Sitting in the Gold Coast
hinterland, waiting for the weekend to pass so I can get back to the course, I
was reading the paper – food bits first of course. The Weekend Australian
printed a column by Necia Wilden that I think sums up how I feel about my
darling boy (and any future siblings).
Below,
customised for MacK, with all respect to both the Australian and Necia WIlden.
Dear MacKenzie, you are almost 18 months old – so it seems like a
good time for Mummy and Daddy to talk about our hopes for your future.
Your food future,
that is. Which is not to say that other things aren’t important – on the
contrary – just that, well, your mother and I are food people.
And judging by your
appetite so far for prawns, pheasant, grass fed rib-eye, duck, asparagus and
brique d’affinois – anything, in fact, that costs more than $30 a kilo – you’re
already showing signs of turning out to be a chip (Sebago, double fried) off
the collective old blocks. So here goes. A short list for you, going forward…
We hope you will
find cooking a dance, not a drudgery. That you will be strong, capable and
curious in the kitchen, and that your cupcakes will be better than Nigella’s.
And if you are ever offered a telly chef’s gig, take it! You won’t miss cooking
nearly as much as you think you will. And you get to live your old man’s dream!
We hope you’ll love
restaurants – good restaurants – as much as we do. Of course the food matters,
but its not the only thing, despite what some might try to tell you. The best
restaurants can mend a broken day in the first ten minutes, before you’ve eaten
a thing.
A handy cooking
tip: Cream rises to the top. So does scum. It’s the same in life.
If you want to
learn a foreign language, we hope it will be the international dialect of Wine.
For your Grandfather, it’s a tossup between that and golf. Let’s stick with
wine. Whereas most languages usually require years of study before you get to
the fun bit, Wine tends to work the other way around. Confused? You won’t be
after your first few, tentative sips. And the rewards – well, apart from the obvious pleasures, you’ll learn to drink outside
the box.
We hope you’ll come
to understand, as the Chinese do, that your food can also be your medicine.
Some good examples of medicinal foods are legumes, bitter greens, coffee,
single-malt scotch and chocolate. Dosage is everything, dear boy.
We hope you will
make the effort – thereby joining a pitifully small minority – to educate
yourself about genetically modified foods. About who owns them, the arguments for
and against, and why your Dad calls GM edible asbestos.
And if you ever
decide to come out – “Mum, Dad, I’m a vegetarian” – please try to break it to us gently.
When you are old,
we want all your good food memories to be undimmed in their power and
intensity. Less like a stroll down prissy memory lane, more like a high speed
car chase hurtling you back to the past. To the sweetness of prawns, pheasant,
grass fed rib-eye, duck, asparagus and brique d’affinois, and your parents
pretending to be horrified by your extravagant tastes.
