Grocery Shopping is Pants

ORIGINAL TITLE*:
The I-Hate-Food Blog


I need to go out and do the food shopping. I have made a list of what we will eat over the next week and a list of what I need to buy to prepare those things. It ought to be a pretty quick and easy experience, what with the list.

And by the way, I enjoy food shopping, so what I am about to say isn't based on any dread of the supermarkets.

But the thought of buying food disgusts me. The thought of eating food disgusts me.

I'm at a stage in my pregnancy that makes me despise food in three different ways.
1) I am so big and my stomach is so squashed that I don't want to put any food in it bigger than a bowl of cereal. I hate eating balanced meals now, as there is no space, and it makes me feel bloated and heavy to eat anything.
2) I have such awful, unrelenting heartburn that I can think of nothing to eat that I know won't repeat on me a few hours later and then all night long while I sleep. Except a bowl of cereal. (And yes, I've tried all the remedies, except that baking soda paste one, and that's not going to happen. On my list is another bottle of apple cider vinegar, since I've already drunk the whole bottle straight.)
3) I am so tired at night that I have no desire to stand in front of a stove or an oven and cook meals. And my mind is too tired to come up with anything innovative and original to eat, so we have been eating boring boring boring for the past month, and even with my menu list written out, I do not want to eat anything on it. Except cereal. Plain cereal.

Yet it's not an option NOT to cook, so I have to do this awful shopping regardless. I still need to feed my non-pregnant husband, my two growing children, and my one childminded child. I still need to pack Fifi's lunches with healthy options and prepare varied meals for childminding. As much as I'd love to just go nuts in Farmfoods and buy seven days worth of frozen fish fingers, chicken goujons, hamburger patties, and oven chips (and there have been weeks where I've ended up doing just that), my guilty conscience won't allow me to do that tonight. My guilty conscience tells me that human beings need fresh food from fresh produce, so go buy some frigging broccoli. Then I look at my weekly meal plan and think, 'I have no desire to steam or eat frigging broccoli; surely steam-bags of mixed veg will do.' And yes, they will have to. Because right at this moment, I hate food.

I hate food. I. Hate. Food.

Just give me a glass of milk (for the heartburn), and if I start to get really hungry, I'll toast a slice of bread and smear it with a bit of butter. Then drink another glass of milk, because toast with butter gives me heartburn. Then I'll need to wake up at midnight and down a shot of that apple cider vinegar to conquer the next few hours of burning esophagus thanks to that innocent slice of toast. But it'll be better than if I had made a casserole, or a soup, or even a salad (unless I left off any kind of dressing - or used apple cider vinegar!), because the relaxin or whatever hormone is causing the reflux is really, really....

It's just really, really mean.

Och well, all this moaning doesn't mean I can skip out on my food shopping, so off to Tesco I go. It's a good thing Farmfoods is shut at 8pm, because otherwise, I'm pretty sure I'd throw this list in the bin and just go stock up on freezer junk instead.

Ugh. Someone want to do this for me?




*I had to change the title of this post, because when I googled 'I hate food' out of curiosity, it came up with all eating disorder sites, and I don't want to mislead anyone. Eating disorders are too serious, and I'd hate for my glib little bit about not being hungry to be associated to any ED. Especially in case anyone with an ED googled it and found my blog, and found it heartless and insensitive to those who genuinely DO hate food and can no longer willingly go back to eating due to their illness. Okay, so maybe I'm taking it too far, but it's something serious that matters to me!