Esther McCarthy: Is the world ready for the Cork version of the trad wife movement?

There is nothing else for it. I shall make a batch of my own flapjacks.

I am throwing stuff at the lunch boxes, Groundhog Day style. 

Frozen ham roll, check. (Side note — this has been a game changer, make a load of sandwiches whenever you get the time and the notion, put them in individual bags and throw them in the freezer. Take out the night before to defrost if you are organised, or if you’re like me, only remember in the morning when you’re flinging everything else at the counter and hoping they end up in the right box. Heaven forbid the middle fella gets a green apple, or there’s tuna anywhere near the youngest. Even SAY the word mayonnaise, and he’ll get the gawks. Anyway, even if you do only remember that morning, it will be defrosted and fresh by second lunch. Did one child chip a tooth on a frozen roll that one time? That’s not for me to say, your honour. I contend it could have been a number of things.)

Back to the list. Peanut butter wrap for middle child, check. Some kind of yoghurt drink. Apple, mandarin, cucumber, grapes, for fear a teacher will look into the bag, and I must pass muster, and she will not report the kids to Tusla for their scurvy files. Will I sadly unpack these well-travelled fruits in a few hours? Perhaps, but without hope, what are we? 

And finally, a flapjack full of oaty goodness. I’ve got this down, finally, after almost a decade of making school lunches.

But then I got Sophie Morrised. Dammit! Look at the ingredients in that innocent-looking flapjack! Is that, gasp, rapeseed oil? And the reviled palm fat? I bite my fist as I read partially inverted sugar syrup. Sure, I might as well pour straight arsenic down their necks.

There is nothing else for it. I shall make a batch of my own flapjacks. I shall wrap them in reusable beeswax paper, and ponder whether the world is ready for the Cork version of the trad wife movement and how much time it will take for me to take my rightful place as the face and flapjack representative of serene internalised misogyny. 

#Momfluencer #Blessed #FeckIForgotToPickThemUpFromSchoolAgain

Enjoy this exclusive, first look, step-by-step guide to my Flapjack Surprise.

1. Realise have no natural baking talent so message mum who foolishly fed my children flapjacks, instigating a ‘why can’t you make nice things like Johnny’s mam’ whinge fest. Ruthlessly plan to steal recipe for inevitable cookbook deal to come. Decide to add in a few sunflower seeds or something to avoid copyright issues.

2. Eat remaining shop-bought flapjacks to kill time until she replies.

3. Read through instructions with growing sense of dread. Eight different types of nuts? What is parchment paper, will the reusable beeswax paper I’ve just ordered online do? A whole pound of butter?! Coronary care much? Is condensed milk still a thing? Is Johnny’s mum living in the 1980s? Maybe she’s trying to get the jump on me for the trad wife gig. Enough porridge oats so “it’s moist but not wet” - WHAT DOES THAT MEAN? Ooh, this bit looks fun, smash nuts with rolling pin.

4. Go online to buy rolling pin.

5. Drive to supermarket to get the eight different types of nuts.

6. Come home with enough nuts to feed a gibbon troop.

5. Turn on Thermomix to whizz nuts instead as rolling pin will not arrive on time.

6. Thermomix in shock as has been on off mode since this time two years ago when first shelled out €1500 in desperate attempt to imagine self as domestic goddess.

7. Realise forgot to buy condensed milk, so just use whole milk instead.

8. Attempt to melt butter and milk.

9. Add porridge oats to disgusting liquid slosh.

10, Add my own hot, fat, salty tears trying to trying to figure the moist-not-wet conundrum.

11. Thermomix gets overexcited at finally having something to do and blitzes expensive nuts into weird paste.

12. Realise forgot to buy parchment paper and hope tin foil will do instead.

13. Am today years old when find out you cannot effectively melt chocolate in microwave.

14. Bung on lumpy chocolate as wrestle with low self-esteem.

15. Put in oven for 20 minutes at 180ºC.

16. Fight urge to scream into abyss as dawns on me nuts not allowed in youngest school anyway due to allergy policy.

17. Remove from oven and feel mildly better as this slop won’t be going in anyone’s lunchbox.

18. Make cup of tea and regret not keeping at least one of the shop-bought flapjacks with their 51grams of carbs per 100g as I watch birds enjoy homemade flapjack fallout that I flung petulantly out the back garden.

19. Have a word with the Thermomix not to breathe a word of this to the family. Don’t know for sure, but suspect it is sentient and will one day rise up from sheer boredom and kill us all.

20. Google ‘Is talking to kitchen gadgets a symptom of perimenopause?’

I blame everything else on the shagging thing, why not this insanity? No surprise there.