Yes, the meal you eat every night — you know, the two dill pickles, half a block of cheese, 17 crackers, a handful of grapes, and five dried figs — has a name. It’s called “girl dinner” and thanks to TikTok, this millennia-old tradition is finally getting the attention it deserves.
What is girl dinner?
After watching the girl dinner video by TikTok creator @avocadale, I finally had a name for that smorgasbord I eat while watching a serial killer documentary every night.
The trend started with Olivia Maher's viral TikTok video of her dinner. "A girl just came on her and said how in Medieval times, peasants had to eat nothing but bread and cheese and how awful that was, and she was like that's my ideal meal," Olivia said in the video, before flipping around the camera and showing us her plate of cheese, grapes, butter, and pickles. "This is my dinner. I call this girl dinner or Medieval peasant." In true TikTok fashion, someone then turned her video into a song, and now everyone is using it to show off their own girl dinner.
The key to a girl dinner is that you combine several snacks into a meal. What I mean is you switch back and forth between munching on a bowl of fruit like strawberries, some brand of pickles, a type of cured meat, any crackers that fit your fancy, and a spread whether than be cheese, smear, or guacamole. You get your fats, proteins, and carbs, fulfilling all your nutritional needs, without any post-meal kitchen clean up. Boy dinner, on the other hand, is usually just a slab of meat.
How to make a girl dinner
Although some may tell you otherwise, you have nothing to be ashamed of if you regularly eat girl dinner. Girl dinner is the height of elegance and adulthood. @thatcheeseplate has tons of aesthetic ideas to post on Instagram in honor of girl dinner for making your life worth living.
That said, as long as you have your crackers, spread/dip, pickles, meat, and fruit, you’ve made the perfect girl dinner. My girl dinner is anything but social media worthy.