AIBU to give the au pair sandwiches for lunch?!?!

[munchee]

So, we've recently embarked on having an au pair for the first time. She is French. We are single person household with just me and my young son (aged 3).

For lunch, my son generally eats sandwiches-cheese/tuna/ham etc or perhaps beans or eggs on toast. The AP eats with him and therefore has the same sort of food. The AP has complained that she feels ill from eating bread for lunch everyday and that she would like to eat a cooked lunch with meat etc (more like what we would usually have for dinner)

AIBU to say no? I am of the opinion that "when in Rome, do as the Romans do" and (unless I am completely ignorant of the norm) I thought most families tended to have bread etc for lunch.

Thoughts please?

It depends on what the Au Pair means by meat. I lived in France (as an au pair) for a considerable length of time, and found that almost all families and friends I met spent a lot more money on food than British people tend to, and ate a lot more meat and fish than we do. So, for example, a standard lunch would be pork chops, chicken breasts, fish fillets etc with veg and some kind of carbohydrate. All very delicious, but really expensive if it's every day.

OP, I would offer an alternative if I were you - most au pairs are allowed to cook for themselves if they dislike the food on offer - but make it clear what the budget is for things you wouldn't buy for yourself, as if you buy her what most French people would eat for lunch you'll be spending an absolute fortune.

Can't she just make herself some pasta. Just boil some pasta and add a pasta sauce jar.

Reminds me of when our french ap went in the Dukkan diet. So ridiculous.

Now I make sure they say they eat 'anything' - I don't have time for a nother fussy eater.

Only and a few others - if the French AP was here and not in a home environment she'd have to:-

a) find a canteen/cafe that served a hot meal at lunchtime
b) find a Pret/EAT etc... for sarnies

so if she were in another environment (student) her life may have to adjust.

here though the OP is being nasty and her whole tone is as though she's hired help and what's more French and has probably hired her to maybe help her DS with French or whatever... I'd love for the AP to teach her DS some French swear words! evil

There's a slight misunderstanding here-we don't have sandwiches EVERY DAY but we do have things on a theme of bread quite often but also omelette, salad, soup etc as people have mentioned (and helpfully reinforced my impression of what is a "usual" British lunch)

Meanwhile, on the day in question I was working from home, having clients visit with only 45 minutes for lunch between clients. I didn't think it was unreasonable on that day to prepare sandwiches in advance as it would have been a bit rushed to prepare, eat and wash up in that time

There's a slight misunderstanding here-we don't have sandwiches EVERY DAY but we do have things on a theme of bread quite often but also omelette, salad, soup etc as people have mentioned (and helpfully reinforced my impression of what is a "usual" British lunch)

Meanwhile, on the day in question I was working from home, having clients visit with only 45 minutes for lunch between clients. I didn't think it was unreasonable on that day to prepare sandwiches in advance as it would have been a bit rushed to prepare, eat and wash up in that time

There's a slight misunderstanding here-we don't have sandwiches EVERY DAY but we do have things on a theme of bread quite often but also omelette, salad, soup etc as people have mentioned (and helpfully reinforced my impression of what is a "usual" British lunch)

Meanwhile, on the day in question I was working from home, having clients visit with only 45 minutes for lunch between clients. I didn't think it was unreasonable on that day to prepare sandwiches in advance as it would have been a bit rushed to prepare, eat and wash up in that time

isn't the AP doing any food preparation Munchee?

Give her an M&S ready meal and some salad and fruit in future - easier than sandwiches and closer to her habits.

my au pair often has a plate of last night's supper for her lunch - can you do that? She warms up curry or pasta or salmon or whatever the family ate. I also make sure we have salad and some ready cooked chicken. Most of the food we cook is vegetarian.

(mine did ask for steak , and I do buy her a packet of this most weeks, but wouldn't be able to oblige if she wanted meat every day, as we just can't afford to eat meat every day).

YANBU.

It sounds like she is expecting a fill roast dinner for lunch. Having spent years living in mainland Europe myself, a hot lunch is very typical there.

When I au paired, I ate what the family ate even though it was vey different from what I was used to.

But if bread makes her feel I'll, then yes, YWBU not to offer an alternative such as soup or eggs as others have pointed out.

jump so allergies and intolerances are 'fussy'?

Wait, if she's the au pair, what does your work commitments have to do with it? Surely the point is that she looks after your child while you are working? Do you cook/make lunch for everyone? Because maybe she should be doing that - then the problem is solved.

I thought this too. I understood that the point of an au pair is that they do all the child care stuff while you work. Why doesn't she make lunch?

Only on MN have I ever encountered this bizarre attitude towards sandwiches. The vast majority of people I know have a sandwich for lunch Monday-Friday.

Maybe you just know a selection of people who all have similar life experience to you. I don't know anyone who eats a sandwich every day, but then many of my friends are self employed and work from home, so aren't limited to food that they can take with them to work.

You aren't alone. Most people I know eat sandwiches every day too.

And if sandwiches are so odd and unusual, as mumsnet seems to believe, why do M&S, Pret and all the independent sandwich shops sell sandwiches?

I think we need to clarify what a sandwich is here to most people! FYI two pieces of buttered bread with some ham or cheese in the middle? NOT a sandwich. If the OP is serving pret or M&S style sandwich's then that's a proper sandwich.

Well they are saandwich shops :) wine shops sell wine, doesnt make it healthy.
however I agree. Bread is not the devil. And wraps are notangels - just bread in a different shape surely? Yet thethey're often suggested as a healthier alternative to bread. To me thats like saying 100g of easter egg is healthier than 100g of dairy milk in bar form.

Just because there are all these sandwiches available Pipbin, it's not necessarily what people want to eat, it's just what is there when people are hungry.

I can stand in front of the M&S sandwich counter and not want any of it, but sometimes have to buy it because I only have a very short amount of time for lunch and its either that, fucking McDonalds or nothing. My worst nightmare foodwise is fridge cold food - it actually gives me stomach ache, as well as tasting of nothing.

When I am at home or the office, I will warm up leftovers, or have soup etc, but when I am travelling for work, I sometimes take my own lunch, but cannot all the time, especially in the summer, so I will try and get a salad or something that is not sandwiches, but sometimes that is not practical if I don't have time to sit down and eat it.

I will seek out hot food where possible, Toby Carvery is a good way to get a hot lunch quick, but there aren't that many of them around.

I think everyone's being a little unfair. Sure, if she doesn't lije sandwiches and wants a simple hot meal for lunch, fine, that's one thing. She can make it herself.

But if she's expecting a busy single mum to drop everything and cook her two meals a day then I would be telling her where to get off too.

She is a guest in our house, here on a "cultural exchange" and I believe that part of that is eating as we normally do, not having a special diet!

Good god, I hope you're taking the piss. You are not obliged to make her a cooked meal but who the hell forces someone to eat bread when they don't want to? If she was vegetarian would you make her eat ham for example? A salad/omelette/wrap take the same amount of time to make.

But onilkly, people here seem to be shocked that anyone has ever eaten a sandwich and why would anyone do that. If no one was eating sandwiches then no one would be selling them.

And I'm not saying that they are healthy or it's what any one person wants to eat, but so many people seem to be saying that no one in their circle eats sandwiches. Well someone must do. I don't eat McDonalds, but plenty of people do.

Don't know if this has already been mentioned, but they use a different type of flour in French bread, so much so that my DH who has to follow a gluten free diet, or he feels dreadful, can actually each genuine baguettes made with flour processed using French methods.
She's not being unreasonable, you are, imho. I don't think she's making it up, either. It's very feasible that English bread will play havoc with her digestive system.

We had a Brazilian stay with us once, and she could not get her head round how much bread the English eat in their diet - she was astounded! She wouldn't touch the stuff as it made her feel bloated and ill.

I suggest making a big batch of wholesome soup which she can eat for a couple of days, or a tuna/ham/cheese salad.

Of course most people eat sandwiches for lunch, but probably not every day. Even when I took a packed lunch to work it wasn't always sandwiches.

OP - why aren't you letting this woman make her own lunch? If you are busy I don't understand why you are making her lunch for her in advance, she's presumably not a child?

I have staff at home, some live in and some live out, and feeding them properly is a priority. I always try to make sure that one day a week they get meals from their homeland and its no mean feat considering there are 4 nationalities. They eat what we eat, nothing is off limits to them, otherwise it would be like operating some kind of food apartheid in my kitchen and just plain wrong. We dont pander to fussy eaters, including me and mine, but neither would meal times be a misery to people. If they genuinely dont like, or just can't eat what has been made, they can cater for themselves from whats available. Food is life and to be miserable about food - nah, I wouldn't like it done to me or mine so wouldn't do it to anyone else.

I couldn't manage without my lot in my life given the circumstances of their employment. They're worth their weight in gold and welcome to a nice meal anytime they want.

Am intrigued. What DO you call 2 buttered pieces of bread with ham or cheese in if not a sandwich? And what about marmite sandwiches, honey sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches. Have we been misled?