Chef BoyarDON'T GO HERE

Now that I am 14 weeks and have experienced about 3 nausea-free days, I have gotten smug. Luckily, my little Peppermint is keeping me humble because just when I think I am never going to feel that nauseating little tingle in my gut, I see Jeff cutting up steak chunks and know that if I eat them, we will be dealing with a different kind of steak chunk. If I had to pick a low point in my first trimester eating, it would be the Tuesday night that I feasted on this:

Yes, I stooped low enough to open a can of Chef Boyardee mac'n'cheese and a can of water-packed chicken. I wish I was kidding. All the freshly ground pepper from a William Sonoma pepper grinder could not stamp out the distinctly white trash flavor of this meal. In my defense, Jeff was working late-- eating pounds of fresh sushi on the Man's dime-- and there was a snow storm and I was really, really craving mac 'n' cheese, but felt too exhausted to wait for water to boil so I could have the more bourgeois treat: Kraft Mac'n'Cheese. Truth be told, I was craving tuna casserole, but the whole "if you eat a high-mercury fish like tuna in pregnancy horrible things will come to pass for the being attached to that heartbeat you fell in love with" has kept me from my real love, the chicken of the sea.

So, like any good parent, I made a sacrifice. I concocted a little chicken casserole for myself made from products that should really only be eaten if a famine of Biblical proportions hits Chicago. And then, only if I have already eaten human flesh and found it too salty.

In other words, canned mac'n'cheese is tastes no more nourishing than a pixie stick. Don't let that cheesy color fool you. If it tasted like that delicious cheese that comes on nachos at a baseball game, I would have gotten in the car, driven to Costco, and loaded up the trunk and the backseat with cases full of this canned cheesy goodness. But, not everything that is an unnatural yellowish, orange color tastes like scrumptous melted Vel-veeta. This had a metallic aftertaste that was so strong that I had to brush my teeth twice just to get back to that yummy biley-vomity taste that I was used to. I haven't come across many edible substances worse than my own puke, but this produce was able to achieve that feat.

In the future, when Al Gore does a documentary on landfill hazards and the demise of our good planet Earth, there will be aerial shots of two things that do not decompose: Pampers and Chef Boyardee Mac'n'Cheese.