Food

Like many parents I regularly experience the frustration of my son’s refusal to eat particular foods. Frustrating because his list of dislikes is mostly things he previously would eat. Toast was briefly rejected. Toast! Ketchup is no longer a friend of his chips.

“I don’t eat olives anymore”
“I don’t like grapes or hummus”
“I’ve gone off bananas”
“Rice. No. I’ve changed my mind”.

Baked beans loved, then firmly lost and have recently made a re-entry into our lives and are (currently) enjoyed with gusto. So there is always hope. Although he has never liked strawberries!

I was a picky eater as a child and barely ate a vegetable until my early 20′s. I feel slightly hypocritical extolling the virtues of broccoli to my four-year old. My child hood memories of food were of battles at school over uneaten dinners. Being circled by menacing dinner ladies and forced to swallow inedible stew. At home we ate ‘meat and two veg’ meals. I particularly remember Sunday tea; homemade scotch eggs and sandwiches followed fairy cakes and pastries made by my mother. I have very sweet tooth. A stand out memory from my child hood was our biscuit tin. We had a pale blue biscuit tin, it was tall and had a print of white romanesque figures on each of it’s six sides and golden knob on the top. I have clear memory as a very small child of seeing the biscuit tin on the kitchen worktop and of climbing onto a stool to get to it. Stretching out to reach the tin and losing my balance. Falling backwards onto the doorstep of the open kitchen door. I ‘cracked’ my head and had to have stitches. Despite this I loved the biscuit tin and the childish thrill of what goodies it might contain. Sponge fingers, fig biscuits or Garibaldi’s. The biscuits of my childhood. Now I am a parent, I have been for sometime in pursuit of the perfect biscuit tin. I love biscuits and cakes, I enjoy the ritual of taking the time to stop and enjoy. Time out from the day. It’s a pleasure I enjoy sharing with my son. Juice for him, tea for me and biscuits for us both.

I had been eyeing various rather cool Emma Bridgewater biscuit tins. Then I found myself in a hardware shop with my son. One of those old fashion hardware stores that has been in the same spot for decades and sells everything. I found a nice collection of storage and tins. Noo chose this one.

I wouldn’t say it was my first choice in the style stakes but he likes it and it is certainly a better place for the various packets of biscuits that until then lived in the cupboard with unromantic practical plastic clips around the top to keep their freshness. Biscuits got a new home and snack time got a new focus. Biscuits have to be selected from the tin. Immediately, Noo decided the tin was “magic”. Tellingly “It can do what ever it wants”. I suspects this means ‘it’ can eat and endless amount of biscuits.

What’s in the biscuit tin today? Currently plain digestive (Noo’s choice) and milk chocolate digestive (mine).

What’s your biscuit of choice? Where do you keep them? Is there such as thing as too many biscuits?

This post is for The Gallery at Tara’s blog. Pop over to Sticky Fingers and enjoy the other entries.