Shark takes charge

Vegetable parcels land with a whumph! on the dinner table, steaming from the oven.

This is Shark's recipe. She wanted lots of chopped vegetables mixed with cumin and coriander wrapped up in a pastry blanket. She made the pastry, did the chopping and frying, composed the blankets, and I did the in-and-out the oven bits.

After all, we are safety conscious here you know. Fortunately, we do not have to comply with the health and safety requirements imposed in British schools, places of work, worship, garden centres or the grassy patch down the road on bonfire night. In schools this probably translates as class 4G in a chemistry lesson watching a video of an experiment with a Bunsen burner, just in case. They probably look at videos of ovens too.

Well not here. We can issue Shark with a vegetable knife and hacksaw any day of the week. Only yesterday Tiger was wielding a penknife and corkscrew. And this, I believe, is a great advantage to home education. We can use real tools, real ovens, real chemicals, and teach real things. And the only person to have so far scorched the kitchen table with real fire is Dig.

From me the vegetable parcels got 75/100 for taste and 85/100 for presentation. I am a mean marker. And now I need to carefully plan the following week's supper menus sufficiently badly where I can both feed Shark and piss her off enough so that she says Mummy, I have had enough. I am cooking again tomorrow night.