Kids Dish

In my old life, I would occasionally throw an Oscars party. It started one year when the Man of the House was away for work, and I invited a gang of girls around so I wouldn’t have to watch the Oscars by myself. I’m pretty sure that’s the same year I was writing a certain novel which had an Oscars-watching scene in it I needed some real life snark (we call it research) for, though I could be confabulating that.

I made stuffed mushrooms with avocado, bacon and cheese, which squirted high-voltage burning liquid at my victims in such delicious ways that they didn’t mind in the least.

In those days, I saw no problem with going to a lot of trouble and fiddly details for such an event.

Last night, we decided to go to a little trouble to have an Oscars party for Little Miss. We happened to be doing our fortnightly supermarket shop, so threw some snacks into the basket. I briefly entertained the possibility of baking a cake or biscuits, but was finding excuses for not doing so by the time we reached the car park.

The Man of the House made dinner - tuna steaks with mash and peas. Yummy! Though Little Miss wasn’t overly impressed with the tuna, preferring her fish white and in batter as she does. All the more for us!

The frocks started pouring out of the television, and I arranged our post-dinner snacks tray. This involved cutting a block of vintage cheese in half, taking the lid off a carton of corn relish, grabbing a handful of crackers and shaking some potato chips into a bowl.

Little Miss had juice, leftover from her day’s adventure, and we had glasses of sparkling water.

All very elegant and refined and a nice family moment.

Within half an hour, they’d both decamped to bed, and left me with the snacks.

It’s funny how, once you have kids, things that seemed fun and essential in your old life just don’t matter any more. Like making elaborate hor’s d’oeuvres to make an occasion feel special, when putting a party hat on your toddler and feeding her cheese and biscuits has much the same effect, only better.

Apart from anything else, there’s less washing up this way.