Wednesday 18 December 2013

Bathos... from the sublime to the ridiculous

I found an empty 500 gm plastic container of Nutella, empty, in Caleb's room. It's such a fraught thing - wanting him to grow up feeling he isn't deprived of toxic lollies and fat laden snack food. And for some reason Cocoa Pops and Nutella are the two items that typify the crap food slant of an indulgent nation and which I would never put in a shopping trolley.


So, what do I do? Bail him up and bawl him out? Done that, or at least a milder version. It doesn't work. The stubborn jaw, the steely eye and that alarming moment I realise he's gained more from me genetically than the shape and size of his nose.

So I've decided to compromise. I made 'Nutella'. I read somewhere that you combine ground nuts, icing sugar and cocoa powder. I added a dash of sunflower oil and whizzed it up in the blender. It's like crunchy peanut butter, but sweet and chocolatey.

But is that going to be enough for Caleb?... the taste tests reveals...
'Yum. OK, yeah, I'll eat it.'




6 comments:

Patty@inStitches said...

We raised five children entirely without television. They understood why - that we didn't like filling their minds with useless stuff and bad news 24/7. And they seldom complained, except once in a while when they saw something 'cool' on tv at the grandparents. But - without fail the first major purchase they each made when they left home was a television - yep! Sort of now I get to do what I want and you can't stop me!
Do they watch it - four out of five almost never - one is pretty addicted to it. Do they let their children watch it - some with caution - the one - anything and everything. just saying.

Anonymous said...

I used to make this for my kids and they loved the stuff. I hate nutella but could eat rather embarassing amounts of the homemade variety. Tastes even better when made with rapadura instead of icing sugar though. Nutella with a caramelly base. :D

Linda Cockburn said...

I have never heard of Rapadura RabidLittleHippy. What's it made from?

Gavin said...

You could do what the swedes do and have one day of the week for lollies, Saturday. The children I met were very excited for their one day of candy or godis in Swedish.

Anne@ArtyGreen in Paradise said...

Hi Linda - I've just finished your book "Living the Good Life", which I really enjoyed. The world needs more people doing what you do. I'm going to make some Nutella replacement for my partner's 13 year old daughter who has come to live with us and is doing her best to cope with our greener lifestyle. Cheers

scottish lass said...

I used to help out at our local schools breakfast club for kids who came to school with no food. As the area where the kids had their breakfast was part of the after school care and nut free they couldn't have peanut paste and nutella. So I checked with web site and found a recipe I used to make them and they all loved it. All it had was 250g butter softened into 500g of icing sugar and 250g chocolate either powder or whole melted. It made 2 of the cream cheese jars.