DADWAGON

So, some of you may have noticed that the New York Times this weekend featured a lengthy story about a lone father and his young daughter traveling on a budget in San Francisco. My day job: Whee!

This week, however, I figured I’d share (I hate saying “share” like that, but oh well) with you a few of the things that didn’t make it into the story (not because an editor cut them, but because I deemed them too digressive). The first is something I came to think of as the Traveling Dad Diet.

When you’re traveling alone with a very young child, meals are pretty much constantly on your mind. What am I going to get her next? Is it good for her? Will she eat any of it? And how am I going to find time to eat something myself?

About half the time in San Francisco, I was trying to get Sasha to eat normal grownup food. Pasta with meat sauce, rice and broccoli. And relatively good takeout food: El Farolito burritos, sure, but also the excellent margherita from Pizza Delfina, a Chilean beef empanada, and her very first PB&J, at the Toaster Oven. Most of the time, she did well. But not all of the time.

But since we were on a budget and because I don’t like to waste food, an odd phenomenon would occur: I would order a dish for myself—say, saag paneer at Udupi Palace—and feed as much of it as I could to Sasha. If I was lucky, a quarter of it would end up in her mouth. A quarter of it would end up on the table or the floor. And of the remaining food, I’d eat maybe half, partly because I was so stressed that I simply wanted Sasha to be fed and mealtime to be over.

Which, at first, was great! I spend way too much time sitting and writing, or sitting and eating, and not enough time on my feet. In San Francisco, I was eating less than half what I normally would, plus I was on the go constantly. Awesome! I could feel the pounds burning off.

Except… Too often I would get ambitious, and either order Sasha her own food at a restaurant or cook enough for two people. These always seemed to be the times that Sasha had no interest in eating, so all that extra would go down my throat, and I’d feel bloated and exhausted.

This, my friends, is the Traveling Dad Diet. It wears you out, both physically and mentally, and leaves you alternately stuffed and starving. At the end, nothing changes—you’re probably still fat. But it’s worth it all anyway.