Adding another aspect of "uniqueness"

When I started this I thought the vegan Mormon was unique enough. Even compared to my husbands high school counterparts who are pursuing graduate degrees and careers, having a family, and so quickly, is another aspect. Well, yet again, I'm adding another.

How about pregnant and vegan? How many sites share stories about that? I can't find it. I looked a few months ago. I'm giving it a shot. I will say due to my ever-caring husband who offered to pick up fries for me, I also ate a half of an In-n-out hamburger (he keeps his own agenda on his mind I still can't wean him of his favorite hamburger, fries and shake, no matter how many calories it is). After a whole week, yes a *whole week* of morning sickness lasting all day and needing to be horizontal to manage it, I definitely won't be partaking of any non-vegan food anytime soon. I need to be a mother!

I'm interested in how this will go. So far my sickness has made eating a chore. Eating half a slice of my homemade bread is extremely painful. When I consulted Healthy Eating for Life for Kids on my dietary intake I moaned.
7+ grains?
5+ legumes, non-dairy milks, nuts?
4+ vegetables?
3+ fruits?
Thanks heaven's sugar, chocolate, and "ice cream" is a huge turnoff right now. I don't have room for them at all!
Now I keep a Weight Watchers point-esque chart every day. I've learned that mornings are my best time, so I have a salad to chase down my cereal, that's 3 servings right there. Unfortunately for my family, evenings are terrible so dinner is usually cold cereal. Still working on lunch. It's a hit and miss. If I think too hard about what food to make, I'll end up in the bathroom.

I can't shake my memories of how easy it was to pull out pizza for dinner (one of my top 2 favorite pre-vegan foods), or how cheese and crakers was a great snack. I even caught myself thinking about meat-based dinners I used to cook.

One silver lining. Amid all the HCG dieters around me, I've learned that pregnancy is a great time to diet and this baby will have a great start.

I Make Bread

For Mormons and Non-Mormons alike, many of their eyes bulge when I tell them I make bread. I not only make my own bread, I grind the wheat to make the bread. No, I don't use a bread machine, I use my Nutrimill and Bosch. Nothing tastes so good as fresh baked bread with homemade frozen strawberry jam (which is super easy too, check out the recipe on the back of Ball's Freezer Jam packet). It's better than candy.

I sat thinking the other day. I've now had my Nutrimill and Bosch for one year. Has it paid for itself in that time? I think the two cost $650. Now for the facts. Do you know that wheat loses 90% of it's nutriets in the first 3-5 days after being ground? Yep. So that whole wheat flour you are buying at the grocery store will take a little longer to digest, but will offer you little else. What is the closest comparable commercial product to homemade bread, that gets frozen within 1 hour of cooking so that I retain as many nutrients as possible? I believe it would be Ezekiel bread. It's found in the freezer section at the grocery store and runs between $5-6 a loaf. My family can eat 4 loaves a week. I lose most of them on baking day. So I figure at that rate, my Bosch and Nutrimill have definitely paid for itself, including the wheat, oil, yeast, gluten, dough enhancer, and salt I purchase for the bread. THAT is worth it for me.

And, as a bonus, I get to grind my own barley into flour and just about any other grain I need. Yes!

What to eat?

Lately I've been feeling hypoglycemic. I think that's what it is. Prior to the vegan diet, when ever it had been a while since I'd eaten I would have an incredible craving for cheese and my body would start a small tremor. Sometimes I would just eat a dinner, but that craving didn't go away until I had a wedge. I'm getting the same feeling today. What do you do when pre-made vegan food is far too expensive for a single-income family, but you are going out of your mind getting the cheese-craving shakes if you don't eat something? Several weeks ago I resorted to cheese. I'm determined to keep myself in line today, since I'm still feeling the arthritic aches from the milk in that darn Halloween chocolate. Want to know what I ate? This is how incredibly simple vegan is:

Breakfast: Kashi Go-Lean w/ soymilk
Snack: watermelon (I got it for $0.10/lb! at our local market, hooray Arizona) & banana
Lunch: Spaghetti noodles w/ left over marinara sauce I made last night (silly me, forgot to buy more Prego for food storage and we had NONE, thank you nutritionmd.org for the recipe!)
Dessert: soy yogurt w/ applesauce
Snack: pinto beans w/ salsa and chips (my kids don't like salsa, they just eat the beans plain), apple, a "greens" vegan powder mix and water

Dinner? I'm thinking veggies with panko covered tofu, or maybe that will be a snack and I'll go to Chipotle and see if their vegetarian is truely vegan. Ah, food. Good thing it's all low-fat!

My First Halloween

I survived it! I excelled in it! This was my first Halloween on a vegan diet. The success? My sugar tolerance is terribly low. Isn't that great! On Friday night, after "Trunk or Treat" at the church, I ate one piece and called it a day, I just didn't crave it. Saturday night I passed on it altogether. Sunday I fasted then had a real hankering for some chocolate after dinner. I indulged, and yes, it was what the kids got so it was good old non-vegan Snickers and Butterfinger and Butterfinger crisp. Can you believe it? 4 snack size bars were too many. Yes! My hubby guess how I was feeling when he jokingly called after me "No bulimia in this house!" So true, I had wanted to dispose of that last chocolate bar.

It has taken months, and there were times I was sure it hadn't happened at all, I just thought that my decrease of sweets consumption was due to having to cook it and no loving the taste of low-fat tofu brownines and knowing that vegan margarine would make my brownies too expensive. Yet it has come I broke the food seduction. Short of having a desperate need for chocolate about every 4 weeks, even Dr. Barnard grants us women that priviledge, I have won control of my cravings. Yes!

Dr. Barnards's Breaking the Food Seduction