02. PERSONAL WORK
Pickles and Ice Cream
02.B
Pickles &
ICE CREAMA PREGNANCY CRAVINGS COOKBOOK
It started simply as an online cookbook with 15 recipes. Now, it's a real book with 70 of them. This book is dedicated to collecting and reviewing the craziest dishes pregnant women crave.
Available for purchase here.
Popsugar
”This gourmet pregnancy cravings cookbook is the most hysterial book ever..”
The Huffington Post
”The ultimate book for expectant mothers.”
Mummy Pages
”(The) answer to millions of pregnant women's prayers."
It all started with a friend secretly eating Oreos and toothpaste in the bathroom. We would have thought her insane if it hadn’t been for one thing – something that instantly downgraded her to “mildly eccentric” on the crazy scale. She was pregnant.
And as we all know, having a miniature human growing inside of you can really mess with how your tongue and brain works. Suddenly, the food you used to love is waging war on your
stomach. And your new favorite food resembles something that a stoned college student whipped up from the leftovers in his fridge.
For our friend, for example, regular Oreos suddenly became like Charlie Chaplin without his moustache. The Internet without cats. A Michael Bay movie without explosions. Just …missing something. And that something was toothpaste.
We were fascinated by this sudden transition from the disgusting to the delicious. And began to wonder … what strange concoctions were other pregnant women secretly eating? Thus, the idea for the world’s first crazy pregnancy cravings recipe book was born.
What followed next was over a year of research. We spoke to every single person we knew that had ever made use of their uterus. Family, friends, acquaintances. And then moved onto strangers and random passersby. We checked out mommy blogs and pregnancy forums. And we devoured all the literature we could on the subject. We stopped short of loitering in maternity wards, but only just. And in this time, we met some amazing people, some amazing kids and discovered some amazing things too.
We learned that some women have very weird cravings. Some women have no cravings. And some women have very boring cravings. It is entirely possible that we have the dubious distinction of having heard the word “pickles” more than anyone else on the planet. Fast food was another fast favourite that got old pretty fast too. But we also discovered that there are some surprisingly popular unusual cravings. Who knew that ice-cream with a spicy sauce was secretly eaten by hoards of pregnant women the world over? Or that soap, bricks and charcoal are commonly longed for, if not always indulged in?
Although almost everyone we spoke to was happy to share their experiences with us, sadly a lot of women had been ashamed of their cravings at the time. This made us even more determined to make the book. We wanted to send a message to pregnant women everywhere. That they most certainly weren’t alone in their cravings. And no matter how weird
it was, there was a good chance someone had craved something weirder. This would be a celebration of one of the quirks of bringing a new life into this world – no stigma attached.
Once we had gathered enough recipes, we started the cookbook as the blog www.eatingfortwocookbook.com.
Each dish was photographed like a gourmet meal, given a fancy title and a step-by-step recipe. For the first time, pregnancy cravings looked and sounded as mouth-watering as they were to the women who craved them.
In fact, they looked so good, we decided, we would try them all and give them a rating and a review. We would do this in the name of science and art. To celebrate the mystery and beauty of birth and life. And of course, for shits and giggles.
This was a decision we came to regret.
Project Details
Photography & Food-styling by Juarez Rodrigues