It’s fair to say that I’m not a domestic goddess. I burn dinner as often as I serve it successfully, and my lunchtime repertoire tends to extend as far as toast and, erm, more toast.
The world of PR has, to be fair, made some sterling efforts to get me cooking over recent months.
First up, Morphy Richards sent me a slow cooker, along with some cooking sauces from Schwartz. It was not a resounding success. The sauces were a bit too synthetic for my tastes and when you have a child who doesn’t “do” sauces, then cooking for one in a slow cooker is a bit of a challenge. I have to say, in my experience, cooked casseroles don’t come out of the freezer looking good.
I’ve received George Foreman grills (very useful for toasted sandwiches) and two air fryers, along with a very lovely selection of cheeses.
But I still can’t cook.
Mostly, I’ve come to terms with this lack of culinary ability.
But one area where I’m uniformly awful is breakfast.
We Whittle women love our beds, and my usual morning looks a bit like this:
8am: alarm goes off. Hit snooze.
8.00am: See above
8.10am: See above
8.20am: Alarm goes off. Daily call of, “Flea? Flea? Time to get dressed.” Doze off.
8.30am: Wake up to find small child, standing, Midwich Cuckoo style, 2 inches from the bed.
Haul ass out of bed. Put on jeans and jumper. Find boots.
8.35am: Stumble downstairs, pour cereal into cup, give to small child. Brush child’s hair at back door.
8.40am: Get into car.
8.50am: Arrive at school, usually 1 minute late.
9am: Stop at Caffe Nero to pick up large coffee.
9.10am: Home from school, look at email.
9.15: Have a super quick look at Twitter.
9.20: Check Facebook
9.30: Ooh, should probably check email again. Repeat last three steps 50 times.
11am: Realise I haven’t yet had breakfast. Just send a quick email first.
11.45am: Realise still haven’t had breakfast. Decide it’s probably better to just wait for lunch.
The net result of this is that, 90% of the time, I don’t eat breakfast. Which is rubbish, I know. It’s bad for my metabolism and energy levels – I’m permanently exhausted in the morning, partly because I go to bed far too late, but also because I’m not consuming much apart from caffeine before 1pm.
Anyway, once again the World of PR is shouting at me to pull my socks up with a ‘Breakfast Week Challenge’ which seems to involve a lot of cereal-based items. This weekend a hamper filled with breakfast products was delivered from the people at Farmhouse Breakfast, and I’ve committed to trying to have breakfast every day for a week.
Now, if I can just work out which one is the porridge and which one is the muesli, I’ll be all set.
[You can win £1,000 of holiday vouchers over on the Breakfast Challenge Facebook page, by taking your own week-long breakfast challenge]
