Food Monster
Everyone keeps asking me, "Are you craving anything special now that you are pregnant?"
Oh yes. Yes I am. I am craving, like a ravenous starving animal, HOME COOKED MEALS. I don't care what it is, so long as it comes off a pan or out of a pot from someone's stove top. Or even a frozen pizza from someone's oven. Leftovers from someone else's previously cooked home cooked meal, a grilled cheese sandwich, even Ramen fucking noodles...I don't care. It doesn't have to be fancy. Even a simple pot of white rice would suffice. I want to walk into a kitchen and smell food cooking. I want to grocery shop for all of the meals I will make for the week. I want to come home from work and make dinner the way that I want it!
It's been 2 and a half months now since breaking ground on our house remodel, and I am about to lose my fucking mind from having no kitchen. No living room, I can handle. But no kitchen? It has been the most inconvenient, pain in the ass, eye-opening experience of my domestic life as a wife...and as a girlfriend, individual and overall human being. I was OK throughout the first month or so...then voila!
I am pregnant and food has become the center of the world in which I exist...being nauseated is worse when your only options for food is take out...which has officially become disgusting and utterly unacceptable to me.
For the ladies out there who choose both not to cook for themselves and for their significant other, I am shaking my head. I am confused, because I have learned that, while having no kitchen access for the first time in my life, the only alternative to not cooking your own food is to GO TAKE OUT. WHY would anyone, on a daily basis, voluntarily pay to ingest rehydrated frozen meat patties and other ingredients all shipped in bulk, doused and dipped in grease and slid down an assembly line?
BARF BARF and MORE BARF. How people are satisfied with surviving off of generic meals made to order on a day to day basis just baffles the hell out of me. Even- especially- sit-down restaurant food. It's all "cooked" and prepared by strangers with their mystery germs and habits and kitchen heat sweat handling what you are going to put in your mouth...(DRY HEAVE).
I can't take it anymore! Even carefully selecting the "healthiest" options on any given menu is still just the lesser of the same evil. I would sooner not eat than have to spend one more penny on take out. I can feel what that food is doing to my body and how it is affecting me. NONE of it sounds even remotely appetizing- it makes me feel sick just thinking about it. I have had "morning sickness" for the past four weeks straight, but I think that it is mostly a product of what I have been forced to consume. My body isn't used to eating CRAP every day- and although I have a very robust appetite, I am a pretty healthy eater for the most part.
Perhaps this is because I grew up in a household where there was always a home cooked meal on the table, even if it was just mac and cheese with fish sticks and a can of peas(on evenings when mom was particularly tired). Mom was a workaholic, highly decorated military administrator who got up for work at 5 a.m. every day, came home around 6 p.m. or later, once a month clocked 14 straight days with no day off (UTA weekends on base) and STILL managed to always cook my brother and I nutritious, well-balanced meals at the end of the day.
Eating fast food or going out to a restaurant was a rarity in my household- a TREAT reserved for special occasions only a couple of times a year.
Yes, I am bragging on my mamasan- but she more than deserves it. I have more appreciation for her and her dedication to putting food made with love on the table than I ever have before. I am even more convinced that I have the greatest mother on the planet. Her face should be painted onto cathedrals, she should be hoisted onto a golden throne and fanned by the wings of angels for what she does. GOD I would kill to be in her kitchen right now, watching her slice and dice and chop and mix and work her magic on the stove...
I know that if Taylor and I lived in Norman, or if she lived in City, while all of this is going on, she would have us over every single evening to eat home cooked dinners. We have been going down to Norman once a week and those evenings have seriously become the saving grace and highlight of my life. Knowing that I get to eat mom's food is what keeps me going all week.
Call me a brat, but I am disappointed that in the almost 3 months since of being kitchenless, Taylor and I have not been invited over for more home cooked meals by the people in our life (although I do appreciate the very few who have and have been consistent about it!). I would do it for them in a heart beat...but then again, I actually enjoy cooking and feeding people. I am learning that not everyone shares that interest. I guess this is because the majority of people that we know don't cook like I do and that makes me sad. What a waste of perfectly good kitchens all over the land.
I went to a set of in-law's house the other night, armed with a box of macaroni and cheese. They aggressively tried to sway me into joining them in going to a Mexican restaurant (which I do appreciate the invite always!), but I just couldn't do it. I was about to cry I wanted that box of mac and cheese so badly I was shaking,
"Just please, for the love of GOD let me make and eat this 69 cent box of macaroni! It's the only thing on this Earth that I will eat right now!"
They never use their kitchen, so it helps that they live up the street for me to come and crash it every now and then- put it to use until I get my own back.
This will all be worth it in the long run, I know. Supposedly we only have another 2 weeks or so until the kitchen will be up and running...and when that happens, we have made a pact to not eat out again for the rest of the year...maybe EVER.
I know that once the baby comes my life will be more hectic, but if my mom could pull off the amazing feat as a wife and mother that is cooking for her family on a daily basis, I know that I will be able to too!
