Me, A Pregnant Person, And My Husband, A Non-Pregnant Person, Tried 18 People's Pregnancy Cravings
My name is Audrey and I'm 26 weeks pregnant. On the picky/adventurous eater food scale, I am a "lightly adventurous" eater. Pregnancy hasn't really changed that. I haven't gotten serious pregnancy cravings, and I'm kind of upset about it because I feel like now is the time to try weird food combos.
This is my husband, Zac, who will proudly try just about anything once. He's a moderately adventurous eater, and he loves weird food combinations. Like...two days ago he casually walked into the bedroom drinking orange juice through a Twizzler.
This was the same day I witnessed him drizzle caramel on a tangerine and eat it.
I asked the BuzzFeed Community to let me live vicariously through them and to share the weird pregnancy cravings they had so I could try them. Zac, a certified strange food combo expert, will also be taste-testing to get an un-pregnant judging. Here are 18 that I thought I could stomach, even though some didn't sound particularly good.
We decided to rank them on a scale of 1–5, one being the least delicious and five being the most delicious.
1."With my daughter it was peanut butter and orange juice."
Zac ranks it a 1/5. I also ranked it a 1/5.
Audrey: By far one of the most terrible food combinations to ever hit my mouth. The flavors don't mix at all. The look of a brown lump in a pool of yellow liquid on my spoon was already bad, and eating it is so much worse. Orange juice is such a powerful flavor and peanut butter is such a powerful flavor, I can't see any recipe that would incorporate both of these successfully. I think the reason the peanut butter and orange juice aisles are so far away from each other in the grocery store is to discourage people from ever trying these together.
Zac: Why would someone eat this? It's just as bad as toothpaste and orange juice. The texture was off-putting because of how inconsistent it was, and the orange juice was jarring.
2."Top ramen with hot Cheetos in it."
—Anonymous
Zac ranks it a 5/5. I rank it a 5/5.
Audrey Engvalson / BuzzFeed
Audrey: Showstopping. Something I would regularly do to ramen. The crunch of the Cheetos and the spice in the Cheetos complement the ramen exquisitely. Though, I do feel like it'd be better if the Cheetos were kind of ground up like breadcrumbs? I'm not sure if you'd lose the crunch then. In either case, it's awesome and something I'd definitely do again, even if the color of the Flamin' Hot Cheetos was slowly turning the broth a very off-putting pink color.
Zac: I wish I wouldn't have stirred it. I think that made the Cheetos soggy. I think not stirring and crushing the Cheetos to sit on top is the best bet with this dish. I actually liked the red broth, but it does kind of look like meat drippings.
3."With my second...peeled, raw sliced, and salted potatoes hahaha"
Zac ranks it a 0/5. I rank it a 1/5.
Audrey: It's far too starchy to be enjoyable. The texture is very satisfying, but the taste of the raw potato lingers for too long. I don't think any salt can help.
Zac: Potatoes are supposed to be good. This was not. If salty vegetable chalk is what you're going for, I guess you've got it, but it's personally not what I'm looking for.
4."Mini Reese's peanut butter cups and a swig of teriyaki sauce. It sounds so off-putting but there’s a reason why soy sauce and peanut flavors go well together"
—Anonymous
Zac ranks it a 3/5. I rank it a 2/5.
Audrey: You get the teriyaki first and the Reese's cup second. It's not bad, but definitely not something I'd ever do on purpose. It's weird how the chocolate kind of takes the aftertaste and the peanut and teriyaki hit you first. Maybe that's just how my brain wanted to process it to make it feel less gross.
Zac: I'm gonna get another, really swish it around this time. It just made it taste like peanut sauce to me. Like, chocolate-y peanut sauce. I'd do it again.
5."Swiss cheese and mustard sammiches. Had to be Swiss. Had to have mustard or I’d cry. ;)"
Zac ranks it a 4/5. I rank it a 4/5.
Audrey: It's actually pretty good. I would make myself one of these as a snack. I love savory foods, and cheese and mustard go together scientifically. I mean, why are they always together on charcuterie boards? They just work. No notes.
Zac: It's fine. Honestly, I wouldn't mind protein somewhere in the middle, but that might mess up the vibe of the cheesewich. I don't know.
6."Being pregnant is like having a tiny stoner inside of you. My favourite meal with my first was a bagel with cream cheese topped with ground-up cool ranch Doritos."
Zac ranks it a 4.5/5. I rank it a 3.5/5.
Audrey: The crunch on top of the bagel is good, and the Cool Ranch flavoring works well. I think I'm docking points because the Dorito dust and the toasted bagel crumbs get all over me and my bump. Ease of eating plays a factor. As far as the flavor combo, though, it's solid.
Zac: I would look forward to eating this. The crunch is beautiful. Cream cheese and bagels are great. Doritos on top of that is also good. Next time I have a bagel, if Doritos (or any kind of chip) were nearby, I'd do this.
7."I craved watermelon with a ton of lime juice on it and turkey burgers with grape jelly on it because I watched that episode of SpongeBob SquarePants with the jellyfish jelly."
Zac ranks it a 6/5. I rank it a 3/5.
Audrey: The watermelon isn't powerful enough to compete with the lime juice. All it tastes like is textured lime juice. I guess if watermelon had been sitting in a pool of lime juice and I really wanted watermelon, the lime juice wouldn't be a deterrent, but my favorite way to eat watermelon is still just plain.
Zac: I would go out of my way to have this. Absolutely delicious. I taste both things in a wonderful magical harmony of tastiness.
8."Parmesan cheese dipped in dark chocolate. When my partner actually found it online and ordered it for me, it was disgusting. I cried."
Zac ranks it a 0/5. I rank it a 0/5.
Audrey: Truly so disgusting I wanted to cry. The only thing chocolate and cheese have in common is that they are both good with wine. They are not, however, good with each other. Ugh, and the fact that they're so good at getting in my teeth means the taste lingers. Bad, bad, bad, bad, no.
Zac: The texture is nice at first because all you taste is the chocolate. Then, the cheese hits you and hurts your feelings with an angry, disgusting plot twist.
9."Wife wanted chocolate milk and Fritos. She would dunk the Fritos in the milk!"
Zac rates it a 3/5. I rate it a 1.5/5.
Audrey Engvalson / BuzzFeed
Audrey: It just tastes like a soggy Frito??? Like, the chocolate milk is too thin to stick, so it kind of just coats. I don't want to have a little pool of chocolate milk in my Frito, but dipping it just makes it wet. The sweet part of the chocolate milk doesn't come through for me.
Zac: I thought I hated it, but it's not bad. It's a Frito with a hint of sweetness, which works because they're pretty salty.
10."Ice cream and peanut butter mixed together, but it had to be roughly 50/50 ice cream to peanut butter to satisfy my craving."
Zac rates it a 3/5. I rate it a 2/5.
Audrey: Very very sweet. Like a cavity-centered goop. I would actually say that both peanut butter and ice cream have great consistencies, but mixing them together makes it feel like you're mixing slime. It loses me there.
Zac: Honestly, I might bump it up to a 4/5. I like cookie dough, and that's what it reminded me of. It's sugary peanut butter paste. It'd be good on a sandwich, though.
11."Strawberry yogurt with a few skittles mixed in"
Zac rates it a 5/5. I rate it a 3/5.
Audrey: The flavors obviously work because they're both fruity. I'm not really sure what the benefit is to eating them together, though? It's kind of hard to eat and you get the yogurt, like, 20 minutes before you get the Skittle, and then you have to spend a really long time chewing the Skittles. Kind of a taxing experience?
Zac: Yeah, you taste them separately, but it's a good snack because Skittles are good and yogurt is good. Next time, I might do fewer Skittles per bite, like maybe one or two instead of six or seven.
12."I constantly craved pickles dipped in mustard... One time my boyfriend got the wrong mustard at the store and I cried for an hour because I wanted pickles and mustard so bad."
Zac rates it a 2/5. I rate it a 3.5/5.
Audrey: I think it's my pregnancy bumping my rating higher than yours because I'm typically not a pickle person, but I like both the ingredients and I simply don't mind them together. I'm not excited about the flavor of my burps later, but that's a future-Audrey issue.
Zac: It stings you, but in a good way? I much prefer pickles in their purer form, though. The mustard didn't stick to the pickle like I wanted it to.
13."I would crave noodles with mustard and pepper."
Zac rates it a 0.5/5. I rate it the same.
Audrey: Horrendous. Warm mustard is the worst temperature for mustard. If you can get over the temperature of the mustard, which is impossible, the mustard makes the noodles feel extra thick. The pepper is powerless here. Mustard does not belong anywhere near noodles.
Zac: Gross. You taste the plain noodle separately from the mustard. Plain noodles are gross and warm mustard is gross, but together they somehow make each other more gross.
14."Doritos dipped in chocolate frosting with a side of pickles 😅"
Zac rates it a 2/5. I rate it a 1/5.
Audrey: I am not a fan of sweet/salty combos, but I can maintain optimism. This one was a classic salty/sweet and it just wasn't for me. The chocolate frosting and cheese coating competed. The best part was washing it down with pickle because the chocolate/Dorito didn't linger. It was overpowered by pickle.
Zac: Chocolate Dorito wasn't bad. I'd probably never try to do it again, though. I mixed chocolate, Dorito, and pickle together at first instead of eating the chocolate Dorito with a side of pickle, and I would say that I would never eat those three in the same sitting again.
15."I enjoyed thinly sliced, pan crisped Spam on white bread with a spread of grape jam. All I wanted for weeks straight was Spam n' jam."
Zac rates it a 2/5. I rate it a 2/5.
Audrey: It was better than, like, the top four worst things we've had tonight. It was not bad. I can see how someone who likes sweet and savory together would like this, though I think it's a little too much Spam to jam (like our ratio is off). The Spam seemed too thick, but overall, not bad.
Zac: I thought it was good. For never having Spam, you cooked it well. It needed jam on both sides of the bread though.
16."Toast with peanut butter and hot sauce! It was the most logical breakfast to me but my coworkers thought I was crazy."
Zac ranks it a 4/5. I rank it a 1/5.
Audrey: Nope. The vinegary taste of the Tabasco mixed with the sweetness of the peanut butter is bad. The fact that they separated when we spread them was even worse. Not a feast for the eyes or the mouth.
Zac: I would add some jam. It was good, like spicy peanut butter. I would make it again if I was making peanut butter on toast and happened to walk past Tabasco sauce. I would not spend more than two seconds finding Tabasco sauce to create this.
17."Ranch dressing on top of chicken curry. Trust me, I know it's insane, I haven't eaten it again since."
—Anonymous
Zac rates it a 3.5/5. I rate it a 3/5.
Audrey: A creamy sauce on curry makes sense on paper. The ranch is fine, but I don't know that it's the optimal creamy flavor for curry. While this isn't a home run, it's at least a ground rule double. I think tzatziki might be better.
Zac: I think the ranch works. I think it would've been better if it was refrigerated and going on top of warm curry instead of room temperature, but I like how it kind of adds a creaminess to it. I might do this again.
18."For me it was what I called 'grapefruit soup,' which was just grapefruit pulp in a bowl topped with clear pop like ginger ale."
Zac rates it a 4/5. I rate it a 3/5.
Audrey: It's tart. I don't know, I can't get over how chunky it is. The flavors are good but the consistency is weird. It felt like it would be kind of like Fresca, but I give Fresca a 7/5. This is much thicker and that loses some points from me.
Zac: You've got to get the right ratio. I like orange juice with pulp, and I like ginger ale. It's like ginger ale with tart fruit pulp, and it's nice and refreshing.
Final thoughts:
Audrey: Best dish by far was the ramen and Cheetos. The combo was a little out-of-the-box but worked well. The worst dish was the peanut butter and orange juice. I have actively tried to avoid both in my fridge because they make me shudder.
Zac: The best dish was the watermelon and lime juice. Not two things I'd typically put together but I thought it was really tart and super refreshing. Worst dish for me was probably, looking back, the noodles with mustard and pepper. That was probably one of the worst things to ever hit my taste buds.
