Γαστρονομια κ’ Γαστρομενη (Gastronomy and Pregnancy)

Happy One Year Anniversary to us!  I was hoping to have revamped the site (a new name!) and been way more gastronomically prolific, but life sorta got in the way…Tah-dah! I am pregnant (if you didn’t already guess from my oh-so-subtle post).  It has been 4 months now and finally feeling better and getting over that whole “morning” sickness thing.  Phew!  Unfortunately the last few months I have not had very much motivation to do much of anything in the kitchen, hence my absence on this blog.  And now that I’m starting to finally inch back into the kitchen, it’s just in time to pack everything up and move out, which again doesn’t leave me with much time or inclination to get too food-crafty (AKA: we eat a lot of cereal and ice cream).  We are moving back to Richmond, Virginia next week and very excited to get settled in and start anew.  We have joined the Victory Farms CSA and I can’t wait to start posting about the bounty I will be picking up!  Some other things I hope to do this summer include canning some of the harvest and maybe even venturing into some baby food making?? We’ll see about that last one but this article in the Washington Post is somewhat inspiring.

Though I haven’t cooked much at all there have been moments of insatiable food cravings, like the weekend I HAD to have Chicago-style Deep Dish Pizza or the night I really had a hankering for fish en papillote.  I even tried to make Sharon’s Rhubarb cake! but it didn’t really rise, it was tasty but not tall and crumbly like hers.

For those who read Greek you will see that the title of this post is technically incorrect.  The Greek word for pregnancy is εγκυμοσύνη (egimosini) but I have a great story about my great-grandmother in the village in Greece right at the end of the 19th century.  The term γαστρομενη (gastromeni), which loosely translates to “woman’s stomach”, was used back then colloquially to describe a woman being pregnant.  My great-grandmother was feeling sick (“morning” sickness) and so her grandfather (my great-great-great grandfather for those keeping track) took her to the doctor, concerned about her health.  The doctor told him, “Oh there’s nothing wrong with her she’s just εγκυος (pregnant)!”  My great-great-great grandfather did not understand what the doctor meant, he had never heard the formal word for pregnancy, and not wanting to look foolish didn’t ask for further explanation.  When they went back to the village, everyone asked what was wrong with my sick great-grandmother, he answered, “I don’t know, she’s εγκυος!”  Then somebody explained that that meant she was just γαστρομενη.  ha!  So now it’s a family custom to announce that one is pregnant by using the word γαστρομενη.

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