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One highly domesticated Betoota Heights father-of-four has garnered praise in the community for his bold attempts at ‘fusion food’ – as he prepares school lunches for the family.
However, it appears that this middle aged conveyancing lawyer is showing a far more concentration and consideration than is really required for the extremely bland meals he’s preparing.
As the first-born son of Lebanese refugees, Robbie Hassan remembers all too well the amount of flak he received for having hummus and pita bread in his lunchbox. And that was the least exotic meal his mother could come up with.
The raw kibbeh and baba ghanouj was enough to make his unworldly skippy classmates faint in the late 1980s.
While very proud of his cultural heritage, Robbie is refusing to let these uncultured convict descendants have the same fun at the expense of his kids. That’s why he is sending them to school with the most uninteresting meals that God has ever put on this earth.
“I’ve researched this” says Robbie, as he throws a tea towel over his shoulder and examines the three
“Apparently you just buy this ‘peanut butter’ stuff….”
“And spread it on two bits of bread”
“With real butter”
“So, effectively I’m sending my kids to school with two slices of bread, with two types of butter”
“They can wash it down with a cardboard box of fruit juice. But it can’t be a normal fruit juice. It has to be blackcurrant juice. Made from a black concentrated cordial”
But the unbridled rush of fructose doesn’t end there, Robbie is also not opposed to feeding his children some real local produce.
“It’s probably still a bit too ethnic. But I don’t have a problem with including one piece of actual fruit in the lunchbox. An orange or an apple. But then I also include a pre-packaged plastic container filled with chunks of preserved fruit, soaking in high-sugar syrup.”
“I know it sounds like child abuse but trust me, this is what they do”
When asked how he plans to counter the inevitable sugar highs that come with such heavily processed foods, causing extreme hyperactivity in this classroom – Robbie says that isn’t really his problem.
“I’m gonna let the teachers deal with that one” he says.
“I draw the line at medicating my children with Ritalin and prescription amphetamines”
“I’m not that committed to assimilation”
