Two kitchens, two sets of small children

Wren paired them because both request notes mentioned the same specific problem: making a meal you are not going to eat much of, for people who need to eat all of it, without any of that becoming a conversation your children remember.

That problem is the whole correspondence. What they landed on, and what Wren later folded into talking about food in front of children, is that the useful move is not to explain anything. It is to keep the kitchen boring. The adult eats what the adult eats, nobody narrates it, nobody is praised or apologised for, and the children get a meal.

Toby's harder stretch was a fortnight when he could not face cooking at all and the household lived on things from packets, and he was ashamed of it until Poppy told him about her own version. Neither of them will hear the word "should" about a Tuesday teatime.