Episode 39: Meat Basket

Above is an example of a line of novelty food toys manufactured by the Adornica Company, located in Mumbai. Recently, Target carried these and other varieties of the 'food basket' toys, classified on the Adornica website under 'dramatic play,' in its $1 value bin. Mostly as a joke but kind of because Av likes to chew on plastic toys we purchased the 'Meat Basket' (not shown, unfortunately), which contained small plastic meats such as hot dogs, sausages, what appears to be a lamb chop, a chicken leg and a hamburger patty. You can see an example of some of the meats in the Meat and Cheese Basket shown above.

Initially there was some debate over what exactly we were going to do with the Meat Basket. We weren't sure if we should give it to her for Christmas, let her have it right away or perhaps give it to someone as a novelty gift. No decision was made, and after a few days it just ended up sitting on the floor, still in the cellophane packaging next to the presents that had already been wrapped.

Unbeknown to us, Av apparently had her eye on the Meat Basket because yesterday she finally went over, picked it up and pawed at it until she could open a hole in the packaging and pull out the meat. Like most toys, she played with it for a while and then cast it aside.

Fast forward to this morning. Around 8:00 we were playing in the living room and she started getting cranky as if she wanted something. I tried feeding her, playing with her, doing all sorts of different things in an attempt to find out exactly what it was. Finally, after about 20 minutes of frustration, she grabbed my hand, stood herself up and walked me over to the Meat Basket. She sat down, let go of my hand and shook out all of the plastic meat. Who knew?