I was not paid or encouraged to endorse anything in this post – these thoughts are my own and I simply want to share my story! 

I’ve always had a complicated relationship with food. With a sense of culinary adventure akin to that of a toddler, it’s safe to say that my food preferences are juvenile at best.

A common dinner for me consists of buttered noodles, a scoop of peanut butter, a slice of processed cheese and a pickle – nutritionally balanced and delicious. In fact, my Instagram hashtag #DinnerWithSarah –   consisting of photos of my pathetic dinners – managed to attract quite the fan club.

This food relationship changed only a few months into my first pregnancy. I spent the majority of my first trimester not unlike countless pregnant women before me: eating meagre portions of dry toast, crackers and candied ginger on my bathroom floor. But as the nausea passed, the second stage of pregnancy hit me, and hit me hard – the hunger.

Not only did the hunger make me so ravenous that I could have scared off a pack of wolves for a meal, but I was craving foods I had never liked, or even tried, before. I also started to consider that maybe pickles and cheese weren’t going to give me, or my growing baby, the nutrition and satiation that we needed. A lifetime of poor eating habits had left me painfully unable to prepare quality meals for myself, so I quickly turned to outside sources. Surely, somebody in Silicon Valley could feed me.

That’s when I was saved by a local food startup. A Bay Area based foodie company, Gobble, promised me big things – minimal dirty dishes, gourmet meals, and dinner on the table in less than 15 minutes. Fortunately for my increasing appetite and decreasing patience, they delivered on everything they promised. I found myself feeling like a 21^st century Betty Crocker as I turned on my stovetop for the first time in six months and whipped up dinner armed with nothing more than a frying pan and a wooden spoon. The meals were mostly prepped, cut, marinated and sometimes partially cooked for me, but when all was said and plated I somehow felt as though the small amount of searing and simmering I did was really what brought the meal together.

I also took comfort in having somebody else do the nutritional planning for me. My days of choosing between brown bread or white bread were replaced with choosing lean cuts of steak, ancient grains, vegetarian dishes, or sustainably sourced fish. I can’t imagine going back to the bland B.G. (before Gobble) days now that I’ve had a taste of forbidden rice, freekeh, and spinach gnocchi. Gobble gave me the helping hand that I needed during my pregnancy to worry less about fumbling in the kitchen and not getting proper nutrition, and gave me more time to do what I really wanted to do all along – eat massive quantities of food. Alas, my hunger was finally satiated. Now all that was left to do was to find some dessert…