I took extra time off before my due date because I had vacation time to spare, so why not? In hindsight, maybe I should have taken less time off. I tried to sleep in past 7AM, but in the end, I just couldn't stay in bed any longer. 

What am I getting up so early for? 

To feed my growing baby, I guess. 

Actually, more than 50% of my day is spent thinking about food. Food that I should be eating to keep the baby healthy. Food that I plan to eat right away after the baby comes.  The next meal, because the last meal I had might not have had enough fiber or protein. Trying to decide whether I should snack on another cookie while waiting for the husband to come home from work and make dinner, or just wait for dessert after dinner.  All I want is sugar and pastries!

Is there such a thing as a healthy dessert? 

J and I were at Snow Angel Cafe  a while back, and tried the honeycomb shaved ice (bingsoo). Since it's mostly ice, it must be healthy, and look, there are even walnuts for extra protein! The honeycomb topping and the scoop of vanilla ice cream was just sweet enough to add flavor to the ice. The best part was how visually appealing the whole thing looked, topped with cute little edible flowers. 

I remember that when we visited, I was still in the early stages of pregnancy, before the nasty orange drink diabetes test, so I was really trying to control my sugar intake. I tried to leave most of it for J to eat, but it was pretty hard to resist. 

 

They have a few other flavours, including matcha and red bean toppings. I was looking forward to going back to try a few others this summer. 

Fast forward to pandemic times... Snow Angel is still open for deliveries, but can't go to the cafe for bingsoo. It's pretty hard to get a bowl of ice delivered before it melts into a puddle!

The sugar cravings are real though, and K kindly ordered one of their earl grey cakes for me, for our socially distant baby shower. She also ordered an ice latte for H, so that he wouldn't feel left out. I took a sip, ONE SIP, which is safe for the baby. It was a solid coffee. They separated a few pieces of sugar on the side for adjusting sweetness as preferred. The cake was alright, not a lot of earl grey flavor, but otherwise, a delicious spongy cake with fluffy whipped cream. 

I'll be back for the bingsoo once we can!  

PS - thanks to everyone for the gifts and food. It really helps to know that we have the support of our friends and family with this little one. :) 

One day, after dinner, PJS and I came to Passion8:

This shaved ice bowl was amazing. Matcha, redbean, cheesecake, and mochi toppings. The ice is sweetened with syrup or some type of sugar (condensed milk maybe?), and goes really well with the matcha. The garnish was a piece of dried orange that looked pretty cute, but we didn’t eat it (were we supposed to?).

Next up was the Multigrain (Injulmi) toast! Topped with a mountain of whipped cream and walnuts, and this..rice flour flakey thing that had the texture of a less buttery croissant. The inside had more mochi/rice cake filling and red bean:

This was OK, not my favourite. I am drooling though, just thinking about that shaved ice in the summer…

Too bad I’m sick right now.

Pragmatic – dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a way that is based on practical rather than theoretical considerations.

Dogmatic - inclined to lay down principles as incontrovertibly true.

if i were pragmatic, i would know that we cannot possibly eat all this because we will feel sick afterwards. however, i am not pragmatic. if i were dogmatic, i would not eat all of this because it goes against principles of healthy eating. however, i am also not dogmatic. so we ate it all

Did I do this right?