Food

I have days where I eat so healthy I should win a prize from a woman's health magazine or something.  I mean, I'm talking every deep-colored antioxidant-rich fruit and vegetable sold in grocery stores in a single day, along with salmon and bulgur and nonfat yogurt and sprouted-grain bread, and to top it all off these are also the days that I take walks and drink a ton of water.  Really exemplary days.

Then I also have days where I eat nothing but Frosted Flakes and ice cream.

That's what I meant when I was talking about how nice 'What to Expect' is to read.  'What to Expect' forgives me for my bad diet days, and helps me aspire to have more good days than bad days.  Or to have more good than bad in a single day.  Or just, you know ... to try.

I love reading articles that sing food's praises.  The ones that give you an A+ for eating avocados and potatoes and a round of applause for switching from regular pasta to whole-wheat, instead of being full of warnings about fat content and reminders that processed whole wheat is still processed.  The latter versions are all written by mean-spirited nutritionists who also advise you to flee cheese at all costs, look down their noses at juice, treat eggs with distrust and hummus with positive disdain, and only mention dried fruit in order to tell you not to overdo it.  Those things are so disheartening.

So, I'm not going to try to please those guys with my pregnancy eating habits.  But there are a couple things I've picked up recently, which I like to imagine if I wrote down and presented to Heidi Murkoff, she'd proudly pin up on the refrigerator and pat me on the head for.

Now, when I see people blog or post facebook statuses documenting their oh-so-healthy homecooked meals, it usually just makes me want to kick them.  So I'm not going to tell you about any homecooked meals.  In fact, the first thing I'm going to tell you about is chocolate granola bars.  See?  Yum.

1.) I always love Nature Valley granola bars when I'm on my healthy kicks (then of course when the pendulum swings the other way I opt for pop tarts and gross stuff like that).  They now have an oats 'n dark chocolate granola bar which is everything I've ever wanted in a granola bar.  Not sugary.  Delicious.  Satisfying.  With a list of ingredients you can be proud of.  Go buy them.

2.) I have decided that Jabberwocky has a favorite snack right now, and it's a handful of raw walnuts combined with a handful of Ghirardelli bittersweet chocolate chips.  That's it.  Super easy, super great, super filling, and super good for you, right?

3.) Something I can't stop being enthusiastic about is this food-scoring system our grocery store has implemented called NuVal.  Every item has a rating based on its nutritional value.  I'm sure many people would find this a restricting and irritating way to shop, but for me, it just gets me excited for the products that score well.  Yaaay sweet potatoes!  Yay milk!  Apples, you guys are totally superstars!  etc.  One of the areas in which NuVal has guided me is cereal.  According to NuVal, the bags of Arrowhead Mills various puffed-whatevers (rice, millet, kamut) are waaaay healthier (and cheaper) than even the healthy-sounding boxed cereals like Raisin Bran.  Admittedly, they are also practically tasteless.  But I'm somebody who finds a bowl of cereal simply comforting, no matter what it is.  Plus, you can add flavor with my Dietary Enhancement #4, below.

4.) I bought almond milk for the first time today (which my husband, who's a bit hippie-phobic, will probably be chagrined to discover).  This is something else I've decided Jabberwocky has been telling me she wants.  I guess that would fall under the category of a pregnancy craving, but it hasn't been the urgent "Mom!  Baby needs almond milk!  Now!" so much as it's been a mild "That sounds pretty good, don't you think, Mom?  Maybe we should get some.  Don't you think?"  Apparently they don't sell it in entry-level sizes, so I had to get a whole half-gallon.  Good thing I liked it quite as much as I expected to.  And it combines great with the various puffed-stuff from #3 above.  (Also the expiration date is two months out?  Awesome?)

5.) I've already mentioned hard-boiled eggs, but it's worth repeating because it makes the difference between Tired Afternoon-Emily and Zombie Afternoon-Emily.  That is, if I get protein in the morning, I still have pregnancy sleepiness after lunch and look forward to my post-work nap.  But no protein means I become a shell of a person dragging myself to the finish-line in a trance-like state.  So now I boil a few at once and keep 'em in the fridge.