London - One afternoon, while I’m putting away the clean washing, I open my teenage daughter’s underwear drawer to find two fresh bread rolls. They are neatly placed among her socks in a paper bag from our local bread shop.
These are not your average cheapo supermarket rolls, they are what I think Bake Off’s Paul Hollywood would refer to as ciabatta rolls.
This confuses me. It’s not come up in the parenting books and none of the other moms have warned me about ‘the bread roll phase’. Also, I am confused because if I tried to introduce exotic breads into the household, they would be rejected and I would be mocked. I learned my lesson with an avocado.
So why is my 13-year-old spending her pocket money on Italian titbits and hiding her purchases?
Later on I manage to prise her headphones off long enough to discuss “roll gate”. I remain calm for this chat because putting the words “teenage girl” and “food” in the same sentence triggers alarm bells.
I tiptoe round the subject, fearful of setting off an emotional eating landmine. Mr Candy has told me not to over-react. Mind you, he would say that if I had found a dolphin in her underwear drawer.
She has two reasons for her secret food stash. One makes sense and the other makes me cross. First, she tells me it’s because of the number of people in the house.
We are a family of two adults and four children but there are always at least six children at ours due to the constant flow of friends, relatives and neighbours’ kids.
Sometimes, I look up at breakfast and we appear to be hosting a school trip. The more children you have, the more people leave their kids with you, especially those with only one child - those parents drop and run, relishing their child-free weekends and evenings out. I may start to charge babysitting fees.
And obviously, the more kids you have, the more food they consume, and they don’t care whose food it is. The fridge door is always open, the crisp drawer emptied within minutes.
My eldest daughter tells me she tried writing her name on food she wanted to eat later, but it was ignored. So she decided that she had to either eat it immediately or hide it among her socks. So we agree a more suitable secret storage place (with my chocolate hobnob supply) and tackle reason number two: She doesn’t always like the family dinners I cook so she nibbles them and scoffs her fancy roll later on.
This is frustrating because, like many parents, I pander to the various taste differences between my children by often cooking four different meals. Being a working mom makes you an “over-pleaser” - I feel guilty about time away, so I give in on food requests.
And I won’t make family meals a battleground, I don’t believe in the depressing and frankly cruel “eat or starve” dictum: my only rule is that we eat together as often as we can, at a table not in front of the TV.
I have tried in vain to broaden the palates of the Candy children, now aged four to 13, but I suspect children are genetically programmed to a default setting of pasta, peas, chips and any sauce with mince in it. My “try one new thing a week” idea fell at the first hurdle: spinach.
In New York, the Picky Eating Project has just been launched. Over six weeks, a chef and a paediatric dietitian will be working to change the eating habits of a seven and ten-year-old alongside their parents. According to the New York Times, the youngest child ate mussels by the end of week one.
The key, according to the project, is not to urge them to have “just one bite”, but to just keep quiet, feed them new things only when they are starving, ban grazing on snacks, put the “good” food at the front of the fridge with treats at the back, eat together, try one new breakfast a week and don’t buy anything with more than 210mg of salt in it.
And yes, cook only one meal for all the family. Also - a new one for me - find those kids who are more adventurous in their eating habits and have them round for tea; your kids will copy (which is what happened with the mussels).
So this weekend we’re re-arranging the fridge before going on an exhausting walk and inviting the neighbour’s little boy round because I once saw him eat asparagus. If that fails, I know where there are two tasty bread rolls.
* Lorraine Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.
Daily Mail