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Five different meals that are basically tomatoes and cheese, which is all your kids will eat

FEEDING your kids five tomato-based dishes definitely counts as their five a day. At least you hope it does, or they’re getting rickets. Follow this guide:

Cheese on toast, cheese sandwich or cheese toastie

Your children are adamant that these are all radically different meals, and who are you to crush their imaginative spirit? Fend off any lurking worries about nutrition with two cherry tomatoes on the side, which they won’t eat.

Pizza

Nostalgic for playdates? Recreate the experience by serving a cheap pizza and carefully placing cucumber and carrot sticks in the middle of the table for the kids to ignore. Then leave them to it, pour yourself a big glass of cheap wine and WhatsApp your most gossipy friend for added authenticity.

Jamie Oliver pasta sauce, with parmesan on top

You felt it best to adapt the recipe to remove the aubergine, mushrooms and onions, but otherwise you are feeding your kids a super-healthy Jamie Oliver pasta sauce! Ignore it when your partner says, ‘Isn’t that just heated-up chopped tomatoes?’

Baked beans on toast

If you look at the ingredients list you can prove that this is a wonderfully nourishing meal because the sauce is absolutely not just tomatoes again, it’s also – oh. Sugar. Let’s ignore the ingredients list, and put a mound of grated cheese on top.

Tomatoes and cheese on a plate with crackers

The classic choice for dinner when you can’t be arsed to heat anything up. Make the most of the time you’ve saved by retreating to the sofa, but bulk-order some kids’ vitamins to be on the safe side.

Step out on the Mash's bracing winter walk – directions below

THERE’S literally nothing else to do, so why not head out on the Daily Mash’s invigorating winter walk? Begins and ends at your house. Follow directions below. 

Turn left. Keep going until the third set of traffic lights, then take the next right uphill on a track between two houses. Keep low and watch out for owls.

At the summit go straight across, missing the middle summit, to the next summit. On clear days you can see Jodrell Bank to the east, the Angel of the North to the south and the Oxo Tower north-north-west. Pass through a wicket gate.

Descend through a bluebell wood past a burnt-out pub and recently used gallows. Take the left fork alongside a barbed-wire fence. It will be snowing here, but do not remark on it.

The path becomes indistinct through a ploughed field. Head for the third cow from the left, cross the stile and continue through the forest. Do not stray from the path or you may be claimed by Baba Yaga.

Leave the wood via a five-bar gate – closing it behind you – and walk south through a glittering modern city of gleaming skyscrapers and unsettlingly deserted plazas. Look for a gap between a Sainsbury’s Local and a Pret.

After three-quarters of a mile, turn right through a disused steelworks, descend down six flights of stairs into its dark interior, and exit into a meadow. Follow the stream past the Corryvreckan whirlpool.

Emerge from a wicket gate opposite your own front door. Time for a hot drink!

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