“IT’S TOO HOT to cook,” I declared to my two young children last week as the whole country sweltered in the record-breaking temperatures, “so, I’m just going to make a salad for dinner.”

And with those words, I was immediately transported back to my own childhood days of the 80s and 90s when my mum would say the same phrase and dish up the now infamous and much-loved ‘Mammy Salad.’

For the uninitiated, this salad was a staple in households up and down the country when the mercury rose high enough. While it varied slightly from kitchen to kitchen, it generally had the same basic ingredients.

One constant was that you had to have butterhead lettuce, none of that iceberg stuff and certainly none of your fancy rocket, spinach or micro leaves. There was also always ham, sometimes of the boiled variety, thickly sliced, but often it was plastic packet ham, rolled up into cylinders to make it look that bit fancier.

There was always a bit of potato salad, because what Irish dinner in the 80s was complete without some sort of potato making an appearance on the plate? There were slices of tomatoes and cucumber too, as well as thick slices of cheddar, and the placement of these was important to keep up the fancy pretence, but when it came to scallions, those tended to be plonked on whole for some unknown reason.

A few balls of beetroot, either pickled or boiled, as well as a dollop of coleslaw and the essential plop of salad cream (never mayo or anything as exotic as Caesar dressing), made up the last little flourishes. Plus, you’d get maybe soft rolls or some fresh brown bread on the side with lots of butter.

It was usually an absolute belter of a dinner, with not a notions-y bit of sun-dried tomato pasta salad, hummus or feta couscous in sight.

‘No thanks, mum’

But what would my Generation Alpha kids make of such a retro meal? Shock and disgust, as it turns out.

Their first reaction was that this was some kind of joke. A salad for dinner – has she finally lost it? You see, it wouldn’t be the first time I’d made what they believed to be wild, untrue statements about dinner. What parent hasn’t threatened to never make dinner again when overstimulated and on their last nerve?

Of course, I never followed through on it, and I can assure you that I have made dinner every night (give or take) of their six- and nine-year-old lives. The point is, I’ve got form on this front, so naturally enough, when I declared I was making a salad for dinner, they assumed it was another empty threat.

So, when I presented them with my take on the ‘Mammy Salad,’ their faces were priceless. I have to admit, I caved a little and threw a couple of things on the plate I knew they would definitely eat, like pesto pasta salad and sweetcorn.

Plus, I buttered enough rolls to feed a football team, just in case they didn’t get enough from the salad. Imagining your kids feeling hungry genuinely does something to a parent’s brain.

‘We’re really having salad for dinner, Mum?’ ‘Lettuce? But I hate lettuce.’ ‘What’s that? Is that… beetroot? I hate beetroot.’ The outrage from my six-year-old was real.

To give them their due, they got over the shock and gave it a try, but to be honest, they stuck to the pasta and saw the ham, cheese and cucumber as nothing but a deconstructed sandwich, begging to be shoved into the rolls on the side. So, pretty much bread and pasta for dinner, yay for the carbs.

Dying of thirst

The whole thing got me thinking about how today’s crop of super-sophisticated, tech-savvy kids probably wouldn’t survive an 80s summer. For one thing, they’d dehydrate on day one, because this generation of children is obsessed with water and their water bottles.

They cannot leave the house without water on their person. I’ve made this fatal error in the past, and pretty much, the moment we arrive at our destination, which could be just 15 minutes down the road, they will declare they are “so thirsty, they think they might die.”

I’d like to see them try to survive a day in the 80s, where you got sent to school with a box of apple juice or a Capri Sun, and that was your liquid for the day. Hot from PE? Sweaty from playing football in the yard? Tough, there was maybe a bacteria-infested water fountain you could queue for and might get one tiny sip before you were told to hurry up, but there were no water bottles.

The idea of having one sitting on the desk for you to casually sip from while you did your maths problems was ludicrous.

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And what about boredom? As the summer holidays kick in properly this week, like most parents, I’m preparing to hear the words, ‘I’m bored,’ at least two or three times a day, while I and to juggle work or open my laptop to check emails.

The dopamine generation

This generation of kids expects to be entertained or be provided with activities and ideas around the clock, but in the 80s, during the summer, boredom was a regular occurrence.

Granted, things were different, and many households had a stay-at-home parent, but that didn’t mean they were organising loads of activities or crafts for you to do or planning exciting outings every day. Instead, you tended to just row in with whatever was going on and make-up games.

Summer camps existed, and I did go to some, but they were rare and not the expected norm and expensive reality they are for most working families today. Your days were less structured. We certainly said we were bored, but it wasn’t the end-of-the-world dilemma it seems to be now.

While we might have watched our fair share of telly during the summer holidays, and get plonked in front of something like Watership Down or Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and be traumatised for life, or some random daytime soap that was probably wildly inappropriate for little eyes, we couldn’t binge on our favourite shows for hours on end.

We didn’t get lost in Minecraft for a whole day or scroll endless rubbish on kids’ YouTube.

The less techie world of the 80s is simply unconscionable to my children, who feel like the buffering symbol or worse, no Wi-Fi, is an affront to their personal freedoms.

I’m not sure they’d survive long in an 80s summer, to be honest, and while my ‘mammy salad’ was a bit hit-and-miss, maybe giving my kids more of an 80s or 90s-inspired summer experience, with less structure and a more go-with-the-flow attitude, might be just what they (and me) need.

Niamh O’Reilly is a freelance writer and journalist.