The email from the holiday club had one sentence in capitals, and it was NO NUTS. It came on Tuesday evening with the pack list, the pick-up times and a gentle reminder that lunches are not kept in a fridge.
I know why it's in capitals. On day two last summer I packed Alfie a chocolate hazelnut spread sandwich without thinking, and the staff swapped it for a plain cheese one from their own supplies. I got a kind email about it, which I read standing up in the kitchen, going pink. This year the club is Monday 27 to Thursday 30 July, four days, both kids, and I've written the lunches out like a military operation.
Why those four days
I'm at work on Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, and Rob has picked up a Wednesday cover shift for a colleague who is on leave. Rob's rota day off is the Friday, and between his leave, my days off and Linda and Steve's days, the rest of the holiday is covered. The club is £34 a day per child. Four days for two is £272, and we pay £217.60 of that through Tax-Free Childcare, with the government adding the other £54.40.
It runs in a school sports hall from 8:30 to 3:30. Lunches go in a crate in the corner until twelve, so everything gets an ice pack and I treat it all as room temperature by noon. Easter last year taught me that a lunch gets eaten at eleven unless there is something else in the bag to eat at eleven, so each child also gets a separate snack bag with a banana or a cheese portion in it.
Reading every label
The sheet says no nuts or anything containing nuts. That rules out peanut butter and chocolate spread, obviously, but also the cereal bars Isla likes (every one says "may contain"), the packet oat biscuits and the cheap pesto, whose jar lists cashews. I read labels along the whole aisle at Lidl on Friday, and the shop took forty minutes instead of twenty-five. The easy answer was to make things instead of buying them, so tomorrow's Sunday sort-out includes a tin of flapjack, which is oats, butter and syrup and nothing else, cut into sixteen squares.
The plan
Monday is ham and cheese wraps, cucumber sticks, grapes and a flapjack square. Tuesday is pasta salad with sweetcorn and tuna, a cheese portion and a banana. Wednesday is egg mayonnaise rolls (Alfie's is mashed so smooth that it's basically a spread, because he can detect a lump from across a room), carrots and grapes. Thursday is cheese and cucumber rolls, carrot sticks and the last of the flapjack. Isla gets the same as Alfie plus a second piece of fruit, because she is ten and eats like it.
What I can't plan for is what happens in the sports hall. Alfie trades. Last year he came home having swapped his flapjack for a single, rather grubby fruit pastille, and he considered it a good deal. I've decided not to ask this time. I'll just count the empty boxes.
The list and what it cost
Everything I bought for the four days, from Friday's receipt, prices as printed:
- Wraps, 8-pack: 95p
- Sliced ham, 2 packs: £2.30
- Cheese portions, 12: £1.49
- Pasta twists, 500g: 79p
- Sweetcorn and tuna, a tin of each: £1.44
- Eggs, 6: £1.45
- Bakery rolls, 8: £1.15
- Cucumber, 2: 85p
- Carrots, 1kg: 69p
- Grapes, 500g: £1.79
- Bananas, 5: 89p
- Butter for the flapjack: £1.81
Some of it won't be used up (there will be wraps left over for Saturday), but I'm counting what went in the trolley, not what went in the boxes, because that's what the spreadsheet does.
The sums: £15.60 for eight lunches, which is £1.95 each with the snacks in. Isla's school-day average this year is £1.39 and Alfie's Friday lunch is about £1.10, so club days cost more, partly because they come with a second bag and partly because a day of running round a sports hall needs fuel. Against the £217.60 we're paying the club, the food is about 7p in every pound.
