What I Ate Wednesday: Pregnancy Edition

It's been awhile since I've done a WIAW post, and I thought it would be fun to look back on what my pregnant self was eating/craving. As you can see for yourself, I eat a LOT when I'm pregnant. I included two days worth of food. The first is a normal weekday, and the second  is one of our weekend days in San Diego. I took these photos over a week ago, back when I still had enough room in my stomach to eat big meals. Lately I've been splitting my meals in half, and eating twice as often, but I think I'm still eating roughly the same amount. As you can see I eat a lot more fruits and veggies on a normal day, and a lot more french fries and dessert on the weekend. Too bad everyday can't be the weekend ;)

Day 1:

Breakfast (8ish): 1 packet of plain oatmeal mixed with 1 packet strawberries and cream oatmeal. This is definitely a weird pregnancy craving for me because I've never before in my life eaten strawberries and cream oatmeal, but now I'm slightly addicted. 2 pieces of toast, 2 eggs and half a grapefruit (another pregnancy craving). Ive been eating this exact breakfast for about 3 weeks now. This is double what I'd eat pre-pregnancy, but I wind up shaky hungry by 11 if I eat less. 

Lunch (noon-ish): Nachos are on constant lunch rotation over here. These are just corn chips, vegetarian refried beans, light mozzarella, and taco sauce, along with an apple.

Snack 1 (3ish): post-workout I ate a small bowl of Trader Joe's multi-grain O's with a banana and unsweetened almond milk.

Snack 2 (5ish): We don't eat dinner till 7, and I can't last that long without a second snack. This is the same green smoothie from this post that Ez and I have been drinking almost daily. 

Dinner (7ish): Zucchini "noodles" topped with lentil tomato sauce and light mozzarella. Don't mind the watery-ness. Pregnant lady was too hungry to let the noodles drain properly. We ate this with mushroom cream cheese pinwheels, which were delicious, but I forgot to get a picture. 

Dessert: (8:30) Post after-dinner walk we had strawberry shortcake using cake mix soda cupcakes - which are basically just a can of soda and a box of cake mix (I used yellow cake + diet sprite). Normally we just use those dessert cups that taste like twinkies, but the store was out and I happened to have cake mix and soda already. This was a pinterest creation (of course!) and they actually turned out really good. Here are a bunch more yummy combos I want to try. We topped the cupcakes with strawberries and lots of cool whip. Yum.

Day 2:

Since I didn't take pictures of everything I ate over the weekend, this is a mish mash of pictures taken over two days to give an idea of a sample weekend day.

Breakfast: 2 fried egg sandwich on wheat bread with herb cream cheese. Ez and I split the fruit.

Post-breakfast dessert: We split these bite-size cakes. So delicious!

Lunch (at the zoo): Veggie burgers and fries followed by a soft serve cone that Joe and I split. Too bad for Ez that he slept through it.

Dinner: Fish sandwiches and Joe and I split the fries/onion rings. We also ate a few bites of fudge afterward, but it was disgustingly sweet and we threw it away. That's saying a lot, coming from me. 

So there you have it! I think my pregnancy cravings are pretty basic: eggs, fruit, french fries, sweets, and nachos. Got all my bases covered ;)

What I Ate Wednesday: Toddler Edition

Anyone else have toddlers that eat their veggies? And normal people food? Tips, please! I'd love to know what healthy-ish foods your kids love. We try to feed Ez what we're eating, but usually he won't try enough for it to actually be considered a meal. Last night we had salmon and Ez ate one bite and then went into super-inspector mode, examining each piece of food we tried to feed him from then on out, and making sure not a single piece of salmon crossed his lips again. The other night Joe fed him a few bites of his lentils, and after each bite (which we had to sneak in between bites of watermelon), Ez would shudder and make the most awful face. The foods Ez does like are limited, so his diet is on a pretty short rotation. Fruit is always a hit. If he sees fruit, chances are he's not eating anything else until every last bite of the fruit is gone (and we have to show him the empty bowl several times as proof). Here's a sample of what Ez typically eats in a day:

Breakfast:

Yogurt, cereal, and fruit.

French toast & berries.

Lately I've been feeding Ez a Stonyfield baby yogurt mixed with about a tablespoon of ground flaxseed, a handful of raisin bran, and some blueberries or strawberries. One of his other favorite breakfasts is french toast. That's what I always order him when we go out to eat, because that's pretty much the only way he'll eat eggs. Sometimes I make a batch at home, and freeze the leftovers, which I serve with butter, berries, and a tiny bit of syrup.

Lunch & Dinner:

Macaroni & cheese + veggies.

Toast + almond butter & jam.

Veggie dog & cantaloupe.

Pomegranate, apple, & beet Happy Tot pouch + Spinach, lentil, & brown rice Earth's Best Pouch + baby oatmeal.

We are vegetarian (+ fish, so pescatarian, but I already told you how receptive Ez is to fish), so Ez eats the vegetarian versions of typical toddler faves: veggie dogs and veggie nuggets. I can get him to eat veggies with his mac & cheese if I mix them up together. If they're separate he skips over the veggies. He's also a big fan of pb&j (of course!). I try to healthify it by using Ezekiel bread and switching up the nut butter (almond butter, cashew butter), and using the no sugar added jam. I still feed Ez baby food at least every other day, because that's the most surefire way to get him to eat veggies + beans. I mix one of the veggie/bean pouches with a fruity pouch, and stir in some baby oatmeal (for iron). I know it sounds disgusting, but it just tastes like fruit (yes, I've tried it!) I try to make sure Ez eats some vitamin C at every meal, because that's supposed to help with absorbing vegetarian forms of iron. And that's easy, cause fruit.

Snacks:

Typical snacks include crackers, fruit, or home baked goodies, like the banana oatmeal cookies above (so yummy! I left out the chocolate chips using this recipe). 

So that's a typical day for Ez. What are some of your go-to kid-friendly meals? 

What I ate Wednesday

I've been seeing What I Ate Wednesday posts in the blog world lately, and I for some reason love seeing what other people eat in a day, so I thought I'd do one as well. Taking pictures of all my food had the added benefit of making me think twice about some of my snack choices, so maybe I should do this more often. In a typical day I eat more sweets.

Breakfast:

I pretty much eat the same thing for breakfast for weeks at a time, and then get sick of it and switch it up. Lately I've been eating plain greek yogurt with a tablespoon of honey, a sliced banana, a tablespoon of flax seed (not pictured) and half a cup of raisin bran. When I have berries I throw a handful of those in as well, but we were out this morning. Plus a cup of coffee with unsweetened almond milk is a must. This is a really filling combo. I usually eat around 8:00, and don't need a snack before lunch.

Lunch:

This is my second time this week eating this meal. It's a vegan "chicken" caesar pita + half an avocado. I used an ezekiel pita, and inside there's romaine, caesar dressing, gardein vegan chick'n, and parmesan. I had Target salt & pepper kettle chips and grapes on the side. 

Snacks:

I ate this clif kid bar before I worked out (2.5 miles/30 minutes on the treadmill).

Afterward I had a snack pack of cashews, cottage cheese, and mango. I wound up working out twice today (very rare), so this was also a pre-workout snack. Joe and I went to the park and he had me doing calisthenic exercises while Ezzy pushed his lawn mower around. He's tough. I only last twenty minutes, then we went out to eat for date night.

Dinner:

Since it was date night, we ordered a lot of different dishes and split everything. We went to a vegan restaurant and got: salad with quinoa, chick'n, edamame, tortilla strips, and lots of other veggies; chick'n burger + sweet potato fries, curry tofu scramble + brown rice. Everything was delicious. And it turns out Ezzy loves vegan chick'n too. And edamame. Good to know. 

Dessert:

After we walked around checking out some furniture stores we stopped by Starbucks and I got a light espresso frappucino, but only drank half since I don't want to be up all night. 

And here are some pics of Ez and I working out, and then collapsed on the grass afterward: