Pregnant Cold-food Meal Ideas

I love the couscous salad recipe from Fantastic Foods, I don't know if it's still on the box, but you can google it. Basically, couscous, tomatoes, cukes, chick peas and parsley, with a dressing of olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and dijon mustard. You can eat it on a bed of lettuce or in a pita.

I would also add kidney beans or chick peas to any garden salad (or tuna if that's not turning you off right now). The beans add protein and complex carbs, so they make the salad more filling.

Greek salad with feta and olives, or fattoush - which is like a greek salad with pieces of pita mixed up in it.

Tortellini pasta salad.

Gazpacho! With a nice piece of crusty bread.

This is making me hungry :-) I like the people who said smoothies, yogurt with fruit and granola or grape nuts - the greek ones they are selling now are nice and thick.

Best wishes.

Hey there, congrats!!! I just made this for my 2 year old's potluck at montessori school today and it was a big hit!

Bag of frozen cheese tortellini
cherry/grape tomatoes
fresh basil
olive oil
basalmic vinegar

Cook the pasta according to directions. Drain, drizzle with little bit of olive oil, mix and put in fridge. Halve the little tomatoes and microwave for 1.5-2 minutes, until they are starting to cook. Put about 1teas. olive oil and 1 teas. basalmic vinegar in with tomatoes and put in fridge. Chop up basil. When the cooked stuff is cooled, mix the pasta, tomatoes and basil together. Depending your current tastes, add some garlic or onion powder, salt and pepper.
This is tasty served warm or cold. It has pasta, cheese, red veggie and fresh green herbs for vitamin C. It's good.

I was exactly like this too! Warm or hot food sounded disgusting and I couldn't TOUCH meat until about 18wks...even now at 22wks I won't touch pork (I love pork!) and red meat gives me the worst stomach ache and runs! I too was allll about cold foods any way I could get them!
I would make things like tomato/avodcado sandwiches w/ a little mayo (lots of nutrients!), apples and peanut butter, bananas and peanut butter, lots of nuts, get some asparagus and (raw) marinate it in some italian dressing and keep it in the fridge (I'd then rinse it quickly before eating to take some of the "bite" out of the dressing on it) for a snack..... let's see what else.... freeze some all-natural juice into cubes, put lemon or orange or grapefruit juice in your water (fresh-squeezed is best!) for a pick-me-up and huge Vitamin C dose...ify ou can stomach it, get some fish, and do some fish on your cold salad. Those are some of the things that really saved me until I could eat warm foods again or meat!

How about smoothies (if you have a way to make them). You can make them super healthy and I make a whole blender full to drink through out the morning or afternoon. I just throw in fresh and/or frozen fruits, veggies, yogurt, OJ, and then throw in fiber/omega/flax seed packet. Look up smoothies online and find some that sound yummy to you.

Cold pasta salad, check out this website or search at your favorite recipe site: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/recipes.asp?food=cold+past...

http://diettogo.com/blog/chef-suggests-our-5-best-cold-meals

Actually I wouldn't throw out the pizza idea just yet. You can make cold pizzas of fruits and veggies and such. They have kinds you bake or no bake since you are wanting cold foods. Same goes for burgers...look into tofu. It really isn't as bad as it sounds or looks. I use to be dead set against it til I tried it in a few recipes and such. It generally takes on the flavor of whatever you are cooking or mixing it with.
Try checking out allrecipes.com and cooks.com. Both are great sites for recipes.

Try adding nuts to your salads, or snacking on them... a great way to up that calorie count pretty fast. And the healthy fats are good for you.

Cold pasta salad is delicious, one of my favorites! Google a recipe for that, there are tons out there.

There are also recipes for cold soups (gazpacho) out there that you could try!

check out the deli salads- if any appeal to you, you could look into making them yourself to save money and have a longer shelf life at home...

thinking of good veggie options with protein:
- pita and hummus
- quinoa (a grain that the incas ate, high in fiber and protein) - make it in chicken broth if you like
- chickpeas on your salad (or kidney beans, or other canned beans)
- apple slices and peanut butter

couscous: it's a grain you would probably find in the rice aisle, often in small boxes in the ethnic foods.

good luck!

What about pasta salad. Not only can you make it 1000 different ways but you can make a bunch of it and save it in the fridge so it is ready to go.

One of my girls and I's favorite snacks is roasted chick peas. Really easy. You just rinse off a can of beans and dry roast them in a pan for 15 minutes. Then you add some salt and paprika and cook 5 minutes longer. They are really yummy. Chick peas are also good to add to salads for a little extra something to fill you up.

Couscous is a grain. You can make it lots of ways and it is super yummy. We have it as a side dish a lot in our house. They also have it pre seasoned different ways (like you can get mashed potatoes) so you just follow the directions on the package.

Rather than deal with cooking chicken, can you stomach the idea of cutting up a pre-cooked rotisserie chicken from the grocery store deli? I get whichever variety is on sale (usually around $5.00 for one) and take off the skin and slice the meat up and put it on a salad. You can make chef salads (ham/turkey with boiled eggs, black olives, tomatoes, cucumber, shredded or cubed cheese, red bell pepper, onion (vidalia or red) and whatever your fave dressing is.

You can munch on jalapeno pimento cheese spread onto toast (I LOVE this). Or make sub sandwiches... Boar's Head lists all the additives (not many) in their meats, so you can shop health concsiously, and have dill pickle spears on the side like you would if you were getting it "out".

I was the same way when I was pregnant with my first. I ate a lot of potatoes and fresh vegetables. For a lot of my meals, I'd steam a bag of frozen veggies and that's all I'd eat. I'd nuke a potato and put butter, sour cream and cheese on it, or broccoli and cheese. Could you eat a peanut butter sandwich with your salad? Maybe veggies and rice mixed together, it's good cold too. At least I think so :)

Do you add things like beans to your salads? That always helps me feel a little more sustained, but I had an enormous salad yesterday and was ready for snacks by 3pm. It did have black beans on it, too.

I'd perhaps recommend snacking throughout the day (kind of the 6 small meals approach).

I'd get some of the old-fashioned, Fruit on the Bottom, yogurts and eat those, string cheese, cottage cheese as snacks.
I'd have celery, bananas and peanut butter to get the protein
Costco has a great trail mix with raisins, peanuts, cashews, almoinds, M&Ms that's pretty caloric but not that bad in the grand scheme of things.

My husband and I spent the past 6 months training for a 1/2 marathon. We got Clif's Mojo bars and Luna Protein bars. Both aren't too caloric, but have a ton of protein, few carbs, yummy flavors.

I'd also do things like pasta salads that you can make as desired (or couscous) and keep either cold or hot, but the grains can help increase your calories.

I survived through one pregnancy on bagels from Costco. We'd either slather it with peanut butter or cream cheese, and I loved it. I went well over my extra 300 calories/day but an active job helped me gain only 17 lbs (I was 15 lbs overweight to start, though).

Good luck!

Chicken salad, grilled chicken in your salads, etc will help you feel full longer--the protein will help as will the nuts. You're doing better than me--meat grossed me out too, but I wanted Slurpees and Nerds! Good luck!

Block cheeses, cottage cheese, hummus, tuna/any other fish (although in limited amounts or watch the mercury levels), what about sausages, hot dogs, etc, or soy/tofu, breads, muffins, waffles, pasta (any whole grains), nuts.

Basically it sounds like you need protein! Carbs only fill you up for so long.

Also, try milk. I found whole milk very filling and satisfying. I needed the dairy and fat! You can cook a ton of chicken breasts and refrigerate or freeze them in manageable sizes/portions. Funny, but I don't always think of chicken as "meat", LOL, of course it is, but when I think meat, I think of RED meat.

I hope this helps you!