Writing a Postpartum Cookbook: February Update
If you haven’t heard - it’s official! I’m writing my second cookbook and I couldn’t be more excited!
This will be a cookbook to guide you through postpartum, and not just the initial postpartum period, because the truth is, we’re postpartum for a minimum of a few years, and how we’re nourished in this stage can have huge impacts on our health and how we thrive through the entirety of our motherhood experience.
This is going to be the cookbook that helps you replete nutrients lost over the course of a pregnancy (or several!), get in the most important nutrients for long-term recovery, energy, breastfeeding, and taking care of a family. And do it in a practical, doable way.
It’s going to be a cookbook focused on meals and snacks for the whole family but that centre your nutrient needs, because you matter too.
If you’ve ever felt depleted as a mom and you want to change that but everything feels impractical for the time and energy you have in the kitchen in your real life, this book is going to be for you.
I first drafted the title and key sections of this cookbook back in March of 2023 (almost 2 years ago!), right after I found out my sister was going to be having her first baby (he is now 15 months old!).
This process has been similar to that of writing The Food Doula Cookbook in that I’ve needed to marinate on my ideas, my recipes, and get crystal clear on the purpose of the book and how it will meet the needs of your body, your kitchen, and your everyday life.
To be honest, it took me a couple of years after The Food Doula Cookbook came out (April of 2021!) to even think about wanting to create recipes or a cookbook again. This type of project can be really all consuming, personal, and depleting.
But as soon as I got clear on how this book would fit perfectly into your life in the postpartum season, my energy and motivation sky rocketed.
This month, I’ve been spending 2-4 days per week (weekends included!) in the kitchen testing recipes. The tricky thing has been fitting these days in amongst running my business (that didn’t really exist last time I wrote a cookbook in 2019-2020!), but I have to say I am loving being in the kitchen again and getting creative with food.
It’s also been so great to always have food and snacks ready in the fridge and freezer!
As I work to finalize the recipes, I’m also starting the process of recipe testing - eek!
I’m so fortunate that many of the alumni who have taken The Professional Perinatal Nutrition Program with me over the last few years have volunteered to be recipe testers for this book!
It’s so important to me to have others test my recipes because the truth is we all have different ovens, different ingredients we keep on hand, and different palates. Recipe testing is so important to make the recipes as yummy, simple, and practical as they can be.
I’m also open to any ideas and feedback you have! Send me an email or a DM on instagram and let me know what you want to know or what you’d like to see in this book. I’m all ears!
I hope you’ll come along with me on this cookbook writing journey. I’m going to share monthly updates here, in my email newsletters, and in my Instagram stories.
Until next month!