Eating on the Job

Well, eating, like most everything these past six weeks, has been difficult.  And, eating at work has been even worse.  First of all, my body was demanding hot food.  Secondly, I refuse to let microwaves be a part of my regular routine.  And, of course, I'm now in need of hot, organic food, I can only eat about three things for a meal (fresh alfredo pasta, fresh burgers, and fresh pancakes), and I no longer live a five-minute walk from work.  Oh yeah, we're not lucky enough to have a full kitchen here.  That would be wonderful!

I've usually packed a pretty good lunch since I moved away from work and in with Sean (before he was baby daddy).  But, since the preggers stomach is so finicky, and the organic preggers worman so particular about her food, my lunch box has become a full-on paper grocery bag.  Let's peak into today's stash:

What we've got here is an organic baby romaine salad with lemon olive oil dressing, organic carrot slices, organic raspberries, organic bananas, a smoothie, a glass water bottle filled from home, and a mason jar of raspberry leaf tea.  We eat different lettuces at home, usually an herb salad or spring mix, but my stomach would only take romaine.  Most romaine salads have a lot of hearts, but the baby romaine salad we found was a better alternative, being dark green and purple.  Though these carrots are from a five-pound bag, I usually prefer to grab the ones from Whole Foods with the tops on and a little dirt still on them.  I believe that the more processed my food is before I buy it, the more potential that process has to remove nutrients from my food before I get it.  Baby daddy and Green Babies Sage Moms both say that banana's are safe when they aren't organic, and Sean goes further to say that organic bananas are a waste of money, because they don't require any pesticides to grow.  I still like to buy the organic ones, but I'll just grab whatever is ripest, because I want to actually eat them this week!

My fruit smoothie is a blend of fresh-squeezed organic orange juice, organic raspberries, organice strawberries, and a banana.  My friend, Norma, dropped off some raspberry tea for this preggers girl, which I had just been reading about in Wise Woman's Herbal for the Childbearing Years, is good for strengthening the uterus before and during pregnancy.  So, I brew it before work to ensure that I will drink it!  The water at home has an Aquasana water filter.  I was an avid Brita user, but Sean did the research long before I arrived on scene, and he chose this one because it's the only one that filters out unnecessary chemicals, like fluoride.

You'll notice that my water bottle is glass (a VOSS water bottle you can pick up at Whole Foods), as is the mason jar and my salad container.  We try to minimize the plastic in our lives.  It's hard to do, because plastic is so convenient and cheap.  I don't have a good glass container for my smoothie yet, but I just started carting those into work yesterday.  Prior to that, I was drinking it in a glass on the way to work.  I just really don't trust plastic to not leech junk into my food, even though some plastics are better than others.  Stainless steel leeches a little bit, and it's certainly better than plastic.  The only thing that doesn't leech into your food is glass and silicone.

In my next blog post, I'm going to talk about the yummy places that I've been able to get hot food without a microwave while at work.