There were generations of people who ate the same thing for breakfast every day. They just got on with their lives without even a single snap of what they ate that day.
The times, they have a changed.
We may like to look at beautiful food just as much as we like to consume it. How else can the Avocado Toast craze truly be explained?
Perhaps it is the doom and gloom nature of the news, but the mermaid hashtag has become a thing. There are mermaid fin classes, mermaid birthday party themes and mermaid school supplies.
It was just a matter of time before mermaids made their way over to the kitchen. The mermaid food trend isn’t just for fish. It is more about colour and whimsy, because, after all (kids, shut your ears), mermaids aren’t real.
Food that has mermaid inspiration may be frothy blue in colour or have irridescent elements that catch the light. It can be as artificial as a neon blue cupcake, but we like to look at mermaid eating as a chance to eat the rainbow. Here are some ideas for how you can get some mermaid beauty into your food, one meal (or Instagram pic) at a time:
1) Mermaid toast. The new avocado toast, one might say, this pastel hued toast looks mystical. Apparently invented by food stylist Adeleine Waugh @vibrantandpure, (1) mermaid toast is basically rainbow cream cheese dyed toast. No red dye #5 here either. Waugh said, “Ever since I realized that adding beet juice to food would turn it into the most magnificent shade of hot pink, I was hooked. My goal is to take healthy food and make it fun and exciting, brightening it up with a few (or many) pops of color.” How to do it yourself? Go in assuming that you are “toast painting.” Here are some dye ideas besides the beet juice: freeze dried blueberries for purple and turmeric root for orange. Start with the cream cheese plain as a base, add dollops of each colour and swirl together like the abstract artist that you always knew you could be. Use pastel sprinkles or edible gold if you are so inclined. Then eat delicately, because it took you so freaking long to make one piece of toast.
2) Mermaid smoothie. We assume you are getting the idea, but a mermaid smoothie can be multicoloured smoothies layered on top of each other, to show the world that not only are you healthy enough to make a smoothie for breakfast, but you also have your life together enough to make multiple smoothie colours. Alternatively, dye your smoothie an aqua so tempting a finned goddess would want to swim around in it. The colour can easily be found with blue matcha powder, although we can’t say the same thing about blue matcha powder itself. (2)
3) Breakfast bowls. Kind of the same deal as the smoothie, but in a bowl and topped with under-the-sea toppings like fruit cut into star shapes. Blue Majik makes for an amazing colour (3) and has 22 times more iron than spinach and 6 times more Calcium than cow’s milk. So you can blame the fact that you made a mermaid bowl on nutrition rather than whimsy.
Once you get your hands on chlorophyll, blue matcha or Blue Majik you may feel tempted to mermaid everything in your life. Mermaid lemonade, mermaid nut milk, mermaid baths? It’s been done. Maybe it’s time to make something for the mermen?