No more pasta!

My son Mr T has been having a love hate thing with cheese pasta for the past few weeks. He is doing some catering at college as part of his course into independent living and getting on well with it all but we hit a road block which ended in a emergency stop this week.

The first week he attempted making cheese sauce he said that he had turned his butter into caramel while attempting a roux sauce. Nothing wrong with caramel with my pasta I thought, could be a new thing here. I love pasta and I love caramel, what you worrying about Mr T? Well he wasn't happy after that lesson, had to clean the pans - tough day that was.

Attempt two seem to go well and he came out of college with a lovely tub of cheese pasta, hurrah I thought. Why in the bad mood though Mr T, you've done it? Well he got in the car with said tub of pasta, a sandwich, crisps and a drink. Now just to explain he has lunch at college on a Monday, Tuesday and Friday and this was a Wednesday. Well they had given him a lunch by mistake at college and it sent him into a flutter. He would not speak to me or Mum and Dad from the Brew who were in the car too as we were all going out for lunch. It wasn't until we hid it all away that he could carry on with his day. 

'Those silly people have given me a lunch and I don't have a lunch today from there' he said. He could just not cope at all with that but was fine when we took it away and hid it all. He then had lunch with us and everything was fine.

But then he had to make cheese pasta again and was so wound up about it he didn't tell me he needed the ingredients to take in to college until 10pm the previous evening. I struck up a deal with the tutor and he came home with another tub of pasta, all fine. 

Get this though, he had to do it again the next week!! Now I had a parents evening to go to so this gave me a chance to find out why we were having to overdose on cheese pasta. Apparently he just needs to be assessed on the boiling part. Mr T had said he was bored with cheese pasta and wanted to cook something more exciting (cannot blame him, even I was bored with cheese pasta). We suggested he made a pasta salad, take away the cheese sauce and highlight the fact that when he has done this it's chocolate cake next week!! Woo hoo.

So I waited in anticipation to see what would become of Wednesday's practical.....would we get pasta again?..............(I so want to put 'to be continued' here)...................but.......................NO we didn't get any pasta and I don't think Mr T will want to cook pasta for a long time yet. He flatly refused, got in a mood and had to do something else. 

I kind of admire his autism sometimes because he will just say no but I do feel for him as he tends to bottle all his feelings up and then explode. He isn't the greatest communicator unless it's a conversation about the facts about Disney, Thomas and Friends or Star Wars so we don't get far on general conversations. I do encourage him to tell me about his days at college and sometimes I get a little of what he has been doing but sometimes he'll say  'oh I don't know' when I ask and there is no pushing it any further.

I don't like to see him anxious so the pasta saga will have to be put on hold for now and return to it with lightsaber in hand ready to tackle an army of stormtroopers. I can't wait for that.. In fact Mr T would make mountains of pasta in that scenario. It's tough being autistic sometimes as processing the information required by other people and understanding why we have to keep cooking cheese pasta is difficult for some. For some people it's a case of understating that there is further assessment needed in a educational setting but for him especially, he has cooked it once why would he need to do it again? I have explained believe me but no, he's done with the old pasta. 

I'll keep you posted on this one but thank you for reading, I will be back tomorrow with Pass the Remote but for now..........

You take care and don't mention the pasta!