Just Roll With It

School children fight over my packed lunches. They queue for a possible glimpse of what I may have created on the day. It's distracting for my poor children who just want to eat their healthy, delicious lunch.

Not so much.

In truth, it's taken us years to come up with a lunch that doesn't come home and hide itself for a rather unpleasant discovery weeks later. Peanut butter and jam is NOT a delicacy in this country and Gogurts are enough to elicit lunch-time harrassment.
My kids just want to fit in and I want them to eat, so I have done my best to make lunches that don't scream "AMERICAN AT THE TABLE!".

The walking skeleton we call A1 has recently insisted that all sandwiches be made on rolls, not sliced bread, because "That's what everyone else brings". It's cheap, less waste, so I caved.

On Sunday, I realized that we had no bread, no rolls for Monday's lunch.

I'm adamant we don't shop on Sunday, which is ironic considering what all we do on the day (but that's my choice that affects me, not some poor employee that's required to work on the day because business is hopping).
This creates a problem in a country that strictly oversees what preservatives goes into foods-- no bread that lasts three weeks over here. You may get three days, if you move it often and keep your house below 62 degrees.
That means I shop on Saturday for Monday's lunch.  But, other people schedule birthday parties, football matches and then there's lie-ins (haha) on Saturday, so sometimes I can't drag myself forget to shop.

Everyone got a hot dinner on Monday. 
That little oversight cost me £8.40 ($13.20)!!

Later in the evening, the little ones and I sat on the side of a football pitch, in the cold and in the wind for an hour and a half of training.  An hour and a half in the cold is just long enough to make me forget I needed to stop off to buy bread on the way home.


Because of that mistake, today I got up with the roosters and BAKED crusty rolls from scratch (or really close to it- prepackaged rolls from the freezer are scratch, right?).
I pulled the hot, delicious little treasures from the oven and let them cool to just the right temperature. Stacked with thin-sliced roast beef and wrapped loosely to preserve the crustiness of the roll, I knew I had redeemed my error. 

What a Mom! What a yummy treat!


It was after school, as I was distributing chores, Skeleton Boy announces:

"I didn't really eat my roll. I sold it".






I'm going to sell him, that's what I'm going to do...