Restaurateurs

Toy food never goes out of style. The kids have been playing with it lately.

We came home today and they started lining up all the plastic toy food on one of the couches. They'd been doing it a little bit, to a lesser extent, of late; putting together meals for their stuffed toys the Easter Bunny brought: Gromit the dog for Jack, a kitty cat for Kate. But they had bigger plans today.

"Who's ready to come to the restaurant?" yelled Jack. "Everybody should come to the restaurant!"

Kate then came into the kitchen. She was wearing her plastic sunglasses up on her forehead, holding her hair back, and talking into the plastic phone that came with her toy kitchen. "Are you coming to the restaurant?" she said. I'm not sure whether she was talking to me or into the phone. Or both. Then she said it again, and then "Yes? You're coming? OK bye." She held the phone down and walked over to grab my hand.

I went out to the living room, where Jack stood with the feast. All of their plastic food -- it's quite a lot, really -- was spread out on the couch. I asked if I could sit on the floor, and did.

Jack said, "We have lots of food at our restaurant. Do you want lunch, dinner, or snack?" Well, we're about to have dinner, I said, so how about a little snack. Jack said, "OK." Kate brought me a piece of cake. "No, Kate!" said Jack. "That's dessert." Kate sat down next to me and pretended to eat the cake.

Jack asked me what I wanted. I said, how about chips? He said, "All we have is a pretzel." I said, fine. He said, "It's fifteen hundred dollars." I said, wow, that's a little steep. He said, "OK, do you want a piece of bread? It's a dollar." I said that sounds good. He handed me the bread. "Do you want butter?" Sure, that would be great.

I ate my bread and butter, Kate ate her cake. Jack said, "Do you want pizza now?" I said, well, how much is it? He said, "It's a dollar." The market had clearly driven prices down.

We ate dinner together, then Emily got home, and we all went into the kitchen and did it again.