Anthony (father of 3): Hey girls how are youse, eh?

Girls: Good.

Anthony: Hello girly how are you? How was school?

Girls: Good.

Anthony: Good eh. I might get you to put your bag up eh and we’ll have some afternoon tea. What do you reckon?

Girls: Yeah.

Anthony: My name’s Anthony, my twin daughters is Alesha and Sarah-Lee and Azaria, my youngest daughter. After school because I know the kids have been, you know, their brains have been working hard and their physical side of being at school with their playtime and that. I just see it as important to, you know, re-energise them for their afternoon to get through their afternoon until bed time.

So, I’m going to cut up some cheese and youse is going to break up some cold meat and put it onto the crackers with the cheese, eh.

Girls: Yeah.

Anthony: Me and Debbie always make sure that we feed them, you know, healthy food, good food, stuff that’s going to put back what’s been lost throughout the day. Like, in relation to fruits, so all your fruits, the girls are really big eaters of fruit. So, they like crackers for instance, eating crackers, cold meats, cheeses; the dairy stuff. Azaria, do you want to do that one?

Azaria: I’ll do that one.

Anthony: You break those up into individual pieces please. And do you want to do your cheese?

Anthony: Alright leave that there.

Girl 1: Do we do the ham?

Anthony: Yeah, youse know how to do the cold meat don’t you?

Girl 1: Yeah you just break up the ham.

Anthony: You just break it up into pieces. That’s your sandwich is it?

Anthony: Youse are hungry eh? From a young age they’ve always known that they have to drink water, water comes before anything else, just to keep them hydrated, to  prevent headaches and things like that, so yeah water always is first.

Alright girls, well done, you ate a lot of food and you should be re-energised now and got all your energy back, so youse can go outside and have some playtime now eh and I’ll clean up this.

Girl 1: There you are, yeah.

Girls: [Laughter whilst playing]

Anthony: Hey girls.

Girls: Yeah.

Anthony: It’s time to come inside, now we’re going to get dinner ready eh.

Girls: Okay.

Anthony: Youse can give mum and dad a hand please.

Girls: Yep.

Anthony: Come in, what are you going to do first love?

Girl 2: Oh I’ll wash my hands.

Anthony: Good girl. Here shorty, you’re going to need this. Preparation for our meals is a time for our family to come together and talk about our day, talk about our evening ahead and talk about the food that we’re eating. So, it’s just a time to come together and communicate as a family on a very relaxed environment-in a very relaxed environment, yeah. Let’s put the skin on here.

Girl 1: See Mummy….

Debbie: Do you want to come with me and we’ll wash...

Anthony: You and daddy will cut the skin of it.

Debbie: … we’ll wash the lettuce.

Anthony: You know what to do shorty?

Azaria: I do.

Anthony: [to girl] Who knows what fish that is?

I like to give them vegetables and all sorts of vegetables. I usually use fresh vegetables from the market, but frozen vegetables are always going to be better than no vegetables. They’re just as good as fresh, so I always keep some of them in the freezer.

It’s a father and daughter thing that I do every weekend, I take them out on the Saturday and we go to the markets. The girls look at the fruit, they get to know the fruit and as for the vegetables, I always talk to them about why they’ve got to eat these vegetables and why it’s important to always have green vegetables in the meals that we have every day.

So, we see the importance of instilling all these things into our children so that they can be independent in the future. [to girls] See it’s white down the bottom. That means it’s cooked through that far.

Debbie: [to girls] Turn it all around.

Anthony: [to girls] So what we’ve got to do is wait until it’s white like that.

Debbie: [to girls] You’ve to get the cucumber from down the bottom and mix it through.

Girl 1: Yeah.

Anthony: [to girls] And then we’ll flip it over and cook the other half.

Girls: Yeah.

Anthony: Alright.

Azaria: Can I do it?

Girl 2: Let me do that?

Anthony: No, you let Azaria first and then you can have it.

Girl 1: Scrunch it right into that.

Anthony: Yeah, me and Debbie always like to lead by example. It’s hard to go and get the kids do something that you’re not doing, so. But, it benefits us as well, so we’ve grown up as very athletic people and we’ve always eaten well. So, we want to instil that into our children and give them the best opportunity in life too.

I think getting the girls involved in the preparing of the meal makes them appreciate it and makes them be, you know, a part of it and that’s our number one rule in our family is that we always come together and we talk. It’s important not only for the family unit, but for communication within society too.