To ask for help in substituting a cheaper pregnancy craving before I bankrupt us?

The fact smoked salmon is not recommended by the NHS in pregnancy due to the listeriosis risk would hopefully be enough!

One’s a fairly predictable side effect of pregnancy and the other is a mental health issue.

I can only speak to my own experience but never before and never after have I felt the intensity of cravings for very specific foods as I did when pregnant. When in the depths of sickness the only thing that seemed palatable at one point was Five Guys beef burgers. Not sure self control is the right approach when you’re so sick that every day feels like the after effect of a massive bender.

Unless the OP has some backstory of food issues, it’s just one of many well documented pregnancy side effects, so I also think it’s a bit miserable.

I don’t think it’s ‘misery’ to raise that. The ideas that pregnancy cravings are overpowering, different from ‘the usual’ desire for very palatable foods, and ‘need’ to be followed can be unhelpful, especially for those of us with food issues. The option to feel urges and not always follow them helped me a lot when pregnant with my younger DC, after difficulty when pregnant with DC1.

This is possibly the most ridiculous problem I have ever considered bringing to Mumsnet, but I'm actually at my wit's end: I'm currently 18 weeks pregnant and for the last fortnight have been absolutely obsessed with smoked salmon. It's not something I usually eat or even particularly like, but now it's all I want, in vast quantities, at every meal.

Tried cheating with smoked mackerel yesterday and it was definitely not an acceptable alternative.

Assuming this means I'm lacking omega 3 or something so have started a supplement, but it doesn't seem to have helped. Frantically hoping someone can suggest something that might hit similar taste/ texture spots? I can't think of anything and it's driving me mad.

Or, failing that, how do I get rid of the craving!? Even rationing myself the current rate of consumption is not sustainable, but I'm literally catching myself daydreaming about it. Woke up at 5am today thinking about it, and ended up buying a packet on the way back from the school run and eating it for breakfast 😳. Husband and I are both wfh today and he's just offered to make bacon sandwiches for lunch... all I can think is that smoked salmon ones would be much better. Particularly if he gave me all the smoked salmon and ate the nasty, non-salmony bacon himself 😂.

Last pregnancy I just wanted cheese and onion crisps, but much less strongly than this, (and besides, I could have eaten an Aldi multipack a day for the whole forty weeks for less than I've already spent on salmon 😫) and in my first pregnancy I didn't have any cravings, so it's not something I've ever tried to deal with before!

Help!

Surely pasteurised or jarred pate can't have listeria in it? Like the little tubs of pate you sometimes see in the Eastern European chilled section in supermarkets… the stuff with packaging that looks like pricey cat food and usually seems to describe itself as sterilised or similar. I know a lot of stuff in the heat-treated pate sector is cheap n cheerful looking stuff (tho maybe that's what you're craving?), but presumably the very very fancy expensive stuff sold in ambient temp jars must also be heat treated, or it would kill bloody everyone?

I know how you're feeling OP - I've been craving pâté all the way through this pregnancy but obviously not been able to have any. I'm going to have vast quantities of it after the birth, having dreamed about it for 7 months so far! Also very much looking forward to snaffling a massive cheese board...drooling already.

If it makes you feel any better, you're almost at the halfway point - then you can go back to eating sheets of smoked salmon again😁(although it probably won't taste as heavenly at that point as you'll not really be craving it any more)

😱oh nooooooooo!!

That is actually devastating. I have to say I've never really thought to look at the list of banned foods in any pregnancy - I just don't drink alcohol or have too much coffee and otherwise crack on as usual. But you're right, that's obviously an even better reason not to eat it.

Cooking small amounts in things like PPs have suggested might be the way forwards...

It's pretty much what you'd expect — they heat/burn the wood (hickory is the one I've seen, when they specify a particular type of wood) and condense the smoke on a surface or something so they can collect it (same as it would condense on the surface of meat, I guess). I believe they then distill it to separate out the part of the mixture that they want, and remove the parts they don't want.

I think some manufacturers do then add other flavours, but you should be able to get hold of "natural" liquid smoke flavour.

You've got to be careful with it though; if you use it wrong you can end up with some revolting results 🤣

This is possibly the most ridiculous problem I have ever considered bringing to Mumsnet, but I'm actually at my wit's end: I'm currently 18 weeks pregnant and for the last fortnight have been absolutely obsessed with smoked salmon. It's not something I usually eat or even particularly like, but now it's all I want, in vast quantities, at every meal.

Tried cheating with smoked mackerel yesterday and it was definitely not an acceptable alternative.

Assuming this means I'm lacking omega 3 or something so have started a supplement, but it doesn't seem to have helped. Frantically hoping someone can suggest something that might hit similar taste/ texture spots? I can't think of anything and it's driving me mad.

Or, failing that, how do I get rid of the craving!? Even rationing myself the current rate of consumption is not sustainable, but I'm literally catching myself daydreaming about it. Woke up at 5am today thinking about it, and ended up buying a packet on the way back from the school run and eating it for breakfast 😳. Husband and I are both wfh today and he's just offered to make bacon sandwiches for lunch... all I can think is that smoked salmon ones would be much better. Particularly if he gave me all the smoked salmon and ate the nasty, non-salmony bacon himself 😂.

Last pregnancy I just wanted cheese and onion crisps, but much less strongly than this, (and besides, I could have eaten an Aldi multipack a day for the whole forty weeks for less than I've already spent on salmon 😫) and in my first pregnancy I didn't have any cravings, so it's not something I've ever tried to deal with before!

Help!

I don't smoke my 'smoked salmon' carrots they're roasted in a salt bath then pickled. Some recipes add liquid smoke, but I never have because I don't know what it is! Disclaimer: some might say I'm also bit a bit of a twat.

An acquaintance of mine claims smoked carrots are exactly the same as a smokes salmon.

The problems here are that (a) they are smoked, (b) they are carrots, (c) where can you get them, (d) my acquaintance is a bit of a twat.