With my daughter off to uni food is about to change in this household. Normally we have an odd arrangement of eating - although all 3 of my children are on the autistic spectrum only my two boys have the associated sensory problems with food. For those of you lucky enough not to be associated with this disability Autism is not Rain Man. It is where the brain is wired differently to the "norm" and this can include the communication centres (which is why those with autism struggle to fit in socially) but also the sensory centres which from a family day-to-day life point of view is far more restricting. Someone with autism can be over or under sensitive to smell, colours, sounds, tastes, textures, and also their own body movements in space; and it is different for each and every person with autism. Think for a moment what family mealtimes are like when one or more of your children won't eat mixed textures of food, won't eat meat because of the texture, won't eat wet foods - or dry foods because they are scratchy, won't eat dairy foods, won't eat crunchy foods, won't eat coloured food and everything has to be beige, won't eat fish because of the smell, or curry because of the spice and the list goes on. The normal reaction of teachers/health visitors/grandparents (especially grandparents) etc is that this is just being fussy, it's not - it is literally part of their disability. Persist and you will actually have a child gagging on the food you give them (not good when your grandparents have taken you out for a meal without mum and dad in public!). It's like sitting someone who doesn't like fingernails down a blackboard down in a room full of blackboards and making the noise non-stop, you can't help but react violently against it. What does this mean practically? For each mealtime I do three different meals; one for me, my husband and my daughter; one for my eldest son and one for my youngest son. Little or no overlap. Everyday.
However with my daughter going off to uni it means that the main bit of cooking I will do is now just for OH and I - I am no longer bound by my daughters likes and dislikes and this gives me the opportunity to shake up what we eat on a daily basis. OH probably will rebel but hey I think the best part of 18 years of basically the same 7 main meals week in and week out (because I can guarantee my daughter will eat them) is enough for anyone. The Love Food Hate Waste site was one which I was prowling through in the bid to use up some veggies before they need to go into the compost. DD has been doing the shopping during the pandemic and has yet to master following a shopping list - memorable incidents include buying 6 one kilo bags of carrots one week after they had been sold out the week before, when we had no room in the freezer either. The site is great for ideas to use up leftovers, just type in an ingredient or ingredients you need to use up and they suggest recipes. Anyway, I came across the meal plans link which have been produced in conjunction with Lidl to be found here.
So what are they - four weeks of meal plans including recipes and shopping lists. No cheating as these are a full seven days, three meals a day, for a standard family. It even gives you tips and reminders of what to put into the freezer (or take out of the freezer) when. They are for meat eaters only though and heavy on the bread products so if you are gluten intolerant then it may be too expensive to substitute gluten free alternatives in nearly every meal. The only thing they do not include are drinks - studies show that these take about 8% of the average family food budget; but anyway I digress. Looking through they are not bad ideas and not too far off what the "average" person in the UK would normally eat so with a little tweaking I plan to give most of it a go for OH and I. Off the top of my head butterbeans will not go down well ☺. Although of course I am not so silly as to think if you half the people it will halve the cost - for this part of the food budget anyway. It will be interesting to compare our pre-uni spend with the normal one once my DD has gone as well as it will be four of us instead of five- two teenage boys constantly on the prowl for food may make up the difference though! The search goes on, as always, for other resources so check back.
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