The further along I get on this pregnancy, the better a friendship I’m developing with my old friend, the crockpot. I really love that thing.

It uses less energy than the stove or oven, doesn’t heat the house on warm days (it’s southern California, we are still getting warm days here), and I can fit pretty much all of dinner in it, except anything we want raw.

When baby is big enough, anything made in the crock pot is likely soft enough for the food mill, so she’ll be able to join in.

Then there’s being able to start dinner at whatever time works for me that day. In the morning when I have the energy, up to early afternoon when I realize my energy levels are sagging. I just have to pick a high or low cooking temperature.

As I drag through this last month of pregnancy, retaining far, far more water than I ever had before, this really helps. Lucky for me, far, far more water still isn’t an actual medical problem. I just didn’t retain much water at all in past pregnancies. Now my sandals barely go on.