I imagine that the best thing about being incarcerated is the guarantee of three square meals a day. No menu planning, no grocery shopping, just exit your cell in an orderly fashion three times a day and file into the prison cafeteria to receive your portion of pipin' hot prison food. Okay, prison food probably tastes horrible (especially if you're an inmate at Maricopa County Prison), but I've just about had it with meal planning. Especially lunch. Lunch is the most annoying meal of the day! It needs to be substantial in order to fill the 12-hour void from breakfast to dinner, so that usually calls for something better than fruit and cheese or PB&J. I often try to cook big batches of stuff in hopes of having portions for lunch (e.g., giant pan of lasagna), but usually I end up saving those extra portions for dinner because let's face it - weeknight cooking can be brutal, and often leads to eating dinner at 8:30. So I'm in search of some excellent lunch ideas! I just found this recipe booklet for awesome sandwiches, and Just Bento has some neat ideas for bento lunches, many of which require minimal prep time. Last week I fixed up some Vietnamese-style sandwiches using this recipe, which turned out very tasty. Does anyone else have any favorite packed lunch strategies to share? I'm about to resort to GTY (Grand Theft Yarn) to avoid having to plan another week of lunches!

No time for a lengthy post at the moment, but I saw this site and had to share. I think it's exactly the kind of thing that will appeal to my regular reader(s). Ever notice that fast food looks way better in advertisements than it does in real life? Here's incontrovertible proof.

I've heard of several... shall we say, interesting things that women choose to do with their placentas after giving birth. There's the classic "bury it in the garden" approach, but I only have a patio container garden and I think an umbilical cord trailing out of a windowbox might scare the neighbors. Then there's the hardcore hippie "cook it and eat it" method, which has awesome ewwwww potential but I don't believe anyone really does this. Although if you bury your placenta in the garden, a pack of neighborhood dogs might unearth it for a snack. Until today, I was ignorant of placenta prints, or the art of using your placenta as a squishy stamp pad to make decorative wall art (or Christmas cards, wallpaper, etc.). I have to admit, I'll probably want to take a look at my placenta, but the relationship ends there. It is very cool that I've manufactured a whole new essential organ out of nothing, but I don't need to eat it. Besides, what wine would I serve?

Last weekend I attended my first baby education class! I started small, with a seminar on taking care of newborns and breastfeeding. I learned many awesome things, such as: 1. My belly is as big, or bigger than pregnant ladies with due dates several weeks (i.e., 4-6 weeks) earlier than mine. 2. I should bank cord blood because it may be the only cure for my future diabetes - everyone knows that the pharmaceutical industry quashes disease cures to ensure their continued profits. 3. Listeria is transmissible through breastmilk, so the prohibition on soft cheese and cold lunchmeat has to remain in effect until the baby is weaned. Although I "learned" all these things in class, please note that only item #1 above is true. Le sigh. I did learn a lot of great things, especially about coordinating breastfeeding/pumping/working, and tons of handy tips for helping my wee one to sleep. I practiced swaddling, and even bathed and diapered a realistic plastic baby. But it was painful to hear the teacher say that pharmaceutical companies bury disease cures to maintain profits. Although pharma companies may do a lot of things that seem "evil", these companies are also made up of individuals, the majority of which actually care about reducing human suffering. Shocking, I know. And the comment about Listeria being transmissible through breastmilk is bunk, or at least never proven. Just another way to limit the autonomy of pregnant and breastfeeding ladies "just in case". Listeriosis infection is very dangerous for pregnant women, and can cause miscarriage and stillbirth. A lot of people I know pooh-pooh my prohibition on unpasteurized soft cheese, but the fact is that pregnant women are 20 times more likely to contract listeriosis than other adults. This FDA factsheet estimates that 30% of all cases of listeriosis occur in pregnant women. Now, far less than 30% of the population is pregnant, so there is something magical about being pregnant that makes us gestators far more likely to get listeriosis. Capiche? I haven't had brie since last June (sniff). But the danger comes to an end once this baby pops out, and then I've got a brie bacchanalia all planned. St. Andre - here I come, lover.

That's the first thing that crossed my mind when I was David Lebovitz's recipe for Candied Bacon Ice Cream. But no, he's serious! And it looks seriously good. I have David's ice cream cookbook The Perfect Scoop, but his Salted Butter Caramel Ice Cream was so good I stopped making ice cream in fear that I would hurt myself. Perhaps I'll make an exception for ice cream of the bacon-y variety.

One of the more annoying aspects of pregnancy is forbidden foods. In particular, forbidden drinks. Yes, I used to enjoy alcoholic beverages, but that vice has pretty much been put on hold. Strangely, I don't miss the alcohol as much as I miss the variety of taste. The tart tannins of wine, the bitter flowery notes of beer, the sweet oakyness of a good single malt... When you're reduced to water, milk, and soda, you get fed up FAST with sweet drinks. I go through lots of club soda, but that gets dull after a few months. Tonic water is better, but I limit my intake because quinine isn't that great for developing fetuses. Dry Soda is really tasty, but at $2 a bottle, this pregnant lady balks a little. Desperate times call for desperate measures. I invented the following beverage, something I like to call (very creatively) the "Pregnant Lady Cocktail". It's bubbly and tart, and the sweetness level can be adjusted depending on what the taste buds call for that day. As all pregnant ladies know, that can change in an instant. Did I mention there are cherries? Pregnant Lady Cocktail Serves one pregnant lady Pour into a pint glass: 1 12 oz can club soda or seltzer 1/2 to 1 1/2 oz Torani raspberry syrup (to taste) 1/2 to 1 1/2 oz Key Lime Juice Stir gently, add ice and several maraschino cherries. Drink in one gulp, preferably through a pink straw.