Gotta Have It

One of my new favorite TV shows is This is Us, which is getting all sorts of buzz as it is slowly being found.  Those coming into the show late may be confused (and should find a way to watch episode 1 first) because it is the story of a family over the decades.  We follow each person in the family as well as the parents and don't discover until the end of act 1 that the parents, who are expecting triplets throughout the first episode, have lost one of the three babies at birth and end up adopting an abandoned African American baby who was born the same day.  And it goes from there.  I love it.

In last night's episode, during one of the flash backs to the parents, just discovering that the pregnancy they thought would yield their longed-for baby is actually going to give them triplets...and how will the low income family, already struggling financially, be able to handle three babies.

Early in the pregnancy, mom has a craving.  I don't remember what it was for, but it got me to thinking about pregnancy cravings.  Fortunately, for Walt, I didn't have a lot...and really only when I was pregnant with Jeri and Ned (by the time I was pregnant with Paul, I was too busy dealing with the first two to think about cravings.

Early in my pregnancy with Jeri, Walt and I went out for a Japanese dinner during which I had something called a "sushi cone."  I think it is made differently now because if you order a sushi cone today you get your rice and fish mixture in a black seaweed (nori) cone shape.

But the cones we had were wrapped in some sort of fried bean curd wrapper.  It was delicious.

When we got home that night, all I could think of was that sushi cone and how I wanted another one.  The craving was so strong, Walt finally went out, drove across town back to the restaurant and bought another one.  In truth (and he probably doesn't know this), by the time he returned home, the craving was gone.  I ate it because he had been so sweet in getting it for me, but I really didn't want it. 

Pregnant ladies are crazy.  Fortunately, I don't remember having another craving throughout that pregnancy.

It was different when I was pregnant with Ned.  I couldn't get enough Italian peppers.  I could go through a jar in a day and would often call Walt at work to let him know that I was out of peppers and ask him to pick up another jar on his way home.

Oddly enough, I don't remember ever caring about peppers before and certainly not since that pregnancy.  I never eat peppers today, but it certainly was a strong craving that may have shaped Ned's personality!

What pregnancy does to our tastes is weird.  Mine anyway.  I was birthin' babies during the era when you had to actually wait for a certain season to get your favorite fruits and vegetables and so, ever since I was a child, I wanted eagerly for August when Gravenstein apples, my favorites, hit the market.  I loved them.  

Ned was born in August and after his birth, my mother visited me in the hospital and brought me a bag of Gravensteins.  I couldn't eat them.  Even the smell of them made me ill and I ended up throwing the bag away.  To this day I still prefer sweeter apples and don't know that I have ever bought Gravenstein's in the past 50 years.

I still have cravings, but now I can't blame pregnancy on them.  I just blame faulty taste buds miswired into my brain somehow.  I crave peanut butter, I crave tortillas, I crave peanuts and certain brands of crackers (oddly, I don't usually crave chocolate).  In fact, I've been thinking, since I woke up this morning, that I have buttermilk in the fridge and I really want to make buttermilk pancakes, so that's what I'm going to do....