I’ve come to the conclusion that I owe my husband a huge thank you. Now that I’m no longer pregnant (and sick) and actually feel like eating, I’ve started cooking again. As I stood poring over recipes the other day I noticed how foreign it felt and realized how little cooking I’ve done over the last year. I knew Rich had kept us going and ensured no one starved (and to be clear, he’s a far better cook than I anyway) but I didn’t realize just how much I had stayed out of the kitchen.
I had some food aversions with my first pregnancy but they weren’t as severe and didn’t last as long as with the second. I really didn’t eat much or well this time (sorry Ethan) because I just couldn’t stomach a lot of stuff. I was very put off by meat, didn’t eat much fruit, and seriously did almost live on Cheerios for several months.
Anyway, now that I’m on maternity leave and have all this time on my hands (snort) I’ve started cooking more. I find when I’m sitting there feeding a baby or cuddling a baby my brain makes lists, plus the side effect of nursing is that I’m hungry all the time. So I sit there and think about what we might have for dinner in the coming days. (I also think up ideas for crafts I can do with Connor, which is problematic for two reasons: (1) I’m not crafty and (2) my slightly tired brain decided that glitter was a good idea. You can imagine how that turned out… Let’s just say if glitter carpet suddenly becomes all the rage I will consider myself quite on trend.)
The other bonus — and it’s quite refreshing, I must say — is that I can again look at recipes and not want to barf. So when people post recipes on Facebook or one of my mom sites includes them in newsletters I tend to get sucked down little recipe rabbit holes. Apparently I think I’m the sort of person who likes (and has time) to make somewhat complicated things. So I buy all the groceries and then have eggplant sitting in my fridge looking at me like I’m supposed to know what to do with it. I don’t even like eggplant.
Purple fruit that likes to masquerade as a vegetable aside, I have been enjoying cooking again. We have some regular favourites but I like to make new things (as opposed to returning over and over to the same stand-bys) so I’ve amassed quite the collection of recipes over the last few weeks. (Note to self: search Pinterest for a better way to organize recipes than a binder that munches up the holes in the paper and then spits sheets all over the floor.) I’ve had a few big hits, some meals I’d consider a success and only one incident where I ended up having to eat spinach pie leftovers for days because my boys took one look at it and opted for a ham/English muffin melt. (No accounting for taste – literally.)
I’m also a little bit bored, if you want to know the truth. I’m slightly too tired to do much good writing or play around with some of the ideas I have, but my brain wants something to do. So I browse recipes and make meal plans and try to keep enough healthy stuff in the house that I’m not turning to multigrain toast and bagels with berry cream cheese as though I were carbo-loading for the race of my life. (Confession: that last part isn’t working.)
So, got any good recipes for me? I might even try it if it includes eggplant.
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