your children to school with an unhealthy packed lunch then you are a bad parent.  That's it, case closed, judgement sealed.

Issues around parenthood seem to excite peoples' emotions and I guess it's only natural that they do.  As a parent, you have to be completely happy that the way you are bringing up your children is the right way and as a result, you have to have opinions about how other people bring up their children too, but the truth is, as with so much in life, nobody is absolutely right and nobody is absolutely wrong.  I don't have a problem with the fact that my children go to school with crisps in their lunchbox and that they have jam sandwiches every other day because I know they will eat what they are given and I know they will be full for the two hours and fifteen minutes between lunch time and home time.  I am also proud about what they eat at home but I'm not going to tell you what it is because I have no desire to start implying that my kids are better than your kids or that I have the perfect parenting blueprint and you don't.  My kids are healthy and active and they enrich my life and I hope that I enrich theirs.  That (and I really mean this) is all that I care about.

I love being a parent. The highlight of every day for the last nine years and three months has been the time I spend with them.  For me, being a parent works. It is, I feel, what I was meant to be but so often I am aware that others would pass opinion and judgement on what I do and this is such a sad way for society to be.  It is media fuelled but it is now a condition of us all.  I don't know, but I doubt if when Judith Kerr wrote The Tiger Who Came to Tea, parents were so bombarded with criticism as they are now.  Life isn't about judging others or about being judged yourself, life is about being happy with yourself and your own opinions and allowing others to be happy with theirs.

As Billy Connolly says: 'Never judge a man until you have walked a mile in his shoes.  After that who cares, because he's a mile away, and you've got his shoes!'

Know Your Onions

I used to work with someone who was very particular about how her coffee was made. I'm not talking about simple fussiness issues like the amount of sugar to add or what type of milk to use. Those things mattered, but it was much more than that. It did have to be one level teaspoon of sugar and the semi-skimmed milk had to be added before the water and not stirred into the coffee. The water had to still be boiling in the kettle when it was added and it had to be poured from a height so that the coffee frothed in the mug. It was impossible to get it right for her. I think in the two years we worked together, no more than half a dozen mugs of coffee that I made for her matched her standards. Although that is obviously because I gave up trying after a couple of months because nobody who is that fussy can be tolerated for long.

The thing is though, I reckon that if you asked ten people to make you a cup of instant coffee with one sugar and milk and if you got them to make it the way they would normally make it, the end result would be ten different cups. They'd all be pretty similar, but they wouldn't be the same. There would be differences in strength and milkiness, the level of sweetness and then there are the subtle differences like when the milk is added before or after the water.

Now we're not talking about anything complicated. This is instant coffee. Something so simple, most coffee drinking nations reject it as an insipid and fowl substitute for the complex tastes of the real thing. Making a cup of instant coffee should be foolproof. A teaspoonful of coffee, some milk and some hot water. I mean its hardly a complicated recipe but as I said, I'm pretty sure it'll taste differently depending on who makes it. So if that's true of instant coffee, how the hell are we supposed to produce consistant results when we're making something more intricate and involved like a casserole or a soup. Something with multiple steps and measures and timings.

Let's take as an example something relatively straight forward like onion gravy. Sausages and mash has become a staple on the menus of most gastropubs and hearty food bistros in the last few years and onion gravy is the standard accompaniment. Making it at home is easy and there aren't many ingredients but even if you confine yourself to some onions and some vegetable stock, the end result can be very varied depending on so many factors.

To start with, how do you chop your onions? Thin slices or thick chunks, rings, half rings or finely chopped little pieces? What do you fry them in? Do you use butter, olive oil or something that gives a higher heat like sunflower or ground nut oil? Then there's the big question, how long do you cook them for and how high a heat do you use?

My Dad (I'm sure he'll come up again in future posts) insists on adding sugar to pretty much everything he cooks. If you meet him, ask him about sugar in cooking and he'll tell you that chef's the world over don't know how to cook properly and that they all miss a trick by not adding sugar to their dishes and sugar, he says, enhances the flavour of the whole dish. The thing is though, one thing my Dad lacks when it comes to cooking, is patience. Patience in cooking is as important an attribute as any because sometimes, just sometimes, its important to wait, to let things in your pot work slowly. Its important to let the chemical processes that take place when things are heated, work, and this is never more true than when it comes to onions. If you slice an onion finely and cook it gently and slowly, the carbohydrates in the onion break down into sugars and the end result of your labour and patience can be the most complex sweet, bitter and piquant, sticky and soft conglomeration. However, if you get it wrong, if you don't chop the onions finely enough, if you cook them on too high a heat and if you don't take your time, you can end up with burnt crunchy onions with a balance of flavour that quite literally doesn't cut the mustard.

So what am I saying?  Well firstly, I'm saying there are so many points of variation when you're cooking something, its a wonder it ever turns out the same at all each time its made.  I'm also saying that its important to have at least a little understanding of what is going on when your cooking something.  Its important to know why something has to be cooked over a low heat or a high heat, why you fry in butter or in sunflower oil, why you chop thinly, finely or into large chunks.  Its also important not to be too fussy and to realise that often, there are no absolute rights and wrongs.  If you like the end result then that is really all that matters.  However, it is worth being self critical too.  It is always worth asking yourself what you could do differently to make it better next time.  How a recipe evolves is fascinating too I think, but that is for another time.

For now, here's how I make my onion gravy most of the time at least.

I use: two or three medium white onions, olive oil, a knob of butter, a pint of stock (beef if I have a choice but sometimes just vegetable,) Arrowroot, Tabasco and Worcestershire Sauce.

Start by slicing the onions.  I slice mine pretty thinly but in quarter circles so that you get long stringy bits of onion in the finished product.  Once all the onions are sliced, I pour a good slug of olive oil in a heavy bottomed saucepan and add a knob of butter too.  Put the pan on a gentlish heat and when the butter has melted into the oil, add the onions.  Now for the patience bit: You have to let the onions cook.  Turn the heat up just enough to let them sizzle a bit and stir them now and again.  Keep doing this until they start to brown a little at the edges and when this starts to happen, turn the heat down and leave them to cook for as long as you can.  The longer they cook, the better.  If you haven't got time then turn the heat up and just cook them more quickly but they may burn a bit and they wont be as nice.  So if you can let them cook slowly, then do. Stir the onions now and again (but not too much) and let them soften, sweeten and turn slowly dark golden and brown.  When they've gone as far as you can let them, if you like, add a glug or two of alcohol, maybe some white wine or something sweet like marsala but if there isn't any to hand, I don't think it matters that much.  If you do  though, turn the heat up and let it bubble off almost to nothing and then add the stock.  Just a little at first and then stir in the rest.  Bring the gravy up to a gentle simmer and then get ready to add the arrowroot.  Mix a teaspoon of the stuff in enough cold water to make it very runny and then pour it into the simmering gravy while you stir it.  Let the gravy carry on simmering for twenty minutes or so and just befrore you're ready to use it, add a dash or two of tabasco and a good couple of dashes of Worcestershire Sauce.  If you want to add some salt then soya sauce is useful because it darkens the gravy nicely.

All this sounds complicated but it really isn't and the end result is worth it.  Try it through the coming winter as often as possible and you never know, you might even get some consistant results after a while.  Get used to making it and the cool thing is, it probably wont taste like mine, it'll be your own onion gravy, made your way.