Eating Buffet Style
Our family visits different types of restaurants depending on the mood. When Ellie and I want to celebrate, we ditch the kids, err, hire a babysitter and head for a nice sit-down restaurant. When we want to actually enjoy a meal with the kids, we head for a fast-food restaurant and let a bunch of high school kids worry about cooking and cleaning without wasting a lot of money or time. When we have a coupon, we head to the supermarket’s cafeteria.
Last night, we had a coupon, so we traveled to the grocery store for Chinese food. Their cafeteria has other things like a salad bar and a grill, but the Chinese food is their best offering. Not that we could visit the grocery store down the street from us; for some reason that may or may not be related to the two Asian restaurants in the adjoining strip mall, the nearby grocery store doesn’t offer Chinese food. We were out for Vital Supplies anyway, so we visited the next-closest grocery store a few miles further down the road for their surprisingly good Chinese food. When I say “good” I’m referring to speed, price, and taste, not extraneous factors like atmosphere,* quality,** or nutrition.***
The big drawback to eating cheaply at the grocery store is they don’t offer kid-sized meals, especially when that kid is under the age of 2. That means I can either buy a regular meal and watch her not eat three-quarters of it, or pay slightly less to pick and choose a few things off the salad bar and watch her not eat three-quarters of it. I choose the salad bar; it’s theoretically healthier for her, plus it adds a little variety to my meal as I finish what she wastes.
Making a plate for her at the salad bar is like eating at a buffet in that I could choose from a variety of foods, including one side of the table filled with traditional salad fixin’s, and another side filled with the kind of salad that doesn’t actually contain any lettuce. The big difference is I have to pay for everything by the pound instead of the flat all-she-can-eat rate. This made the peas a better choice than the denser carrots. Going around the table, I also grabbed meatballs for protein, macaroni salad thinking I could fool her into thinking it was macaroni and cheese, various fruits, and some Oreo fluff**** and fruit pizza because if she wouldn’t eat those I would.
Abbie insists on wielding her spoon, so I’m basically at her mercy as to what she’ll eat. She started with the peas, which was good that she’d eat some green matter. Next I tried directing her toward the meatballs, but that didn’t work. Instead she kept reaching to the opposite side of the plate and scooping up giant spoonfuls of my, err, her Oreo fluff. I scooped as much as I could onto my plate, and pointed her toward the macaroni salad. She scooped some up and gladly put it into her mouth, until she realized its yellow color came from mustard, not cheese.
With no more fluff on her plate, she attacked the next closest thing: the whipped topping dollop on the fruit pizza. I let her have it until she was about to dump the dollop on the floor; no daughter of mine would waste whipped topping. I took the topping from her and dolled it out with fruit on the spoon so I could think she was eating healthy in between the bites of Chinese that Ellie kept offering her.
I wound up finishing her meatballs, macaroni salad, and a little fruit, so I didn’t feel like I bought too much excess food. I also had to finish her fruit pizza and Oreo fluff because I didn’t want her to have all that sugar. It was the best Oreo fluff I’d had since last time I had a coupon.
* It’s a grocery store. What do you expect the atmosphere to be like?
** I’m pretty sure their meat is circus animal-free, but that may only be because I’ve never seen cows, pigs, or chickens in a circus.
*** Even the rice is fried.
**** Oreo fluff is vanilla pudding, whipped topping, and crushed Oreos mixed together, and it is good.
Last night, we had a coupon, so we traveled to the grocery store for Chinese food. Their cafeteria has other things like a salad bar and a grill, but the Chinese food is their best offering. Not that we could visit the grocery store down the street from us; for some reason that may or may not be related to the two Asian restaurants in the adjoining strip mall, the nearby grocery store doesn’t offer Chinese food. We were out for Vital Supplies anyway, so we visited the next-closest grocery store a few miles further down the road for their surprisingly good Chinese food. When I say “good” I’m referring to speed, price, and taste, not extraneous factors like atmosphere,* quality,** or nutrition.***
The big drawback to eating cheaply at the grocery store is they don’t offer kid-sized meals, especially when that kid is under the age of 2. That means I can either buy a regular meal and watch her not eat three-quarters of it, or pay slightly less to pick and choose a few things off the salad bar and watch her not eat three-quarters of it. I choose the salad bar; it’s theoretically healthier for her, plus it adds a little variety to my meal as I finish what she wastes.
Making a plate for her at the salad bar is like eating at a buffet in that I could choose from a variety of foods, including one side of the table filled with traditional salad fixin’s, and another side filled with the kind of salad that doesn’t actually contain any lettuce. The big difference is I have to pay for everything by the pound instead of the flat all-she-can-eat rate. This made the peas a better choice than the denser carrots. Going around the table, I also grabbed meatballs for protein, macaroni salad thinking I could fool her into thinking it was macaroni and cheese, various fruits, and some Oreo fluff**** and fruit pizza because if she wouldn’t eat those I would.
Abbie insists on wielding her spoon, so I’m basically at her mercy as to what she’ll eat. She started with the peas, which was good that she’d eat some green matter. Next I tried directing her toward the meatballs, but that didn’t work. Instead she kept reaching to the opposite side of the plate and scooping up giant spoonfuls of my, err, her Oreo fluff. I scooped as much as I could onto my plate, and pointed her toward the macaroni salad. She scooped some up and gladly put it into her mouth, until she realized its yellow color came from mustard, not cheese.
With no more fluff on her plate, she attacked the next closest thing: the whipped topping dollop on the fruit pizza. I let her have it until she was about to dump the dollop on the floor; no daughter of mine would waste whipped topping. I took the topping from her and dolled it out with fruit on the spoon so I could think she was eating healthy in between the bites of Chinese that Ellie kept offering her.
I wound up finishing her meatballs, macaroni salad, and a little fruit, so I didn’t feel like I bought too much excess food. I also had to finish her fruit pizza and Oreo fluff because I didn’t want her to have all that sugar. It was the best Oreo fluff I’d had since last time I had a coupon.
* It’s a grocery store. What do you expect the atmosphere to be like?
** I’m pretty sure their meat is circus animal-free, but that may only be because I’ve never seen cows, pigs, or chickens in a circus.
*** Even the rice is fried.
**** Oreo fluff is vanilla pudding, whipped topping, and crushed Oreos mixed together, and it is good.
posted by Matt at
11:10 PM
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