Post-Kid Kitchen: Craving Crackdown and Some Things I've Been Eating

I was more than a little envious when Rob and Westley went on an early-morning coffee-and-donut date recently. An apple fritter sounded absolutely delicious, but our vegan donut place has not yet branched out into gluten-free-dom. (Some women with food sensitivities find they tolerate more things during pregnancy. I have done the gluten experiment, and I am not one of these lucky women.) Besides, I didn't want to butt in on Daddy-Westley time.

But I still wanted an apple fritter.

I've finally cracked the code on my pregnancy cravings, and it's fairly simple: not every "craving" is a pregnancy craving. Brie en croute, for example. I haven't eaten it since my wedding reception seven years ago, and I basically always want it, pregnant or not. Ergo, not a pregnancy craving. Ice cream, on the other hand, is firmly on my "pass" list. I don't usually care for it. But for a few weeks there, it was all I wanted to eat (especially Trader Joe's Soy Creamy Cherry Chocolate Chip, which we've taken to calling "Cherry Gorghadra"—because we love super narrow-audience humor).

And then there's fruit. I'm almost always down with fruit, but pregnancy has made my fondness for it ridiculous. I don't usually eat pounds of it in one sitting. We're talking two and three apples at a time.

Which brings us to my apple fritter-cure.

Baked Breakfast Apples
Serves 2 (or 1 pregnant woman)

2 Granny Smith apples
Juice of half a lemon (about 1 Tbsp)
1 Tbsp sugar
1/4 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp coconut oil

Preheat the oven to 275 F. Peel, core and slice apples and arrange in an 8"x8" baking dish. Sprinkle apples with lemon juice. Mix the sugar and cinnamon in a small bowl, and sprinkle about half the mixture over the apples. Pinch off bits of coconut oil—pea-size or smaller—and arrange them over the top of the apple mixture. Top with remaining cinnamon-sugar. Bake 15 minutes. Serve warm.

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Overall, I haven't been very interested in food lately. Cooking and eating both seem like so much effort.  I've been falling back on easy, throw-it-in-the-oven-and-forget-about-it meals. The Forty-Clove Chickpeas and Broccoli from Appetite for Reduction has gotten a lot of play, and we've had pancakes for dinner more than a few times. Easy, comforting foods are my culinary touchstone.

Chickpea-Broccoli Casserole from Vegan with a Vengeance:


I substitute cooked quinoa for the breadcrumbs in this and other casserole recipes, and it works really well.

Cucumber-tomato salad, a favorite from my childhood, with homemade gluten-free vegan sausages and mashed potatoes:


I was photographing my food, and Westley wanted me to take a picture of his dinner also:


And I can't stop baking muffins. I use the recipe for leftover fruit and vegetable muffins almost exclusively. These are strawberry-lemon-poppyseed. I don't know why this combination isn't standard in coffee shops everywhere:


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