THE 14-year-old was just about to go to bed the other night when he remembered something.

“We’ve got Food Tech tomorrow, I need these ingredients for the morning,” said Roscoe, thrusting a scrap of paper into my hand.

In my day, we used to call it Cookery, but now there seems to be a much more serious, academic approach.

I found it very difficult to keep a straight face during a parents’ evening discussion with the Food Tech teacher about a project one of my other sons was working on a few years ago, involving a scientific analysis of a lemon meringue pie.

But then I met someone recently with a degree in Food Marketing who went on to train as a development chef specialising in this sort of food analysis for a large chain of sandwich bars and now runs his own successful company producing 10,000 top quality pies which he sells to restaurants, pubs and delis all over the country.

So what do I know?

I wonder, though, if this top quality pie maker used to present his mother with a scrawled list of ingredients the night before his Food Tech class, when her cupboards were bare and all the shops were closed?

All my boys have done this. I sometimes wonder if it’s their idea of a little joke. Perhaps the Food Tech teacher, still seething at my lack of composure as he was attempting to discuss the chemical composition and structure of a lemon meringue pie with me, is in on it.

It’s like being set a particularly stressful store cupboard challenge.

When actress Gwyneth Paltrow, who refuses to buy processed food and cooks family meals fresh, from scratch, reaches this stage with her children, I bet she’ll have every ingredient you can imagine, from coconut milk to ripe mango and Chinese five spice powder, readily to hand.

I remember those perfect, but slightly irritating, mums at the mother and baby classes I used to go to, who would bring along mashed avocado to feed their six-month old, while their toddler dined on olives and mozzarella with ciabatta. Mine munched cheese sandwiches.

I bet they’re all getting A*s in their Food Tech store cupboard challenges now.

“Why can’t you ever ask for something simple, like fish fingers or a tin of baked beans?” I asked Roscoe as I pulled a chicken breast out of the freezer.

He also needed courgettes for his oriental stir fry. I gave him carrots instead: “Just cut them into really thin strips, your teacher might not notice,” I suggested.

I didn’t have garlic, but I did find one, shrivelled up chilli pepper. “I don’t like chilli, so I’ll leave that out,” he said. Probably for the best, I think it was more than a year old.

The next ingredient on the list was pak choi, or Chinese cabbage. I didn’t even have English cabbage, or lettuce, or anything that looked green and leafy. I gave him a bunch of spring onions as a substitute: “Make sure you use the green bits. They could almost be cabbage leaves chopped up really small.”

And then, under a pile of potatoes and onions, I found a lump of ginger root, the last ingredient on his list. I waved it triumphantly under his nose: “Look, we have ginger.”

Roscoe was not impressed: “But I don’t like ginger. The teacher said we could adapt the recipe to suit, so I’m not going to put ginger in it.”

I was incredulous: “But this is like a small miracle,” I said, holding it out to him. “Look, ginger,” I pointed, transfixed.

“It’s aromatic, pungent and spicy, it will add so much flavour and zest to your stir fry. And just think how impressed your teacher is going to be when he sees you have ginger.”

Roscoe wasn’t interested: “Don’t like ginger,” he kept saying.

I attempted to put it in his bag: “You don’t need to use it. Just show it to your teacher then.”

He wouldn’t have it. I followed him down the drive as he went for the bus, waving the rare and highly prized ingredient in the air. “But we have ginger,” I shouted after him, “We have ginger.” He ignored me.

And so, he got on the bus, with his chicken and carrots and spring onions. But no ginger...

I HATE tattoos and make all kinds to threats to my boys should they ever consider having one. Charlie, 19, loves to wind me up: “But what if I got ‘I love my mum’ on my arm, would that not be okay?’ I like Barack and Michelle Obama’s approach.They have threatened to copy their daughters’ inkings on their own skins and go on YouTube flaunting it as a “family tattoo” should their girls ever succumb.