Daddy vs Chips II

Up until last week, I had never cooked anything proper for the twins. I had cooked them simple things, mushed vegetables, pasta with sauce, but I had never cooked a full meal for them. Now a stay-at-home dad, I had no excuse. Being a man with hunter-gatherer delusions, I was keen to put something on the table.

Ma-ma and I decided long ago that we wanted the twins to have as wide a palate as possible. So I dug into our Ella’s Kitchen bible to find an ambitious dish for my discerning clientele to masticate. I settled on a salmon pasta in a cream sauce.

Salmon is something neither ma-ma or da-da-da eat. But wait,  I thought, does not every father want what is better for his offspring. Must my children forego the joys of seafood because I had a meat-and-two-veg culinary education? I was determined they damn well would not.
As the twins slept, I toiled like I was doing a technical on Bake Off. Roughly an hour later I had produced a dish I was very proud of. I tasted it, decimated it, bagged it and froze all but one portion. I eagerly awaited the next day, when the hungry twins would feel the force of da-da-da’s gastronomic triumph.

Dinner time finally arrived. Da-da-da buckled the twins into their seats and strapped on the bibs.  The pasta smelt gorgeous. The twins salivated. And then two simultaneous conversations began.

The first went like this:

Da-da-da: Have some pasta baby boy.

Cillian: (mouth full of pasta) mmmmm…

Da-da-da: Well done baby boy. Have some more.

Cillian: (mouth full of pasta) mmmmm…

Da-da-da: Oh wow! You are such a star. Here you are…

Cillian: MMMMMMMMMMM!

The second was quite different:

Da-da-da: Have some pasta lovely lady.

Saoirse: Ugh. (spits)

Da-da-da: Oh go on, its nice.

Saoirse: Ugh. (spits)

Da-da-da: Please baby, you’ve not even tried it.

(Saoirse waves hands dramatically and shakes head).

Da-da-da: Come on baby (inexplicably hums the theme from the Dambusters and pretends the spoon is a plane).

Saoirse: Ugh. (spits)

(Da-da-da looks away, then quickly turns and tries to sneak the pasta into Saoirse’s mouth. Saoirse waves hands dramatically, throwing spoon and pasta to floor)

I had successfully cooked a dish that one twin would eat and the other would not. For any parent of twins, this is the horror of horrors. I would now face a lifetime of having to arrange different meals, go to different take outs and generally not enjoying mealtimes ever again. If one face summed up the whole experience, it was this:

Best of all, I had six more frozen pots of this crap staring at me every time I opened the freezer.

And so to the result:

Chips win! And chips is what I should have made.

Please note, my failure is in no way the fault of @EllasKitchenUK and wholly the result of my hubris and poor cooking skills.