What to cook for dinner tonight? It’s a perpetual dilemma for most people when it comes to food planning at home. Many often look for quick meals that are easy to prepare and clear up and save them time in the kitchen.
From ‘girl dinner’, which is a convenient and conscious choice to opt for comfort food made for pure consumption and enjoyment, using random ingredients as opposed to the traditional style of cooking for hours in the kitchen, to ‘rat snacking’ and ‘fridgescaping’, meal times are increasingly getting spontaneous.
For instance, rat snacking has nothing to do with rodents, but means food combinations and making use of leftovers to create a combo meal in a bite-sized format. The hashtag #ratsnack has made internet users make use of their kitchen’s leftovers to create a combo meal or experiment with unconventional food pairings.
Some social media trends can get eccentric too. Recently, fridgescaping is a new fridge decor trend that has taken over the internet with over 35 million posts in the past few weeks. The concept is on decorating food items in the fridge with nice containers, ornate china, picture frames, mirrors, flowers or herbs, displaying fruits and vegetables or figurines to make the contents visually appealing. Even so, medical experts and critics argue that this habit is silly and unnecessary décor can cause contamination or increase risk of food borne illnesses.
Another term ‘unhinged dunking’ is about countless videos of dunking chicken fingers, burritos and sandwiches into cups of salsa and/or ranch; ‘Krispy Kreme Challenge’ is the student-run event that dares participants to run to the nearest Krispy Kreme outlet, eat over 12 doughnuts and then, with stomachs bursting, finish with another run back to their starting point — all in one hour.
Girl dinner has immense popularity on the internet, perhaps because it helps women live their lives freely, take a break from the kitchen and self-indulge, either by emulating their fellow followers on social media by making reels or even getting inspired to make a meal and dine alone. To share an estimate, girl dinner as a concept initially gained popularity on TikTok, with the first video only discussing the idea and gaining over 30 million views last year. It was started by Los Angeles-based influencer Olivia Maher, who talked about how to simplify a meal. She said, “Giddiness often goes along with it, because it’s what you want. It satisfies you.”
Now the trend has turned into a simple, snacky style of eating and can be made from cold cuts like cured meat, where people eat every last bit of the meat and leave nothing to waste, or mini pizzas; and sometimes healthy bites such as peanut butter and jelly; a snack plate with bread, cheese, fruit, and pickles; a boxed macaroni and cheese in a wine glass; a microwaved popcorn; instant ramen noodles and such are some of the food preferences that one can relish on a couch while snacking and watching TV. As a result, anything that’s satisfying and easy to prepare qualifies as ‘girl dinner’.
For those following the girl dinner trend, it has been a pleasant departure from diet culture, and rigid expectations of what food should be, as it provides pleasure in the meals one is eating. Interestingly, it also has an underlying reference to an independent woman, her power to express, self-love, and eat with freedom while cooking for one’s own appetite. It takes away from the idea of cooking a traditional meal which many still do.
But as they say, variety is the spice of life. A ‘girl dinner’ can also be diversified into mini meals of fruits, veggies, carbohydrates, and protein, and can incorporate colours and textures for healthy snacking. So a ramen in sesame oil, soy sauce, veggies and cheese or simply boiling eggs, whole grain crackers, cheese, sliced apples, grapes, carrots, and cucumbers are a perfect choice for a healthy ‘girl dinner’.
