Number 29 - In Which You Say Potato, I Say Carbohydrate.

Give me a spoon.

I flipping love mashed potatoes. Something inside me is trigged by the clocks going back: I need stodge, I need carbohydrates, I need to hibernate. This time of year demands stews, steamed sponge puddings and piles and piles of mashed spuds.

So imagine my horror when Daughter announced today with a "meh," that she "doesn't like mash potatoes anymore. They are too creamy."

I'll give you a second to let that sink in.

TOO CREAMY? Clearly my child is ill. I needed to sit down.

I tried the Atkins diet about ten years ago and craved potatoes so badly, I once nicked a french fry off a lad in Burger King who was walking past me carrying a tray piled high with them. My hand snaked out, I grabbed one, and I stuffed it in my gob. He didn't see. I didn't care if he did or not.

So, for me carbs and cold weather go hand in hand. A doctor told me that the body craves food that it needs. Clearly my body needs carbohydrates. Who am I to argue?

So my dilemma tonight is what on earth to cook with our Monday Roast? (We have our Sunday dinner on a Monday, just to be really contrary.) It's roast beef tonight with roast potatoes, garlic green beans and the last of our carrots from the garden. Normally I'd do mash alongside, with a hint of garlic, topped with cheese. But Daughter and her "meh" ing is making me worried. I don't think it's about the potato per se, I get the sneaking feeling it's about Thigh Gap. It's the first day back to school today, she had PE third period and she's had a week of being idle. I caught her posing in her mirror last night and poking at her thighs and tummy. If she were overweight, then fair enough, but she isn't. She's a size 10 and is about 5 foot 5. 

So, Thigh Gap is the current thing with the kids online; ripping anyone apart, celebrity or not, about whether their thighs touch at the top. Apparently you are hideously fat and disgusting if your thighs do. And apparently it's not OK for me to log on to her Facebook account and tell all these girls what utter fucking morons they are for subscribing to this fatuous notion.

I worry about Daughter every day. I worry about what lies she is exposed to, by fashion magazines and media who should know better but don't care that they make teenaged girls feel that anorexia is cool. I worry about the pressure she is under at school to perform well in her GCSEs. I worry about pressure from her peers and celebrities to be much more sexualised than she should be. (I'm looking at you Miley Cyrus. Put some fucking clothes on and stop whoring about on a builder's yard.) And I worry that I, as her mother, want to act on her behalf; to wrap her up in cotton wool and prevent the world from ruining my little girl. But I know I can't, as she has to live in it too. So instead, I shall make dinner, make pudding and if she's worried about Thigh Gap, I'll go for a long walk with her at the weekend where we can burn some calories whilst we walk and talk.