When you’re pregnant, everything is different.  And if it’s your first time, everything is new.  This means you may have …

Chocolate.

Is it good or bad?  There’s quite a debate out there about this right now.  Some are saying chocolate is good, because is contains so many antioxidants and flavonols and other “beneficial” chemicals.  Others say it’s bad, because of its caffeine content and some of the chemicals it contains….  So, clearly, there’s disagreement here! 

About six weeks ago, we went to a restaurant to celebrate my father’s birthday.  They had “shrimp and crab au gratin” on the menu, and I had to try it.  It was so good!  I decided that I would need to make it at home.  I looked up various recipes and none looked quite right, so I set out on my own.  I omitted the crab, even though I love it, because it is very expensive! This is what I came up with.

This post is particularly important to me, because in my first pregnancy, I chose a doctor the same way I chose every doctor at that point: I looked through providers on my insurance website and picked one that seemed nice. (i.e. had a name I could pronounce, was close to home, was a DO instead of MD….) Up until this point I’d always ended up with pretty nice doctors, so I felt comfortable choosing an OB this way too. Too bad that it didn’t go well.
But what I learned from this experience is that you can and should change your provider if you feel that the first person you’ve met with does not mesh with what you want. You have hired this person! You are not stuck! You have the right to work with someone with whom you are comfortable. I alluded to this in my post on Choosing a Provider, but now it’s time to discuss it a little more.

Since I wrote my first post on adrenal fatigue a couple weeks ago, it seems like everyone’s talking about it!  Sarah, the Healthy Home Economist, wrote a post last week called Six Little Known Signs of Adrenal Fatigue.  Other bloggers have posted recipes for foods that can help adrenal fatigue, like Soli @ I Believe in Butter’s Zucchini with Tomatoes.  It’s a hot topic right now! 

Do you use vanilla extract in baking?  I know I use mine a lot for baking, homemade ice cream, and other things.  There are a lot of reasons why I choose to make my own extract for these purposes, which I will share with you.  And then I’ll get to the good part: how to do it!

Today we have a guest post from one of our readers, Anna Drozdova!  She mentioned in a recent comment that she makes ginger beer and I just had to know how.  I thought all of you would want to know too.  So here she is!

I decided that this year, I wanted to make my own pumpkin puree.  I usually buy a can or two each winter to make pumpkin bread, but of course there are issues with BPA in the can liners.  Making my own seemed to be the best solution!

Welcome to the next post in the Healthy Pregnancy Series!  If you haven’t read the older posts, you may want to go back and do that now!

Tomato sauce wasn’t even my first project, but it was the one that weighed most heavily on my mind. While friends were gathering up strawberries and other earlier crops to make jellies and jams and all sorts of things, I was just waiting. My family won’t eat jellies and jams so there was no reason to make any. But tomato sauce! We go through that like crazy! It was one of the biggest things I’ve planned to can and no, I am STILL not done! But I actually did this one in a few different stages so I “perfected” my technique a bit. I’ll share with you the way that I did it, and explain why some of the other ways are not my preferred way. Here we go…be prepared to get messy!