Isla's menu was written in felt tip on the back of a Beavers letter, with a starter, a main and a pudding marked "(surprise)". It was pinned to the fridge on Saturday night under the meal plan, with a note saying the kitchen was closed to me from 3:30 on Sunday afternoon. I'm not a woman who gets many closed signs. I enjoyed it.
The menu
Mothering Sunday was 15 March, mild and grey with a thin drizzle, and the first daffodils were out on the grass in Beckett Park. We went to Linda and Steve's in Bramley for coffee in the morning, with daffodils, and I came home to a closed kitchen door and a lot of noise behind it. Isla had decided on three courses, because "that's what a proper restaurant does". She chose them from a children's cookbook out of the library, then adjusted them for Alfie, who has a hatred of sauces with bits in.
- Starter: garlic bread (Rob's job, since it involved the oven)
- Main: chicken pasta in a cheese sauce, with broccoli and Alfie's peas
- Pudding: banana split sundaes with squirty cream
The kitchen is a galley, a metre and a half wide, and it was not designed for three people, a colander and a stool. I sat in the lounge with a cup of tea and a book I didn't read, listening to it. There was a clatter, a long silence, Rob saying "Not like that, like this," Isla saying "I know, I'm doing it," and later a sound I can only describe as a pan of boiling water going the wrong way.
Who did what
Isla ran the whole thing, with the cookbook propped on the bread bin and a pencil behind her ear. She chopped the chicken, with Rob standing a hand's width away, and made the cheese sauce, which split. Rob rescued it with a whisk and a splash of milk, so quietly that she may not have noticed. He did a lot of that.
Alfie did the peas. He measured out the frozen peas into the pan, which is a job he takes extremely seriously, and then tipped the water into the colander with enormous concentration and also, in a way that nobody had planned, over the floor and one slipper. Mabel arrived to see what was going on and left at speed. The broccoli went in with the pasta. The garlic bread was slightly black on one side, and Rob ate that side.
Tea was meant to be at 5:30. It was on the table at 6:25, which I think is fine for a three-course meal made by a nine-year-old and a six-year-old. The chicken pasta was good. The sauce had a few lumps. Alfie said that was "bits", and ate it anyway, because he'd done the peas. Pudding was a banana, a scoop of ice cream and a pile of cream that had been applied with total commitment.
The cost and the washing-up
I did the receipt afterwards, because I can't not. Garlic bread £1.50, chicken £2.99, pasta 89p, cheddar £1.30, broccoli 69p, frozen peas £1.09, ice cream £1.69, bananas 90p and squirty cream 99p. That's £12.04 for the four of us (the milk, butter and flour for the sauce came from the cupboard and aren't on it). A normal home-cooked tea this year is £1.80 a portion, £7.20, so the three courses cost £4.84 more than an ordinary night. Rob bought a bunch of daffodils from the Co-op for £2, and the kids had made me a card each, which I'm not counting.
The washing-up took forty minutes and all four of us. Isla said it was the hardest part of the whole thing. I told her that it was the same for everyone who's ever cooked, and she looked at me with a new kind of respect that I hope lasts until at least Wednesday.
I turned 38 last Monday, and this was the better present. I don't need much from Mothering Sunday. I need somebody else to be in the kitchen and a pudding with too much cream, and this year I got both.
The sums: £12.04 for the meal, £2 for the daffodils, £14.04 in all. A sauce that split, a pea-water flood and the best tea of the spring.
