Julie Jay: My brown bin overfloweth with meticulously prepared dinners

Such is the ongoing battle in relation to family food that the only real winner in our home is the compost bin. Not to brag, but my brown bin overfloweth with carefully curated and meticulously prepared dinners — all rejected by my toddler’s discerning palate in favour of cheese and crackers.

Before having kids, I quietly judged my friends as, every night without fail, they succumbed to their children’s demands for individual dinners and carefully arranged foods on plates to avoid different foodstuffs touching. Of course, the joke is now on me, as I go to ridiculous lengths to get a bit of grub into my beloved little grifter, who requests specific edible items only to reject the specific edible items when presented to him minutes later.

Though every day I live in the hope my meals will be well received, I am more often than not bitterly disappointed. Like the small Caesar he is, he will simply wave a hand and dismiss both me and my Masterchef attempt at fish and chips.

“But I made the chips perfectly symmetrical, just as you like them,” I say.

Ted stares straight ahead with the apathy of a mafia mob boss, takes a sip from his cuppy and responds with a sparse: “No.”

If the rumours are true and certain social media websites are mining my data, my search history will be pretty monotonous. Every day is optimistically spent googling similar picklers: ‘Exciting ideas for toddler meals’, ‘How do I get my toddler to eat his dinner?’, ‘Dinner ideas for toddlers?’ and, as I become increasingly pressed: ‘Dinner ideas when you can’t be arsed cooking anymore.’

As any of my friends will attest, my research skills are pretty irrefutable, especially in our collective single days when all I needed was a first name and a star sign to unearth a Tinder date’s entire professional and personal history.

Given my record as a top-class investigator, it will surprise nobody to hear I have been digging only to find that Ted is in fact a great eater outside the home.

“He eats everything I put in front of him,” a friend noted after a welcome playdate for Ted (the friends who volunteer to take one of your children for the guts of two hours are friends I will protect at all costs).

Our beloved childminder also confirms that Ted has never turned his nose up at a dinner, and although the social side of things plays a part, I can’t help but feel a little miffed my culinary efforts are being so maligned.

I’m not putting myself forward as a great cook but I have seriously improved through the years. I learned a lesson or two when previous partners experienced dramatic weight loss due to my kitchen efforts.

Having never done home economics, it took me a few years to work out that a clove of garlic was not the whole thing, finally clocking the truth after I almost blew the head off some housemates in 2006, having added three bulbs to a spaghetti bolognese.

Nowadays I am a lot better at balancing flavours, and by balancing flavours, I mean opening shepherd’s pie sachets whilst averting my eyes from the worryingly long and very numeric-looking list of ingredients.

Sadly, my husband’s attempts at dinner do not fare any better with our resident tiny food critic, who looks positively aghast when presented with Daddy’s attempts. He tends to personalise these rejections much more so than me. I’ve become completely desensitised to watching as my chicken fajitas, beef bourguignon, roast pork, and fish bakes all get turfed in the bosca bruscar.

The true terror of feeding your toddler lies in the not knowing. I have no idea how any meal will go, and it is as exhilarating as it is emotionally draining.

Today, we are mad for meat and potatoes, but who knows what tomorrow will bring? For all I know, Tuesday’s carnivore could be Wednesday’s Happy Pear fan. As Ronan Keating sings, ‘Life is a rollercoaster’, especially when you are the private chef for a three-year-old client.