Kid Food, Birthday Parties & Why We Chose a Different Menu
Kid Food, Birthday Parties & Why We Chose a Different Menu
My son just had his birthday party! It was dinosaur themed with a volcano activity (and not your typical science fair kind - small groups of kids had their own mini volcano to create. They also used red food colouring for the “lava.” And since climate change is a theory of why dinosaurs became extinct, they ALSO had the opportunity to create “ice”)!!! But this post isn’t about the party itself, but its menu.
Most birthday parties we’ve been to including the “real” party we hosted last year, serve the SAME food: cheese or pepperoni pizza. It really gets boring! So we decided to do something different this year. Offer chicken fingers, grilled cheese and fries (plus fruit). Yes, it’s still typical “kid” food, but at least it’s NOT pizza! I don’t hate pizza, in fact, I love it, but it just gets boring. And even most picky eaters will eat other things. We probably didn’t have to serve fruit, but we kind of wanted to make sure the kids had some sort of fresh produce. And yes, the sauce on top of my grilled cheese is pasta sauce - one of our guests was dairy-free and we didn’t want to risk it with the chicken fingers - I was told that the batter for the chicken “may contain” dairy. It was kind of like having tomato soup, so much better than just ketchup (the grilled cheese could have been meltier/cheesier, IMHO). No comment on the chicken fingers since I didn’t eat it.
Most of the kids loved it, of course, and of the parents who stayed, they agreed that it was a good change. The staff plated everything for the kids (because the kids are mostly six…IYKYK) and all of the chicken fingers and fries (and yes, both plum sauce and ketchup were aplenty) went. They DID make a little too much grilled cheese, but hey, that’s good for me because, well, I LOVE grilled cheese! The fries were pretty good too. And I have to admit that I’m not much of a potato kind of girl (I’ll pick sweet fries over regular any day. But it’s kids first at a party like this!
Would I do a non-pizza party again? Yes, most definitely. Non-pizza meal parties are something that seems to be lacking these days when it comes to children’s birthday. While I’m not going to serve kids, say, calamari (hey, I don’t like the stuff either), I’d love to see more events with different options. Quesadillas are kid-friendly as well, so why don’t we see more of that? Or burgers? Parties at McDonald’s were pretty common in the 1980s and into the early 90s when I was growing up. I went to plenty of those (along with Pizza Hut and Chuck E. Cheese. Those were really the only options back then (if your parents didn’t want to host at home), unlike today, where venues are aplenty). Movie theatre parties are also possible these days. I mean, if you don’t want to spend two hours making sure kids aren’t running around and making a mess of things, it would be great! And there’ll be a lot of food. The kids get popcorn while watching the movie, and then more food (cake and possibly lunch if you choose to add on, say, pizza) after!
Parties at home aren’t all that common in my son’s social circle, unlike how things were when I was growing up. However, it’s a good thing that there’s no pressure to “be better” than the last party the kids went to. It’s just all pretty standard: a Chuck E. Cheese type arcade, mini-golf, trampoline placye, etc…Some parties are more STEAM or crafts focused. One thing they all have in common is that they’re not quite low key.
If you have Gen Alpha kids, what’s it like for you? Are they low key or are they mid-range to all-out? Are princess/superhero visits common? The company we used for our dinosaur theme party also offers those!