I Love You, Now Eat Something

Chocolate and peanut butter. Peanut butter and chocolate. That smooth mix is truly one of God’s greatest inventions.

I get very excited when the Reese’s peanut butter eggs appear in the stores at Easter time. And on Halloween night, my kids know any chocolate peanut butter combination goes right in to the mommy pile. If you look in my freezer now, way deep in the back, you’ll probably find an emergency Reeses peanut butter cup stashed away.

When I was pregnant with kid number one I was very sick.  I had hyperemesis,  which basically is just extreme morning sickness. I actually lost 28 pounds by the time he was born. So of course the doctors were very concerned and told me they didn’t care what I ate as long as I kept it down and took in some calories.

The only thing we found I could eat was chocolate peanut butter milkshakes.  I know, I know. That sounds like a pregnant woman using any excuse to pig out. But really, it’s all I could eat that would stay down.

I no longer drink chocolate peanut butter milkshakes because I’m no longer losing weight and I’m no longer growing a baby.  Yet a couple weeks ago I found myself once again making a chocolate peanut butter milkshake.

This time my mad blending was to add some calories and hopefully put some weight on my mom. She’s battling liver, lung and brain cancer and has lost so much weight from the chemotherapy.  We joke about how skinny she’s getting, how we need to go shopping for new skinny clothes for her (shopping at Macy’s of course!) and how chemo is the best weight loss plan we’ve found so far.

But, honestly, I’d do anything to pack a few pounds on her now. So I did the only thing I knew to do, and that was pull out the blender. Instead of the high fat, empty calorie version with ice cream, I used a version of one of my regular breakfast smoothie recipes.

Here is the “I love you and I want you to be healthy and a little plump” milkshake recipe.  Enjoy.

1 cup plain non-fat Greek yogurt

1  banana

1 cup chocolate soy milk

Large scoop peanut butter

Squirt of Hershey syrup. Actually it was 2 or 3 squirts.

1 cup frozen strawberries