Picky Eater Making Smoothies

First off, I am incredibly thankful I can be picky. I can go to the grocery store any time of any day and select from a wide variety of options. I am truly blessed.

For many hunger is part of their life, they struggle or are unable to find simple things like clean water. A friend of mine, Christopher Burgess writes as well as speaks to build awareness around this worldwide challenge.

I wanted to bring this up before I dove into taking about my pregnant food habits. One, to acknowledge I actively appreciate the blessings in my life and two to hopefully create space in my as well as other lives to help work towards ending hunger. Especially in our local area.

As I sit here I am enjoying a baked potato (organic), with shredded Tillamook cheese, and sour cream (organic). I am also sipping on a smoothie I made at home made of 90% organic ingredients, 100% natural. In the smoothie is strawberries, raspberries, juice, water and a mango pomegranate flavored protein power. The smoothie made in my favorite Christmas gift from my Mom and Step Dad Rob, the Bullet.

During the first trimester I found out what it was like to live as a truly picky eater. My exclusions list far exceeded my list of things I could choke down. This included things I normally enjoyed before like meat, cooked vegetables and oddly enough water.

Eli would scratch his head night after night trying to "guess" what I would eat. Often my go-to food was sliced up apples (organic) and maybe some oatmeal. Shopping was fun too, walking around Costco or Safeway could easy induce nausea if I was teetering on the edge of low blood sugar. The trick - eat something light every 2-4 hours to steer clear of feeling like a sea sick land lover.

The Shopper's Guide to Pesticides became Eli and my go-to when deciding to buy organic or not. Since fruit was high on my list of eat-without-getting-sick list.

Surprisingly enough Costco has increased their stock of organic foods in the "Dirty Dozen" list making our grocery bills a little easier on the pocket book. However, organic potatoes are on my list to grow in our garden since they are expensive and sometimes tough to find outside of Whole Foods or PCC.

I am also blessed with an incredible midwife that has guided me through the mysteries of prenatal supplements. I take four calcium/magnesium pills, two fish oils, one vitamin D, and then three of my mini prenatal pills (equals one giant horse-pill-sized prenatal and is a million times easier to swallow and keep down) per day. So far there are two types of drinks that I can use to get these pesky pills down, Hansens Rootbeer and milk.

Once again, I feel the need to reiterate how thankful I am to be in a position where I can get excellent health care, education as well as make informed buying decisions for the health of the baby and myself.

Even with all this fancy organic food talk, I am still pregnant - that means once in a blue moon I will want an old fashioned milkshake and maybe even a cheese burger.