One thing that happens when you’re pregnant is that as your stomach starts to stretch. It itches! So I have to keep my belly really lubricated. Every morning, there’s a buttering ceremony after I get out of the shower. It’s really like basting a turkey with body butter.

In this humorous, vividly domestic image, Lakshmi demystifies pregnancy by focusing on an unglamorous bodily reality—itching skin as the abdomen stretches. By calling her daily moisturizing routine a “buttering ceremony” and likening it to “basting a turkey,” she uses culinary language (central to her public persona) to translate intimate physical experience into something relatable and comic. The joke also subtly reframes self-care as practical maintenance rather than vanity: lubrication is presented as comfort and relief. The ritualistic framing (“ceremony”) suggests a daily act of attention to the changing body, blending tenderness, pragmatism, and self-aware humor.