We Have Achieved Pregnancy!

Two and a half years has led us to this amazing point. We are five and a half weeks pregnant and everything is looking good so far!

I'm amazed and delighted that WomanCode really worked for us.

I'm not a success story quite yet since there's a long way to go before a healthy and happy delivery. But we're well on our way. Despite PCOS and hypothyroidism we got pregnant naturally.

Only five weeks in it is already tougher than I expected in some ways. I haven't thrown up but my stomach often feels unsettled and the thought of food disgusts me. I'm sleeping a lot and don't feel much motivation to do things (like write this blog post!). I'm also having emotional issues with the hormones bringing up a lot of my fears, insecurities, and depression.

It's all going to be good, though. I know this journey will be worth it.

There's five more weeks to wait before I can see my midwife and get my first scan but the pregnancy has been confirmed with blood work and the hormones are rising appropriately.

If you are struggling to get pregnant because of a hormone imbalance or irregular cycles, you should definitely give the WomanCode diet a try. You've really got nothing to lose!

Still Struggling

Still no temperature rise. I'm starting to panic that my cycle is not going to be a normal length and I'm obsessing over what I'm doing wrong.

I am eating really well but I still have challenges. I've been having too much sugar (found a store that sells the coconut ice cream I love). I'm having a hard time not having carbs in the evenings (even though they are complex carbs).

I also need to cut back on dairy more and be careful about soy. The jury is still out on whether soy really does mess with one's cycle and imitate estrogen in the system but to be on the safe side I should avoid it. Which is really hard! (I made a great almond crusted tofu today).

If stress is really what delayed my ovulation, I need to find a way to relax. Panicking over the role that stress has played is just adding to the stress and making it all worse. I don't know what makes me relax. My husband has his baths that he loves. I nap when I'm stressed. But I need ways to destress when I'm awake. Time to do some research on things to try for relaxing.

A PCOS Miracle & Meal Plan for 5/17 to 5/24

Okay, so the PCOS miracle I'm really looking for is pregnancy, obviously. But today my period started and that's pretty amazing. It is day 30 of my cycle!

A 30 day cycle is just incredible. Absolutely perfect. Just what I need. Once I keep this up I just need to figure out if I'm ovulating. Plus a shorter cycle makes it a lot easier to time sex effectively.

This is great news and I'm excited that the diet is really working. (And you can tell from my last post that I really am going dramatically up and down between hope and despair each day!)

I have been struggling to keep up with my meal plans. I wanted to use up the food I had to not waste but trying to work from leftovers and what I had on hand is tricky when I can't depend on my usual go-to meals (grilled cheese and tuna fish sandwiches). I need some new go-tos! But I also need new go-tos for each cycle phase. That should be a post soon.

But I'm going to try to get back to having a plan for each day so I know what to make for myself and my husband and I'm not struggling to get him enough food.

Sunday (today)
Snack: kale chips
Dinner: yam and black bean soup with orange (afr)

Monday
Breakfast: chocolate peanut butter chia seed parfait
Lunch: wild rice with cranberries and mushrooms
Snack: cranberry DIY larabar
Dinner: black bean soup

Tuesday
Breakfast: parfait
Lunch: stir fry with kale, mushrooms, carrots, onion over brown and wild rice blend
Snack: watermelon pieces
Dinner: miso soup and  almond butter banana popsicles

Wednesday
Breakfast: graham cracker with nut butter and cranberries
Lunch: rajma with brown and wild rice
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: miso soup and sticky rice cakes with red bean paste

Follicular Phase Switch
Thursday
Breakfast: graham crackers with nut butter and clementine
Lunch: sweet potato and avocado onigiri
Snack: avocado wontons
Dinner: Going out with father-in-law

Friday
Breakfast:
Lunch: creamy mushroom fettuccine (afr)
Snack: cashew cookie dough lara bar
Dinner: boca burger with lots of toppings

Saturday (Husband out on boat)
leftovers

Grocery List:
(for monday)
bananas
wild rice
cranberries
mushrooms
dates
almonds

(for rest of week)
miso
peanut butter
clementines or orange
wonton wrappers
avocado
cachews
chocolate chips
whole wheat flour
portabello soup
nori

Asian market:
red bean paste
glutinous/sweet rice flour from long grain

Meals Last Week

I've been mostly cooking leftovers this week. I made this amazing stir fry and I had forgotten how much I love mushrooms. Sweet carrots, flavorful mushrooms, singed broccoli...it was perfection. I ate it with some brown rice.

This is a pumpkin and coconut cream parfait. Yes, it is as amazing as it looks. I'm not the biggest fan of pumpkin taste but this is good. Would have been better if I had done two things better. One, I didn't freeze the pumpkin ahead of time as the recipe recommends. Two, I didn't realize I had Coconut Milk and not Coconut Cream as the recipe calls for. So I was using my hand mixer on it for about twenty minutes before I realized that it was never going to thicken up and turn into whipped cream. Such a shame! But it was still good as a liquidy mess :)

The graham cracker with toppings has become such a great go-to meal for me whether for breakfast or lunch. I spread peanut butter on it and then add things like applesauce, fruit, granola, and nuts. Delicious!

I also made some nacho spinach chips for my lunchbox here. They didn't stay crispy in with the other stuff so next time I need to put a lid on their compartment, I think.

I tried the vegan crepes with asparagus and mushrooms but my asparagus had gone bad so it was just mushrooms. And I tried to substitute Urad flour for the all purpose white and it tasted kind of weird. The crepes were easy to make, though, and I think with normal flour they would taste great.

Today is day 28 of my cycle. My temperature is still high. I'm waiting anxiously to see what news the next week or so might bring me.

My weight is down another couple of pounds. I'm at 144.5 now, which is 28.5 lbs below my heaviest weight.

Sweeteners and Glycemic Index

Because PCOS is a condition that is related to/similar to Diabetes, the diet is similar to that for people with Diabetes. This means you're looking for foods that have a low "GI" (gylcemic index), that is foods that burn fuel slowly in your body rather than giving you a spike in blood sugar.

That's why we steer clear of simple carbs and white sugar. But I was looking at all the various alternative sweeteners out there and wondering where are they on the GI scale compared to white sugar?

I found this helpful chart that lists all the sweeteners out there by their gylcemic index.

After that it has a discussion of the zero GI sweeteners like Stevia. The conclusion seems to be that Stevia is probably a good choice for us (although it always seems to come mixed with other sweeteners that are higher GI, which makes it average out fairly high too. I did see a Stevia plant for sale at the Maryland Sheep and Wool Festival. I wonder if one could create their own sweetener?)

Truvia may be the best as it is mixed with erythriol and that has a GI of only 1.

I was disappointed to see that my favorite sweeteners like Maple Syrup, Honey, and Molasses were still pretty high on the list.

Meal Plan & Progress

So we ended up not even getting to the meals Wednesday to Friday of last week. Even though I should be doing Luteal phase meals now I'm going to still do those plans from last week.

I think that I might have a totally normal cycle this time! I'm on day 22 and yesterday I felt deeply sad for no reason plus I have a little tiny bit of acne developing. These things suggest to me that I'm in PMS, which would be just about right for a "normal" 28 day cycle!

This cycle I tried to use ovulation sticks but I can never seem to get a clear understanding of what's happening with those things. I really need to go back to taking my temperature. I did it this morning so that's a start. I just feel frustrated that I can't instantly have the temperature history to know what this morning's number means but that's entirely my own fault.

I still feel my hope and my fear swinging wildly back and forth. One moment I feel full of hope that we're are finally close to getting pregnant and I'm fixing all our issues. Another moment I feel the familiar despair that it's never going to happen and it's too late for me. (It's not. I'm 33, which is old but not too old).

It's Mother's Day tomorrow and it feels like a punch in the gut. My customers want to wish me a happy Mother's Day and so are more likely to ask if I have children.

But anyway, if I do get a period next week that will be pretty amazing and a great sign that I am probably ovulating.

From last week:
Wednesday  Sunday
Breakfast: graham cracker
Lunch: rajma and brown rice
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: grilled asparagus

Thursday Monday
Breakfast: graham cracker with nut butter, applesauce, and strawberries
Lunch: quinoa kale bowl with mushroom and asparagus
Snack: trail mix
Dinner: asparagus leek and green onion soup

Friday Tuesday
Breakfast: graham cracker
Lunch: breakfast for lunch: sweet potato hash browns and coconut "bacon" flakes, vegan pancakes topped with strawberries
Snack: lara bar
Dinner: Savory Asparagus Crepes with Easy Vegan Hollandaise Sauce

New meals (Luteal)

Wednesday

Breakfast: pumpkin pie parfait

Lunch: orange cauliflower and brown rice

Snack: oven baked onion rings with chia seed breading 

Dinner: Sanctuary Salad (ranch style) (afr book)

Thursday

Breakfast:

Lunch: lettuce wrap tacos with fake beef crumbles

Snack: girl scout cookie lara bar

Dinner: carrot soup

Friday 

Breakfast:

Lunch: stir fry with whatever veggies are left and brown rice

Snack: vegan cookie dough blizzard

Dinner: yam and blackbean soup with orange (afr book)

Grocery List:

pumpkin puree

walnuts

molasses?

romaine lettuce

boca crumbles

peanuts

vegan chocolate chips?

cauliflower

radishes

sunflower sprouts

cherry tomatoes

extra firm silken tofu

dill

vegetable broth powder

onion flakes

orange juice

A nice short grocery list means I have the chance to buy some extras that I have good deals for. Like claritin and nature valley bars. Maybe I can even buy that raspberry bush this week!

Also with a few more pet purchases I should get the $7 back coupon that's advertised at Weis this month.

Meals 5/5/15

The eggplant "bacon" was...okay. It was flavorful. But it didn't get crispy like you want in a blt. It was my first time trying eggplant and I wasn't thrilled with it but I did think that I'd be willing to try it in other applications. 

For the sandwich I decided to do half with the eggplant bacon and half with the coconut bacon flakes and see which I liked better. I thought the bacon flakes would get a better crunch but I didn't end up liking either side. I didn't eat very much of this sandwich.

I added "shaved brussle sprouts" from the Appetite for Reduction book. I've made four recipes from it so far this week and they've all been good. No surprise I liked these. I don't know if they were meant to get quite this black but that's how I like my veggies: pan fried until blackened!

I want to start keeping an eye on whether I'm getting enough fruits and veggies every day. With eating reduced carbs and sugars plus no meat or dairy you would think the only thing left to eat would be fruits and veggies yet I still seem to manage to avoid getting enough. I've been eating a lot of nuts.

Did I get five servings of fruits and veggies?

1. Apricot in breakfast and snack
2. Eggplant in "b"lt
3. Brussle Sprouts in lunch side
4. Red Bell Pepper in soup at dinner
5. Spinach in "b"lt
6. Tomatoes in "b"lt
7. Spinach and strawberries in dinner salad

I didn't exactly eat much of my lunch but I did well in serving myself enough varieties of fruits and veggies!

Meals this Weekend and Mood Changes

My Sunday meals did not get done at all since I didn't get all my grocery shopping done in time and we had a friend in town visiting. I ended up making the sweet potato hash browns with coconut bacon and vegan pancakes. I threw in an egg because we still have some to use up.

The pancakes were phenomenal. Very light and fluffy. Super easy to cook. I like them better than my standard pancake recipe.

The coconut bacon also turned out great. My husband says they taste like a mixture of coconut and bacon and he likes both those things.

The hashbrowns were not as much of a success. The idea of cooking them in a waffle iron sounded so awesome. But it did not work at all for me. Despite using up all the rest of my paper towels (I usually use cloth paper towels), I couldn't get enough moisture out.

This morning I woke up at 5:00 am to get lunch finished before my husband left at 7:15. I just barely made it! I'm really glad I got a new food processor because I used it for four different things this morning: bread dough, pesto, mousse, and diy lara bar.

This is portabello mushroom burger (marinated in balsamic) on whole wheat bun (actually mixed flours because I ran out part way through!) with a home roasted red pepper and homemade pesto. Avocado chocolate mousse (I forgot to add the strawberries for hubby's lunch!). And a homemade version of an apricot almond Lara bar.

I'm on day 17 of my cycle and my mood has been really bad. It feels like nothing is going right the last couple of days. I feel like sleeping until it's over. It's PMSy feelings but it's far too early to be getting PMS, I think. 

I'm recording it on my fertility tracking app and waiting to see what it might mean.

Paying Attention to Poop

Gross out alert! I hate talking about poop. I hate thinking about poop. I don't want to know those details about anyone's life, even my own!

However.

It is an important way that we can know how our bodies are functioning. I have learned from WomanCode that higher levels of fiber are necessary for women with PCOS because when we don't eliminate often enough waste estrogen gets reabsorbed into our bodies (and I've seen that information confirmed with several PCOS experts). That makes our imbalance of hormones worse.

Since I don't like to think about these things, I haven't been paying any attention to how often I poop. I read somewhere once that everyone has their own schedule and there is no normal so not to worry if you go twice a day or once every other day.

But WomanCode explains that you should be using the bathroom within twenty minutes of getting out of bed in the morning with only the help of water (not coffee). You should go again in the afternoon.

Once I started paying attention for it I discovered that I was definitely constipated. I hadn't noticed because I didn't have any pain associated with it (I did when I was a pre-teen and had to go on suppositories for a while. Yuck!)

Even now that I've increased the amount of fiber I'm eating and taking Metamucil pills most days I still struggle to use the bathroom twice a day.

This is another way I'll be able to tell if the diet is working. It's one of the few daily signs that can be observed.

Just The Essentials

From reading message boards and watching videos of other people with PCOS I see lots of people talking about diet and its effect on PCOS symptoms.

There's different books and different websites and different programs that we can get on but they all have two things in common. These are the essential basic foundation of using diet to heal PCOS.

1) No simple carbs
2) No simple sugars

(and those two things are related).

So regardless of the other details, I think if you have PCOS: going for complex carbs and natural sugars will go a long way towards balancing your hormones and getting you back onto a proper cycle.

That's what all the PCOS diets have in common, what they all recommend.

It may not matter which of these diets you follow as long as you're doing low carb (basically the food that is good for people with diabetes).

Another element that's very common in these diets is lessening dairy intake.

Increasing fiber matters because that can clear excess estrogen out of our systems.

These are the basics that can go a long way towards healing us and erasing our symptoms!

Meals 4/27/15 and 4/28/15

Breakfasts:
Oatmeal Bars
I don't like these very much. They're edible but I don't love them. I put some honey on them yesterday and that was a little better. But this morning I had an avocado with balsamic vinegar for breakfast.

My husband likes them, though, and he's impressed by how filling they are.

I also attempted the chia seed banana bread muffins. I didn't have arrowroot powder, though, so I just used corn starch. I probably should have looked up what conversion rate to use. They ended up pretty bad. Didn't really cook through. The glaze was good, though. I may try this again when I have all the right ingredients.

Snacks:
Trail Mix
Yum yum yum. This is tempting to eat every time I'm hungry. I mixed cashews, walnuts, craisins, raisins, and mini semi-sweet chocolate chips with some salt and a drizzle of olive oil. Good stuff but I need to make sure I'm snacking on enough fruits and veggies and not just nuts and bits of dried fruit.

Baby Food

This was a good suggestion. I got a great deal on these on-the-go applesauces (which are not billed as necessarily baby food but have the same concept as the baby pouches). The only issue for me is that I am sensitive to food texture and I don't like things that are too smooth. So rather than eat this straight from the pouch, I spread it on a graham cracker and sprinkled with raisins. Delicious!

Baked Fried Pickles

I love fried pickle chips so when I heard that you can make breading out of chia seeds I wanted to try it with pickles. 

It worked fairly well. Next time I'll use more oil for the pan and not try to put wax paper down (oven temp is so hot that the paper burned). The one side of the breading stuck to the paper pretty badly.

I tried some with just gelled chia seeds (mixing chia seeds with water and letting sit a few minutes) and others with a mix of that and flaxseed meal. The mix worked much better.

With a dollop of ranch dressing these were quite yummy.

Main Meals:

Carrot Noodles
I don't have a veggie spiralizer yet so I sliced the carrots with a mandolin slicer. The sauce is very flavorful and intense so it goes perfectly with some brown rice.

Egg Salad on whole wheat toast for lunch. I'm really going to miss egg salad a lot when I go vegan.

Caprese Salad with a homemade pesto using cashews in place of pine nuts. Regular salad on the side.

Meal Plan 4/26 to 5/2

Day One:
Breakfast: Basic Oatmeal Squares (with raisins and chocolate chips added)
Lunch: egg salad with relish
Snack: homemade trail mix featuring cashews
Dinner: caprese salad and cashew pesto

Day Two:
Breakfast: chia seed banana bread with nut butter
Lunch: stir fry with brown rice, carrots, broccoli, snap peas
Snack: baked fried pickles with chia seed breading
Dinner: carrot pasta with creamy zesty garlic sauce

Day Three:
Breakfast:
Lunch: egg salad
Snack: trail mix
Dinner: lima bean and sugar snap pea mint salad

Day Four:
Breakfast:
Lunch: stir fry with carrots, broccoli, and snap peas
Snack: deviled eggs
Dinner: avocado with balsamic vinegar

Day Five:
Breakfast:
Lunch: avocado almond butter sandwich
Snack:
Dinner: salad with artichoke hearts

Day Six:
Breakfast:
Lunch: dijon pork chops and sauteed broccoli
Snack:
Dinner: broccoli cheese soup

Day Seven:
Breakfast:
Lunch:
Snack:
Dinner:

Grocery List:
lettuce
avocado
chia seeds
carrots
broccoli
brown rice
tomato
raw cashews
frozen baby lima beans
chocolate chips
(shallot)
(mint)
tahini
pickles

dog food

Meals 4/21

I was going to make carrot cake breakfast cookies but I forgot I needed bananas and I sent my husband to work with the last of them. So I made the cookies the next day. They are very moist with the mashed banana, applesauce, and fruits. I left out the pineapple. I'm not crazy about them but they are okay.

For lunch I did a pan fried chicken and crispy garlic broccoli. It was delicious! My only caution is watch out for the steam. That oven is super, super hot. I got a painful face full of steam.

I went to work with some rice crackers for a snack. I came home so exhausted that I couldn't stand the thought of cooking my dinner. I convinced my husband to make me "cream" of carrot soup (really milk of carrot soup). He had never made soup that wasn't in a can and he was really nervous, but I talked him through it from the living room and he delivered a delicious soup that was way better than what I would have finished with (I tend to cut corners a lot in recipes).

I didn't get a picture of that one but it was great.

Meals 4/20 & Super Simple Rajma Recipe

I had the cranberry breakfast cookies again.

For lunch I did rajma, which is an Indian dish of red kidney beans. I make a super simple version of it...

Rajma

• sautee onion, garlic
• once those are really sizzling, add a few diced canned tomato bits
• add a rinsed can of kidney beans and about a cup of water
• add sprinklings of turmeric, cumin, chili pepper to taste
• cook until a lot of the water cooks off
• serve with rice

For dinner I was supposed to do duck fat fries but I wasn't able to find duck at the grocery store either in the meat section or in the frozen section (pig's feet? yes. cow tongue? yes. gizzards? yes. duck? no.)

I ended up eating some tomato soup I had bought at work a few days ago and never finished. Then I made the cupcakes you saw in the last post. Happily that kept me from eating the mini cadbury eggs that my husband had!

When I told my friends that the avocado black bean brownies hadn't worked for me, one suggested this recipe, so I'll be giving it a try at some point: http://www.skinnytaste.com/2014/02/amazing-flour-less-brownies.html?m=1

Flour-less and Natural Sugar Cupcakes

After so many bad desserts this phase, I was really craving something rich and sweet. Watching Cupcake Wars is not helping!

So I did some research to find a cupcake I could eat.

Ideally I don't eat any sugar in the evenings, not even natural sugar like honey. But I decided eating some honey was going to save me from eating something worse.

I chose this super quick and easy microwave flour-less cupcake: http://ditchthewheat.com/1-minute-flourless-chocolate-cupcake-lc-gf/

Then I made this cream cheese frosting with honey: http://www.babble.com/kid/carrot-cupcakes-with-honey-sweetened-cream-cheese-frosting/

The denseness of the cake didn't pair that well with the light cream cheese frosting but it was still way more delicious than any of the other desserts I tried this phase!

Meals 4/19

On Sunday I had work from 11:00 am to 5:00 pm so I was rushing around in the morning getting my lunch cooked and ready!

I made it though.

For breakfast I made the cranberry walnut breakfast cookies but I substituted chestnuts for the walnuts since chestnuts are the nut of the menstrual phase. I happened to have a bag of pre-roasted chestnuts that my mother-in-law gave me a while ago and I had never opened!

The cookies were pretty yummy. I like the pumpkin ones a little better but these are good. They also don't hold together quite as well as the pumpkin ones.

We did the dijon mustard pork chops with wild rice. I got just a box of wild rice mixed with long grain. I realized later that I could have gotten brown rice and wild rice and mixed them together for my own custom blend. Next time. I cooked the boxed rice in home made chicken broth and added chopped craisins and chestnuts. I ate half of this before I left and then the other half at work a while later.

In the evening I finished up grocery shopping and I decided that I couldn't wait any longer for a food processor. So we tried to go to Goodwill to look for one, but it being Sunday night they were closed. Then I found a Big Lots and got a nice big food processor for $30. (Here's the one I got. It's a tiny bit cheaper on Amazon).

With that I was able to make the black bean avocado brownies that I was so excited about. But they were a huge disappointment. They weren't at all sweet.

Granted, I was low on the brown sugar and didn't put in quite enough but it's hard to believe that little bit could have such a big effect. It tasted like dense refried beans more than brownies. They look so good too! :(

We also had some snack foods for dinner like the buffalo cauliflower and some guacamole with rice crackers.

We Have Blood!

Day 48 and I am officially in the menstruation phase. I may be the only woman trying to conceive who is thrilled about that, but I am.

That is shorter than the 60 to 90 day cycles I have been having (and many of those periods were brought on by outside forces like medication to force me to ovulate so they could check me for PCOS).

It is said that 28-35 is a normal length of cycle. But I'm pretty sure my friend who has two children has a cycle that's usually in the 38-40 day range.

Plus I only started the diet part way through this cycle. I'm pleased that I think I pegged where I was in my cycle pretty accurately based on emotional cues.

I'm not going to go back to taking my temperature quite yet. It stresses me out and makes me frustrated when it isn't what I want to see (it's very low all the time, never seems to rise).

I will see as I continue my diet how long my next cycle is. After a couple of cycles in the realm of normal then I will start taking my temperature and using the ovulation test strips that a friend sent me to see if having a period means that I'm ovulating.

Meal Plan Sun 4/19 to Sat 4/25

If menstruation begins...
Day One:
Breakfast: I had such luck with pumpkin breakfast cookies, I'm going to try Cranberry Walnut Breakfast Cookies
Lunch: Wild rice pilaf with pork chops
Snack: buffalo cauliflower
Dinner: caprese salad (must use up some of my basil!) and black bean avocado brownies

Day Two:
Breakfast: toast with concord grape jelly and egg on the side
Lunch: rajma and wild rice
Snack: cheese crackers (made by cooking slices of cheese until crispy)
Dinner: Black bean soup and sweet potato flatbread and brownies

Day Three:
Breakfast: breakfast cookies
Lunch: I will attempt to imitate the amazing duck fat fries at Victoria's with sweet potato
Snack: deviled eggs
Dinner:  mini pies with graham cracker crust and sugar free dessert pudding
I'm adding desserts to my dinners here because I know when I'm on my period I crave dessert a lot!

switching into follicular (may need to switch meals around based on work schedule and menstruation)
Day Four:
Breakfast: carrot cake breakfast cookies
Lunch: chicken with plum glaze
Snack: crispy garlic broccoli
Dinner: cream of carrot soup with sauteed broccoli

Day Five:
Breakfast: toast with avocado, cottage cheese on the side
Lunch: pan roasted chicken
Snack: deviled eggs
Dinner: spinach salad with artichoke hearts

(probably will have enough leftovers to cover the last couple of days. If not, will make more plans when closer)
Day Six:
Breakfast:
Lunch:
Snack:
Dinner:

Day Seven:
Breakfast:
Lunch:
Snack:
Dinner:

I was going to do a whole other meal plan for if my period doesn't start, but I'm getting really tired of the luteal foods and with the cramps last night, I have to count this as a change in cycle!

Grocery List:

wild rice

pork chops
duck

black beans
kidney beans

tomato
broccoli
sweet potato
avocado (2)
artichoke hearts can
spinach
bananas

dried cranberries

mozerella
parmesean

graham crackers
plum jam
apple sauce unsweetened
mild hot sauce
sugar free jello pudding
cocoa powder

eggs
heavy whipping cream

Food Wed 4/15

Hope everyone had a good tax day, everything finished! We've got some issues with our taxes from the year before that we're struggling with. Hopefully that will be resolved soon.

I really do feel like my period has got to be nearly here. I was so down yesterday. And I woke up with a headache, plus I was ravenously hungry last evening. These are all signs of it.

A friend called and I started sobbing. She said, "Are you hormonal?" and I said, "I sure hope so!" Whether from pregnancy or my period, I'll take either at this point.

So I didn't do a very good job yesterday regulating my food. I was supposed to eat toast with egg in the morning and then spaghetti squash chow mein for lunch and spinach salad for dinner.

I missed breakfast completely, which set me on a bad trajectory. Then I was having company for dinner so I snacked through lunch and made the spaghetti squash chow mein for dinner.

That turned out fantastic!

I highly recommend this one. The strong sauce went great with the squash and it really tasted just like chow mein. Great for a Chinese food fix.

Would be even better with some chicken or beef satay. I tend to forget about meat when it comes to meal planning. I was a vegetarian for a long time and a lot of my family are vegetarians so it's easy for me to forget about meat. Next time I'll add some meat over the top and it will be perfect.

Then in the evening I started getting super cranky and shaking and unable to focus or to make any decisions. I was craving brownies (and considered running to the store for ingredients for black bean avocado brownies). Instead my husband whipped up some flourless banana bread muffins and I fried the rest of my cauliflower tatertot batter so we had some evening snacks.

I'm going to be working on meal planning for next week and I think I'll plan two potential menus, one based on if I get my period and the other if I don't. I won't be shopping until Sunday (it's Thursday today) so I'll have time to find out what to expect from next week.

My garden is doing pretty well. I'll have to get a picture of that for you. I transferred the seedlings outside. I didn't have enough soil to fill out the fabric garden bed I bought. I should have started smaller! But I piled soil into the corner and planted there. It has required a lot of watering, but luckily I've been saving rain water in some buckets (I will be making a proper rain barrel soon). The carrots greens are growing and getting big. The broccoli seems good too.

Food Mon 4/13 and Tue 4/14

Eggs on whole wheat toast.

I have a long history of dislike for whole wheat bread but Nature's Own wasn't too bad. I was going to make my own, but I was able to get such a good deal on this that I got it instead.

With eggs and salt it was quite good.

Spaghetti squash with "cream" sauce

This was terrible! lol. The fake cream sauce may work as an alfredo substitute on real pasta but it was awful with squash. Both were very mild in taste and it was just a tasteless goopy mess. I'm not really sold on the sauce at all. I'm not sure it actually worked.

I salvaged the squash a little bit by roasting the seeds.

Cauliflower tater tots

These were really good. The only problem is that when they said to drop them into very hot oil my oil was too hot. They cooked to black in three seconds flat before I can snatch them out!

Bacon, Egg, Leek Risotto

This was delicious but took a long time. I guess I should have known that but I've never made risotto before. It's a very long process. Even longer with the brown rice. I couldn't find short grain brown rice so I went with long grain. It was still a tad bit crunchy when I ate it.

I probably should have done this meal on a day I didn't have work.

Will try this again with more time for cooking. As with my previous bacon recipe, bacon makes everything delicious!

Because I forgot to get pepperoni, the pizza bites didn't happen. Will have to save that for next week. Instead I had my graham crackers with chocolate chips and nuts and raisins.