I used to want to be famous. Blame a particularly bad habit of checking Perez Hilton every day in high school — but I was inundated with the lifestyles of the rich and famous. And I wanted some of it.
But after a while, I began to realize something. Sure, being famous has its perks, but being the baby of a celebrity? That’s the life you really want. Celebrities love to remind us that being famous comes with hard work: grueling shooting schedules, energy-draining performances, mind-numbing press junkets. But their kids? Those lucky cuties just had to be born, and they get all the same perks.
And while there's still some hope that I could become famous one day (hey, we’ll all get our own reality TV moment eventually, right?), I’ll definitely never get to live the life of a famous baby. My own childhood, while both happy and healthy, lacked the glamour of a Blue Ivy or North West type of existence. Sure, I was loved and fed, but I was fed Kraft mac and cheese.
What would it be like to be a celebrity baby? I may never know, but I could at least see what it was like to eat like one. So I went on a mission to replicate the same meals that famous tots have been known to indulge in — and here's what happened.
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North West
Ok, so I don't know North West, but let's just say, if I did, I think we'd get along. This kid knows how to hang: She's got baby-sized Yeezys and she came to party. Plus, her mom makes her beignets if she asks (I know this from following Kim on Snapchat, something I did even before The Incident). And clearly, this girl loves a chocolate chip pancake.
Photo: Via @KimKardashian.
If you, like me, dream of longer lashes, don't take an Instagram trying to look like North West. Not only am I lacking in the eyelash department, my brown eyes are not nearly as wide and doe-like. (Ugh and don't even get me started on how toddlers have the softest skin and don't even have to work for it).
So it should come as no surprise that my pancake, though delicious, didn't stack up to North's, either. They just didn't have the same fluff! Also, when you are an adult, you have to make your OWN pancakes, and your mom isn't there to comfort you when you accidentally burn your hand.
In the end, though, I would get brunch with North any day — maybe we could have pancakes and get princess makeovers?
Photo: Via @LordItsMarshall.
Mason Disick
Going in to this experiment, I knew North's meal would rock. But I wasn't so sure about her cousins. Would we invite them to our fantasy brunch that exists only in my head? I was leaning toward no. Sure, their familial bond is adorable, but these kids have it rough. A fame-filled childhood isn't all one big sugar rush followed by a crash on a Frozen suitcase.
The Disick kids live in an all-organic kingdom run by their mother, Kourtney. As we learned this season on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Mason is already trained to know what food is okay and what is forbidden.
That doesn't mean it's all salads, though. In the same episode, Kourtney serves the family gluten-free, dairy-free pizza. No one, least of all the kids, is a fan.
Screenshot via Keeping Up With The Kardashians.
To make my own dairy-free, gluten-free pizza, I went (where else?) to Whole Foods. While there are lots and lots of people who avoid gluten for a number of reasons, I'm not one of them.
Of course, at an Upper West Side Whole Foods, no one bats an eye when you check out with a basket full of dairy free "cheese" and a pizza crust that feels like cookie dough, as well as a jar of brown rice syrup (more on that later). It was only my own prejudice that made me self-conscious of my choices.
What I ended up with actually wasn't that bad. Sure, it wasn't the best pizza I'd ever made, but it was shockingly passable. It reminded me of the rectangular pizzas they served us in elementary school — processed, but still pizza-like. I bet if I served this up to the Disick kids, they'd eat it up. Kourtney, I'm available for cooking lessons.
Photo: Courtesy of Marshall Bright.
Apple & Moses Martin
Lest I get too cocky about my ability to cook and eat the gluten-free diet of a celebrity kid, it was time for the real challenge: eating like I was one of Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow's. Before Mason was even a glimmer in Kourtney's eye, Gwyneth was proselytizing about the benefits of a sugar-free, veggie-full diet for the whole family.
On Goop, you can find several of her "family friendly" recipes, like this one for zucchini cacio e pepe. It's just as good as the real thing, she promises!
Photo: Paul Hubble/Getty Images.
Spoiler alert: No, it is not. Or, maybe if you can trick yourself into thinking zucchini shoved through a spiralizer is just as satisfying as a bowl of carbs, then it is (if you can, let me know your secret). And look, I love a good zucchini pasta. Cover it in enough sauce, toss on a meatball or two, and it gets less and less obvious what's going on.
But just cold, shredded squash covered in nothing but olive oil, pepper, and some cheese? I wasn't fooled, and I don't think it's just because I'm a legal adult. I think any baby, famous or not, would know something was up and demand the real thing, too.
Photo: Courtesy of Marshall Bright.
But what about a refined-sugar free dessert? While at Whole Foods shopping for a Kardashian-Disick friendly pizza, I also picked up all the ingredients needed for a Gwyneth-approved dessert, a vegan mousse. Once again, the promises are lofty: I "won't believe" that it's not the real thing.
I was skeptical of such claims, but then again, I can't believe Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president, and yet here we are. Maybe something else could go against all common sense and still be true, too.
To make a mousse with no eggs, cream, or refined sugar, I used avocado, the aforementioned brown rice syrup, coconut oil, and maple syrup. Oh, and it was topped off with a dollop of cashew cream instead of whipped cream. The recipe originally appeared in Gwyneth's newest cookbook, It's All Easy.
While coworkers swear to me some of the recipes are, indeed, easy, this mousse was not. Oh, and I could totally believe it was vegan. Blame it on the lingering avocado flavor that just can't be ignored.
Photo: Courtesy of Marshall Bright.
The Jolie-Pitt Clan
Avocado-y mousse was a lot for me to handle, but it was nothing compared the diets of Angelina and Brad's kids. While they seem to be growing up largely out of the public eye, I sent our intrepid intern, Julie Rogers, after their internet trail to see what she could learn.
"Apparently they eat crickets 'like Doritos,' so have fun with that," she emailed me a short while later.
Photo: GVK/Bauer-Griffin/Getty Images.
And have fun with it I did. Apparently, if you want to eat crickets that taste like chips, you don't have to look any further than Crick-ettes, which come in flavors like sour cream and onion and salt and vinegar.
I enlisted the help of a few coworkers to taste test, and the brave few who joined were, as I was, pleasantly surprised. "They just taste like sunflower seeds," one observed. Another taste tester just shrugged, neither horrified nor impressed. If you can get over the appearance of the things, it's mostly just a crunchy sensation with a slight dusting of onion flavor. Attempting to chow down on them like they really were Doritos, I kept eating — until the little legs started getting caught on my soft palate. Then I had to stop.
Photo: Courtesy of Marshall Bright.
Harper & Gideon Burtka-Harris
Of course, if you want to argue which celebrity baby has the best diet, it would be hard to award it to anyone other than Neil Patrick Harris' adorable twins, Harper and Gideon. It doesn't hurt that their other dad, David Burtka, is a professional chef. Seriously, a quick scroll through both dads' Instagram feeds shows them chowing down on everything from ramen to high tea at the Plaza. While I might not be invited over for designer mac and cheese any time soon, I could at least embrace one of the kids' favorite pastimes: slurping down oysters.
Photo: Via @nph.
Yes, I went to the same exact restaurant as the Burtka-Harris clan, and sat in roughly the same spot, so I could be photographed, also eating oysters. Is it creepy? Is it weird? I don't care, because these oysters were so delicious. Oh, and because I am just an adult who eats like a child, and not an actual child, I got to enjoy a glass of rosé with my oysters. Beat that, Harper and Gideon!
Photo: Via @lorditsmarshall.
Blue Ivy Carter
There was really just one person left. My lodestar, the celebrity kid who will surely rule us all: Blue Ivy. I don't even want to pretend that Blue and I could be friends. I am completely confident she is already way cooler than I am. But maybe, just maybe, I could eat like her. Once again, I enlisted the help of our intern, Julie. If there any was proof of baby Blue's eating habits online, I knew she could track it down. And once again, she delivered.
Photo: Robert Kamau/Getty Images.
And lo, did Blue Ivy point at the ice cream truck. And it was a Sponge Bob popsicle, and it was good.
It was not sugar-free, or plant-based. It was not pricey oysters, or bugs. It was a popsicle, sold on nearly every street corner in New York City, every day. The Blue Ivy experience was affordable, accessible, and delicious.
It would be easy, right?
Photo: Via @Beyonce.
I was wrong. As it turns out, ice cream trucks, while seemingly omnipresent, are also mobile. It can be hard to find the exact one you want. If, like me, you're especially unlucky, you'll keep finding this truck, over and over again. They do not sell popsicles, as the worker inside will tell you, almost anticipating your question, as soon as you being a sentence with "Excuse me, do you have..."
No. No, they do not.
I concluded it was a sign from the heavens. To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, I am not Blue Ivy, nor was I meant to be. Or, as he writes later in the same poem, "I grow old, I grow old."
It was time for me to leave the diet of a celebrity baby behind and go back to eating like a 27-year-old. Which meant getting an ice cream cone from this truck and calling it dinner.
I may not be famous, but ice cream for dinner isn't too shabby, if I do say so myself.
Photo: Courtesy of Marshall Bright.
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