Apparently I am lazy.

Today my 6 year old son said to me: "Mommy, you're getting quite lazy you know."

(I should just explain here that they call me mommy because I'm South African and we are mommies, not mummies, even though I say mummy to people here in case they think I'm strange).

Given that I have been getting up at 6am, doing the usual laundry, tidying, lunchbox packing, breakfast making, cross training, crazy mother trying to get kids out to school-ing, working like a mad women on multiple new business pitches and two client launches, racing to do pick ups, more work-interspersed-with-cbbc-and-breaking-up-fights, making dinner, charging off to karate classes, bed/bath and more work till midnight most nights, I didn't really feel like I'd been lazy.

So I politely asked why he felt this way.

"You've been lazy with the groceries mommy."

Oh right.

True. Tonight they did have to eat an instant lasagne from the freezer (thanks husband for stocking those). And as there was nothing instantly weight watcher friendly in the freezer, fridge or cupboard, I was forced to enter into a WWII ready steady cook event. (Note how World War and Weight Watchers have the same initals. Hmmmm. Interesting.)

I was rather proud of the soup I made out of 3 limp carrots, 2 sticks of celery, an onion, some sprouting sweet potatoes, a tin of lentils and a hefty (a little too hefty in hindsight) sprinkling of curry powder.

I did point out that the avocado man (Ocado for those of you who don't speak child) was coming tomorrow but that yes, perhaps I had left it a little late in getting some food in, particularly as tomorrow's packed lunch for son2 looks likely to involve pasta salad sans salad. i.e. plain boiled pasta, cold. Or a frankfurter and a celery stick. Or as son2 pointed out, he could have cheese and crackers. Because we still have both of those. Just. Scraping the mould off shouldn't take long.

So yes, maybe I have been a little lazy on the groceries front, but we somehow seem to manage to eat our way through an exhorbitant amount of food, particularly as husband is away abroad (eating steak and drinking great South African wine not that I'm in any way envious) and I'm still on my starvation kick and the kids ignore most of the stuff I put on their plates anyway. Where does all the food go?? Surely it was only seconds ago since I bid farewell to the last avocado man (Bob, in the Cabbage van, nice to meet you).

I seem to spend vast sums of money on food that lasts minutes. Besides the expense of it all, it's rather time consuming all this shopping, even with the wonders of instantly filled online shopping baskets.

So yes son, I have been lazy. And you know what, I don't actually care. Tomorrow, if Petr in the Strawberry van doesn't get here in some cruel twist of fate, you'll be having dinner comprising meringue nests (a left over from election night dinner's Eton Mess), topped with frozen peas and corn (possibly defrosted if I can be arsed) and a side serving of frozen frankfurters. Because that's what we have. Suck it up.

An ode to pink wafer biscuits

Following a bacon and egg on squishy whitebread sandwich for breakfast, something forgettable for lunch and an extra large portion of lasagne and garlic bread for dinner, I decided that the diet was so obliterated that a small ice cream would cause no further harm.

I got the scoop out and handed my children triple chocolate ice-cream (deep chocolate ice cream with chocolate sauce and chocolate flakes on top) squished into a cone, before making one for me.
Nothing beats ice cream in a cone. Ice cream on its own is wonderful to be sure. But in a cone, it becomes something almost godlike.

I must clarify here. While those waffle cones are all very well, what you really want are the cheap wafer cones that come in tin foil tubes, neatly stacked into one another. They are made of no known natural substance, but there is something about their artificial crunchiness that just whisks me back to childhood. When we grew up the cones came in different colours, resulting in maximum arguments about who was having which colour. I am so pleased the cones I buy come in one colour only: yellowy beige.

Crunching around the top of my cone this evening in a haze of quiet contentment, I was reminded of my love for all wafer biscuits or cone type things. Where I grew up, you'd buy tins of assorted biscuits and in amongst the ginger nuts, foiled wrapped chocolate biccies or jammy dodgers, there were always little miniature chocolate and strawberry wafer biscuits. The kind with the fake icing inside. They were always the first to go, certainly if I was left anywhere near the tin.

When I was pregnant (both times) I had only one craving. Pink wafer biscuits. Not your Waitrose top of the range Italian wafer biscuits. No. The lurid pink triple layer wafers filled with fluorescent pink cream by the well-known brand 'Happy Shopper'. I could only buy them from our village shop. I've never seen them anywhere else since. I do believe 'Happy Shopper' is a brand of nastiness that supplies far flung village shops. These wafers cost 49p a pack. I know. I bought one pack a day. You get approximately 20 to 30 wafer biscuits in a pack. I could eat them all in a single sitting. By the end of it, I'd be shrouded in a pink wafer biscuit cloud, with particles floating lazily in the air, the floor around where I'd be sitting looking the base of tree in spring.

I loved those pink wafer biscuits. I mean, really loved them. There must be something addictive about the E-numbers that make lurid pink. Whatever it is, nibbling on my cone this evening made me realise how long it's been since I'd had them, or indeed, even seen them. So I did a little searching. And found that Ocado stocks these. They're not Happy Shopper, but they look suitably plastic to satisfy me. I feel an online shop coming up....