A Bun in the Oven
Though it may not be apparent from my posting, I’ve been cooking up a storm lately.
You see, I’m knocked up, which you’ve already figured out unless you made the honest mistake of confusing our unborn child with a tadpole. And we couldn’t be happier. Though by ‘we’ I’m excluding the dog who already feels his gold medal being taken away and polished for the new arrival. If I’ve taught him anything, it’s how to sulk.
But because this is a forum where we talk about food and not my emotions, excietment and new ability to cry whenever I see a balloon floating away, I will spare you all the drippy details. Suffice it to say: things are really, really good.
Before they were really, really good, though? They were queasy. You don’t even know the lengths I went to to keep your recipes coming. The “morning” sickness phase – which, in my case, lasted all day – made the writing of this post and this one to feel like epic marathons of yuck (I still gag a little whenever I think of rice pudding). The only thing that helped (besides napping, which is my new favorite activity after eating bread and watching sappy YouTube videos that inevitably make me cry), was, if you can believe it, cooking. But now, since about this post, it’s been nothing but smooth, blissful sailing. Only it feels like there’s no food on my boat.
Yes. I am hungry all the time. I wake up hungry, I’m hungry an hour after breakfast, an hour after midmorning snack, an hour after lunch and every hour on the hour until it starts all over again. Francesco halfheartedly jokes that we’ll have to take out a second mortgage just to finance my eating. My argument is that at least we’re supporting the local takeaway shop.
It’s hard to keep up with law readings, exams, classes, a falling apart house, the dog and the overwhelming need to nap while cooking enough to feed my husband, myself and this little tapeworm ball of joy. I usually come home from class so hungry there’s little I can do to keep myself from shoving bread haphazardly into my mouth and washing it down with the bottle of strawberry milk I had to have once I saw it on the walk home from school. (I wrote that knowing that Francesco doesn’t read this blog. And honey, if you are reading, I’m totally kidding about the strawberry milk thing.) I even snack in class, though my penchant to sit towards the front (to encourage participation aka keep myself from falling asleep) makes this kind of uncomfortable. Especially when the professor is constantly eyeing my homemade muffin.
Last week, just to give you an idea of the quantities we’re dealing with here, I made this ginormous lasagna, which I’ll write about soon, that I figured would be our lunch for the whole week. 10 lunches, I thought, no need to eat sandwich after sandwich! Only problem? I finished it less than 24 hours later. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s a warning: things might get a bit repetitive around here. But bear with me. I’m new at this constant cooking thing. But once I get the hang of it…oh the deliciousness we’ll make!
