Food!

Monday, June 23, 2008

My First Trimester

Since I've been pregnant, David and I have amassed a whole new appreciation for eating. During my first trimester, I was so sick all the time that I couldn't keep anything down but lukewarm water (not cold, or I'd throw it up), saltines and Lipton's noodle soup. During my second trimester, I was CONSTANTLY hungry. And it wasn't just "hunger"- it would feel like I was starving even though I obviously wasn't, and I'd get debilitating stomach pains and headaches if I didn't eat every 2 hours. Because of the sheer FREQUENCY of my needing to eat, we ate a lot of greasy, fast nonsense. It's only really been over the last two or so months that I've been able to eat like a "regular" human being, so we've been trying in that time to get ourselves back on track.


My Second Trimester

We know that very, VERY soon things are going to have to change. Not just for just the two of us, but as a "family unit" in general. (By the way; yes, equating everything in our lives to how it will affect a "family" has been challenging, if you were wondering.) I would ideally like to have the little boy see us eat lots of healthy, fresh food and let him witness us trying new recipes and new ingredients as often as possible. Growing up, my family ate pretty much nothing but ground beef, chicken, and cube steak. So when I decided I didn't LIKE meat, I was pretty much doomed. I very quickly became a "sides only" vegetarian, which I think happens a lot to young veg's. When my family had meat with a side, I'd have double to rice/noodles/pasta to "make up" for the lack of food on my plate. Eating fresh, varied foods is something I still struggle with, since I've always been really, really good at limiting myself. I want to get myself back into non-pregnancy shape in better ways then only eating Lean Cuisine frozen pizzas for three years, which I will totally do if I don't at least make an effort to attempt otherwise.

Speaking of which, I really, really want us all three of us to have a healthy relationship with food, especially since all of our genes have a predisposition for both extreme self-denial and relentless chubbiness. I was never as overweight as some of my relatives but I tortured myself with food in my adolescence. Not by starving myself outright or purging, but by putting myself on ill-advised "diets" that usually consisted of limiting the food I ate to only one item in the morning, afternoon, and at night. I once ate nothing but baby food for a month and a half, for example. I'm hoping that if we teach our son how to eat healthily right off the bat he won't struggle with the how-to's later on. Fingers crossed, anyway. But where do you even start, right?

Naturally, we were PUMPED when Davey discovered "Twenty for Twenty: Vegetarian Edition" on allrecipes.com- a list of twenty mostly fresh ingredients to stock up on in order to make twenty different healthy, vegetarian dinners? So far we've tried the Mediterranean Chickpea Salad, the Hot and Spicy Tofu and the Homemade Black Bean Veggie Burgers. WOW! They're all so delicious and don't leave us feeling heavy later on; I love, love it. It helps, of course, that David is an amazing cook. He does 98% of the cooking around here because he is just so, so much better at it than I am.


Homemade Black Bean Burgers <3

It's true, I can't actually COOK for the life of me, but! Amazingly, I seem to have a natural talent for baking. I used to get a secret kick out of bringing in home-made spice cakes and blueberry coffee cake made with hand picked blueberries to parties and pot lucks when I worked at Mass Mutual, because it was so contrary to my personality that I would bake, and everyone was always really surprised and impressed. Like a lot of things I used to enjoy, though, I put baking on the back burner a year or so ago when I scraped my entire foundation down the drain and started rebuilding it from the ground up. Getting pregnant slowed that process down even more, but now that I'm at the (very, very) tail end of it I'm starting to get back into baking.



My fire was re-lit the instant I laid eyes on the (no longer updated, sadly) Cupcake Bakeshop blog and egged on by my subsequent discovery of Cookie Madness; two websites all about unique baking. How absolutely amazing do lavender cream filled cupcakes with citrus cream cheese frosting sound!? I've decided it will be an awesome challenge to see how I can make these recipes a little healthier without compromising too much of the taste and I'm pumped to start experimenting. Wish me luck!