Peacocking the packed lunch

Elijah and his one true love. Cheese.

Action stations everyone. Elijah needs a packed lunch for the next two weeks while the nursery chef is off.

Now, to some that may not seem like a big deal right? Chuck a sandwich and some Mini Chedders in and away you go.

No, no, no it is so much more than that in the age of the peacocking packed lunch.

It's all about healthy, break the budget organic teeny tiny portioned toddler snacks. It's about alternative quinoa crisps that taste like cardboard. What the hell was wrong with a Dairylea Lunchable I ask you?

It is though there is now a direct link between the quality of your kid's packed lunch to your parenting ability.

Jam sandwich today compared to Timmy's wholegrain rotisserie chicken and organic tomatoes? You shoddy parent. Is that a Penguin? A PENGUIN??? Irresponsible parenting. You mean to say you sent your child in with a whole piece of fruit? Not sliced into tiny completely uniform sticks? I am calling social services. You bloody monster.

You cannot just whack in a Wagon Wheel anymore as it is deemeed unhealthy by the powers that be (personally I blame cocking Jaime Oliver. Turkey Twizzler RIP). You cannot pack nuts in case someone has an allergy. (Um me #arks). Notes get sent home by the angry dinner staff mafia as a tiny packet of raisins aka toddler crack has a lot of sugar and is the sole cause of the childhood obsesity crisis didnt you know?

This may also be where the staff realise one of my secret shames that Elijah eats and has eaten the same thing for lunch for around a year. Cheese sandwich leaving 3/4 of the bread, crisps, his own weight in Babybells and whatever stolen chocolate item he has got from the treat draw. Hardly the suff of Ella's Kitchen.

So, what did I do? Went to Morrisons panic brought half the shop with anything that one, he would eat thus not raising suspicion and two would be accepted as a reasonably healthy packed lunch. The fear of judgement is at an all time high people.

I might also confess our lunch box game is poor. A hastily brought Poundland jobby that is likely to break under the weight of a fly.

Sorry son, I have failed you. You do not have a peacock of a packed lunch. More like a old manky chicken.

Jesus knows what fresh hell his school packed lunch will bring.

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