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I have been a fan of healthy food for what seems like forever. But eating healthy usually means having to cook which wasn’t always my favorite thing to do. After some time, however, I learned how to adjust certain recipes to the way I eat: less oil, more veggies, fake chicken broth or vegetable broth. This recipe was given to me by my friend Leeka that I later modified and built upon. The funny thing is that I used to really dislike sweet potatoes. I always thought that sweet has no place in food but only the desert. I hated yams, and cranberry sauce on top of meat ( yeah NOT a fan of Thanksgiving food). So when Leeka suggested we cook sweet potato fries, I thought “Ew!”
I was pleasantly surprised, to be honest. Later I started using garlic and spices to spice the sweetness up, but it’s up to you how to season it.

So here we go:

You will need 2 sweet potatoes and 2-3 large zucchinis.

Cut them up in the shape of fries. Make sure to keep potato skins on since most of the nutrients that sweet potatoes offer are located in its skin.

Lay them all on a baking sheet or tray. Add 2 Tb of olive oil, diced garlic, salt, pepper and seasoning of your choice ( I opted for homegrown dried sage this time).

Mix it to coat the veggies well and set to bake for about 30 minutes at 400F.

And enjoy!
P.s: it keeps well and leftovers are even tastier

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Read Preconception part I here

November  was a month away when I realized that there was no way I could be ready to start trying. So we decided to postpone it 3 more months to allow adequate time for 3 months of “off the pill” cycle and finish up the more mundane planning tasks.

Maternity Coverage:I HATE health insurance companies. I think they’re are some of the most rotten companies on the planet, bent on doing nothing but finding way to deny claims and cover nothing. I had been with Humana a while back and it was miserable. A year ago I switched BCBS and have been relatively happy with the coverage. However, it came time to add materity coverage. The deal with maternity coverage is that you have to start it 30 days before conception or nothing will be covered. When I called BCBS, I found out that my particular policy only had 1 option for maternity, and a very sucky one, if you ask me ($2500 deductible and then 50% co-insurance- SAY WHAT?). I might as well go and pay it all out of pocket.
Then I was educated about a new plan that just came out under Obama Care ( YAY for Obama!). And by educated, I meant , I was told one exists but the salespeople answering the photo were too dumb to explain it to me and to know what’s covered. The excuse was “It’s a new plan!” – I don’t care- I’m not going to sign up for something you can’t even tell me details about.

Finally after 5 phone calls ( seriously), i was told that the plan, in fact has a co-pay of $35 for the first prenatal visit and then every other visit is free, until I get admitted for delivery and at that point it’s $150/day at the hospital. That’s seriously kick ass! It costs an additional $217 a month, but in my book it’s well worth it.

So all paperwork was filled out and mailed out, however based on the incometency of everyone I encountered at the sale call center of BCBS, I don’t expect it to be “fast-tracked”. So there I sit and wait for 6-8 weeks of promised time to have my policy underwritten and issued. Bummer!

As it’s looking now, the policy will be issued some time in January, hopefully right in time for February conception, in case we do indeed get pregnant the first month ( which of course I don’t think will happen)

That being said about health insurance, I had also tried taking care of dental insurance ( switched plans) and I am waiting again… for the policy to be issued so that i could go get my wisdom teeth extracted before the end of the year and also my pre-conception cleaning done.
You might ask why i need to worry about my wisdom teeth… Well, two of them are partially impacted, which means they’re breading ground for bacteria. The last thing I want to happen when I get pregnant is have one of my wisdom teeth get infected and need antibiotics or worse, extraction.

My goal  is to have a completely clean, calm healthy body going into conception: no inflammations, no antibiotics, no toxins.  That is why I am making sure that any possible complication is forseen and taken care of.

Which brings me to:

Vaccinations and Testing