Every day I serve my child up a plethora of healthy options for her meals. Every day she eats about a quarter of those items, and then demands milk. So lately my husband and I have realized that we are eating a good amount of toddler meals. Grown adults eating like a toddler on the regular.
You know what I mean by toddler meal: the leftover remnants that you can’t bring yourself to throw out since it’s unlikely your child will let you eat your own dinner, so you gobble it down like an Olympic food-eating competitor.
Some days I’ll go a whole day and realize all I’ve eaten is the end of her snack cup of cheerios that she force fed me, a half of a half a pear (that’s a quarter y’all), a cup of coffee or tea that I’ve reheated 4 times, and a protein cookie.
Balanced diet? I think not.
As my husband returns from work, I myself seem like the toddler in the situation asking (while he walks in the door),
Did you bring me anything good to eat?! I am starving!
Because the reality is that every moment that I have not been chasing her around and saying “Don’t sit on the dog!” has not been spent making myself something to eat. Mama just doesn’t have time for that anymore. My husband claims my most endearing and annoying quality is my complete inability to feed myself while also simultaneously feeding her balanced meals and snacks all day. And so, my regular meals in a typical day are usually toddler meals, eaten in haste, likely while doing another task.
We now joke that there could even be a niche market for eating like a toddler in the hipster adult restaurant world.
I know it’s a hard sell, but I do think there is a market for it. After all, if people are willing to eat in the dark, the nude, or only drink out of baby bottles who knows what we could convince them to do!
Here’s what would happen at my restaurant that serves toddler meals to adults:
You sit down and order a meal, just a normal lovely meal of steak and a ceasar salad and a glass of wine. Like a real bonafide grown-up would.
But then your waiter comes out with a plastic plate filled with a half-eaten and soggy peanut butter and jelly sandwich, some warm grapes, and a glass of water they quickly knock over. The server then yells at you that they are in fact very hungry or thirsty. You have 5 minutes to shove whatever you’ve been served into your mouth while trying to calm the server down before they throw themselves to the floor. Because in my restaurant, the meals aren’t the only thing that are childish…so is the wait staff.
Ah toddler meals, so relaxing!
What do you think? If you were a single unmarried type would you want to experience eating like a toddler? Or rather, eating like the mom of a toddler? Bonus question: what kind of decor and music should my toddler meals restaurant have??
