Apples and Lemons

I haven’t had many cravings to speak of during this pregnancy. I guess I’ve been feeling too sick to really enjoy eating or drinking at all! There are some things that are better than others for me right now, like I seem to prefer chicken dishes to much else when we’re having home-cooked meals, and I have been liking lemon-lime gatorade to drink, or lemonade, or just plain water. I was on an orange-juice kick for a while, but I don’t seem to like that as much anymore.

One thing that several people suggested to me that I try when they heard about my 24/7 nausea was to suck on a lemon. There have been all sorts of remedies and medicines and tips and tricks that I’ve heard and even tried. (Although I tried for very long and very hard to stay away from the medicine. Sigh.) But sucking on a lemon was the last one I tried.

I thought it would be quite horrible…my mouth puckers just thinking about it. But I actually tried it in desperation, and it wasn’t so bad! At first my salivary glands went into overdrive, and my heart started pounding and my body temperature seemed to rise…just from the extreme sourness/bitterness I was slurping on. But I think it actually did settle my nausea, albeit for a very short time.

Now I actually enjoy it, and Josh thought of a great counterpoint to the flavor…apple slices! He slices up an apple for me, cuts up a lemon into wedges, and I suck the pulp dry from the lemons, then drizzle some of the leftover juice over the apple slices. It’s a really good snack for me right now.

Our three apple trees were newly planted this year, so we didn’t expect much, but we had hoped that at least all three of them would bear fruit. Only one ended up bearing for us this season, our Pink Lady apple tree. We only got three apples from it (well, two really, the birds got the third!), but they were the best apples we had ever eaten! Now we have to buy apples from the store because there are no more this year.

Our lemon tree is also newly planted, but it has done very well. It’s still so tiny, and its branches are all so heavily laden with fruit that they are laying on the ground. It looks more like a lemon bush than a lemon tree right now, lol! But we’ll have fresh lemons for a while longer.