Produce and the baby bump

 

A baby shower isn't just all fun and games. It is a pivotal moment in a family's life. It's important to make it special; the most important component, as we all know, is… the menu. Yes, yes, beautiful baby is coming, a new chapter, ect... What are we going to eat? 

The theme can help decide what to prepare, and it is fun to get others involved, whether making the shower a potluck or just calling on friends and family for recipes. With my eldest daughter, we decided to announce our pregnancy using the app that told us what size the baby was in terms of fruits and vegetables. As our Adelaide was not yet named, we lovingly referred to the growing produce in my belly as the Blueberry. Our blueberry-themed baby shower was a nod to the nickname and also to how incredible it was that that tiny sweet cluster of cells was becoming our child, a whole beautiful human being. 

Finding a theme for your shower is a fun way to narrow everything down. Picking games and snacks around the theme and even decorations. Here at My Diaper Cake, you can order a themed kit to help you get rolling on this idea. 

What to serve can coordinate with your theme or, it can be a theme in and of itself. For example, when coming up with ideas for showers here at My Diaper Cake, we had a fun notion of engaging your guests and giving a little nod to the amazing growth of the creation of a human being. 

Set up your food table at the shower like a timeline and put labels down for each month of pregnancy. 

 

	At 4 weeks, your baby has grown to the size of a poppy seed. Serve lemon poppyseed muffins to your guests with Crème fraîche.		At 8 weeks, you have a little blueberry, frozen blueberries into ice cubes and serve them in lemonade. Get fancy and freeze basil leaves in some of the ice cubes as well.
	12 weeks along now, and that future alarm clock of yours is a fig. Serve up an instagram worthy charcuterie board with a centerpiece of fig jelly. I didn't like the sound of it at first but spread it over brie on your favorite cracker, and trust me, this board will be clean before the blueberries pop out of those melting ice cubes.		16 weeks and you have an avocado in there. You could make avocado on toast points with cracked black pepper and salt, and that would be delicious, but if you want to get a little experimental, try this citrus and avocado cream pie recipe: https://californiaavocado.com/recipe/california-summer-avocado-pie/
	20 weeks, your little monkey is as big as a banana. Email the future grandmas and ask for a family banana bread recipe. At our house, we make it with brown sugar oatmeal topping.		24 weeks is as big as an ear of corn, serve salted caramel popcorn and sit down for a slide show of the parents to be taking their own first steps in the world.
	28 weeks is an eggplant, cut the eggplant into thin rounds and bake them in the oven with garlic, basil, and topped with parmesan cheese.		32 weeks, that butternut squash size kiddo is rearranging in there, dice it and mix it with brown sugar, melted butter, and kosher salt and bake at 400 degrees for 45 minutes and thank me later because you are finally to the third trimester and this is going to change how you look at vegetables for the rest of your life.
	36 weeks and the baby is as big as a papaya. Papaya smoothies blended with milk, lime juice, and vanilla. Sweet and soothing as you are nearing the finish line and probably running out of room in there.		You made it. 40 weeks. Individual-sized pumpkin pies are your reward for carrying around that blue ribbon winner. If your baby is anything like mine, you will have to wait another nine days for her to grace you with her agonizingly cute "what, was I late?" expression, so you should definitely take two.

 

You can come up with recipes of your own to fit the produce of each month, take a spin with some of our ideas, or decide on a whole new menu of your own based around a theme of your choosing. Whatever you serve at your baby shower, we hope you have fun deciding what to do. The shower is about all of you gathering together and enjoying all the promise of the future.