GUEST BLOG
By Tabitha Ronson First it was impossibly creative lunches. Mums with way too much time on their hands creating elaborate lunchbox artworks.
Sandwiches shaped like cartoon characters, animals, iconic buildings; salad and vegetables carved to resemble fauna and flora; food patched and pieced together to resemble colourful miniature works of art.
According to the mums behind these culinary Monets, Van Goghs and Sánchez Cotáns the creations are a way of encouraging their children to eat.
There may be some truth in that but my experience of this trend, is that it's more about the mummy showboating, scoring sneer points against her fellow school-gaters, than about the nutritional welfare of the child.
Master A still goes to a school where they provide a hearty lunchtime meal. He regularly returns home questioning why his home-prepared food (oven ready) doesn't ever taste as good.
However, since the rise of this florid food fad, take up for cooked meals has plummeted, with mums battling it out through cucumber crafted crocodiles and pastrami and Gouda cheese shaped Angry Birds to be crowned Supreme School Lunch Box Queen.
I normally try my best to keep up with the Jemimas but this time I will not be dicing a Leaning Tower of Pisa carrot.
Not content with hijacking lunch boxes, these oh-so fiendishly fabulous Domestic Goddesses have now started on breakfasts.
Pinterest pages are springing up every day taunting the mere mortals with breakfast masterpieces.
Eggs - poached, hard-boiled and scrambled - alongside sausages and grilled tomatoes to recreate a scene from SpongeBob SquarePants. A Vermeer reproduced with some blueberries, a pancake and a dollop of Greek yoghurt.
"Mummy, can you make me a breakfast that looks like something?" Master A asked me the other morning.
I served up two banana skins. "It's a pair of slippers," said I.
Working Mum, pondering on the merit of arty breakfasts. Seriously, why would you?
