these are not the cupcakes you are looking for

before i was pregnant sweets held no sway with me. i have been very accustomed to depriving myself of what i really wanted to eat. i became a vegetarian about 5 years ago despite the fact that i LOVED meat, especially a bone's filet just barely cooked....yum...all bloody and still a bit chilled inside :) my choice to become a vegetarian was 100% wrapped up in the treatment of animals and giving up meat was very hard. i still drool over steaks and hamburgers....anyways, i became adept at eating food that really did not hold much interest for me but that i knew was a healthier option. yes, i am the vegetarian that does not really like salad and i am not in love with veggies. I started to think of food as simply fuel for my body. therefore, i very rarely ate sweets of any kind because they are full of sugar which i also tried to avoid (although i always made an exception for my aunt angie's red velvet cake!).

one of the side effects of pregnancy that i looked forward to was food cravings. i pictured myself sending bens out at 11 pm for ice cream and pickles just like they do in the movies. during this pregnancy i have had one real craving...for taco bell. what a waste! i just drove the 1/2 mile from my house and picked it up for myself. the rational side of my brain insists that not having food cravings or aversions has been much better for me. i look at the food pyramid and try to plan what i should eat throughout the day without a second thought to what i will be wanting at that particular moment.

although i would not define any of my feelings as cravings, i have developed a "taste" for sweets that i did not previously have. i will admit that ice cream was once an important part of benson's courtship strategy but like i said, i have never had a sweet tooth. once or twice a week, benson and i now have a late snack of atlanta's best ice cream from the frosty caboose. i find myself getting super excited about which flavor i am going to get (even though it is usually butter pecan). imagine my surprise when i was driving down peachtree industrial the other day and found myself veering across multiple lanes of traffic when i saw a sign for the newly opened sugar shack...40 flavors (guesstimation) of cupcakes should be illegal! i felt like i had an out of body experience when i became THAT pregnant girl buying 4 flavors of cupcakes and making excuses (lies) about how i was going to space them out and how i have a husband at home who can help me out! it was physically difficult to drive home without ripping into the box at a stop light. when i finally got home, this is what i saw.

cue lights and ethereal voices coming down from the heavens

carrot cake....peanut butter....red velvet...key lime pie...
i was at a loss. which one should i eat first? luckily (in this one respect) benson was out of town for 2 nights. (in a very nice and supportive way, he does what i asked of him months ago and reminds me that i did not want to turn into THAT pregnant lady and continues to remind me that sweets are not really giving anything good to the baby. damn it, why did i make him agree to keep me in check?! in the future i will have to try jedi mind tricks "these are not the cupcakes you are looking for...i can go about my business" ) since bens was out of town i was under no pressure to eat them immediately. i felt like this was the best option.

why could i not get this picture to rotate??

a bite of each! later i finished off the key lime pie and the next day i demolished the red velvet. true to my old form though, i got a little tired of the sugary sweet treats and ended up leaving them on the counter until i found an ant trail this morning...maybe some things never change... i can say that for the first time in my life i am really enjoying my desserts!