Stepping Into the World of the Gospodinã - A Moldovan Kitchen Witnessing (Moldovan cooking class)

Written by - Lu Johnson, Founder and Curator at Mending Miles Co.

If you asked me when I was younger whether or not I wanted to help in the kitchen,

I'd say "no thanks." and quickly scurry away.

In childhood the kithen represented labor over play. Plucking, cutting, gathering trash, and my least favorite, doing the dishes!

But today I know that it is in the kitchen that I've learned about womanhood in the cultural sense. While washing vegetables or dicing onions for an aunt, a grandma, or a parent, I learned of traditions, expectations, dreams, and always a little bit of gossip. Could never look at my aunties the same.

The kitchen is where so much of who I am was softly handed to me, and I don't think I was fully aware yet.

The Invitation

Walking into Vatra Dumeniului

Over the years, I found my place in the kitchen in a way that made me feel like a witness.

My years in restaurant leadership have helped in deepening that connection to gastronomy. Eventually, food became an anchor. A way I could experience the world.

I carried this truth into Vatra Dumeniului.

A kitchen I looked forward to being invited into. Learning of the Moldovan kitchen was a challenge I welcomed, learning more of what it represents, and validating the parts of me that craves to learn from the women who came before me.

In that kitchen, I got an opportunity to step into the world of the gospodinã.

The Gospodinã

A word that holds more than its translation

While this word translates to "housewife" it carries a deeper essence of what some of us might view as a housewife. It is a testament to the nurturer, the person who carries culture, attention, and wisdom. The gospodină is the one who heals with her words, her meals, and her presence.

Rather than reducing womanhood to a place of servitude, it holds its value and power.

The gospodinã is a way of seeing women in a wider lens than the labels we have been given in other places. Not someone who was once a girl, taking a "rightful place" in the kitchen, but the core reason life is easier to hold.

I lean into spaces like this on purpose. Spaces where womanhood gets to be more nuanced than the versions we are most often handed. A resounding authority, lineage moving through hands, joy and purpose living alongside each other.

The Women of Vatra Dumeniului

Elena, Veronica, Mihaela, and Domno Mihai's Jin de Casa

It was an honor to be one of the girls in the kitchen with Elena, Veronica, and Mihaela for my Moldovan cooking class. And let's not forget Domno Mihai and his phenomal Jin de Casa (house wine). They poured me a glass, and that is the Moldovan way of saying; make yourself at home, and stay for a while.

I was happy to!

I love Jin de Casa and I know it is the seal to a genuine invitation.

This time it was the perfect reminder that culture can move through something other than language. So I dug my hands in fresh dough, followed the technique as close as I could and created placinte magic.

Placinte

Two versions, one tradition

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  Freshly baked Moldovan placinte filled with cheese and cherry, made during a cooking class at Vatra

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  Inside the kitchen at Vatra Dumeniului during a hands-on Moldovan cooking class

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  Vatra Dumeniului in Moldova, a cultural kitchen and cooking class space rooted in tradition

Placinte is the Moldovan stuffed pastry that has lived in this region for generations. Dough, rolled thin, filled with what the season gifts, and folded into shape before hitting a pan of oil and quickly disappearing from the plate in the middle of the table.

You have to stop me from stuffing up on Placinte!

Its roots go back to the Roman placenta, a flat baked offering that traveled across the region and it settled into Moldovan kitchens as something for everyday and yet somehow sacred at the same time.

We made two kinds.

A savory version filled with cheese, and a sweet cherry one. The perfect any time of the day meals. Could be lunch, could be breakfast, could be dessert. Could even be a midnight snack!

It is special to make a food that has been made the exact same way for centuries along side the stewards of that culture. What an honor to step into a line that started long before you and I, and will keep going long after.

The Kitchen Becomes the Classroom

The heart of Vatra Dumeniului

One of the focuses of Vatra Dumeniului is to teach young Moldovans how to stay rooted in their own culture in a world that defines tradition as outdated and creates a framework to stray from it. They also invite travelers like me to learn Moldovan cuisine in a way that is honest, hands-on, making us honorary ambassadors of cultures and showing us the paths that connect it to our own cultures.

You arrive. You are fed. You are taught.

And by the time you leave, you have a sense of the country that is deeper than ordering a meal at a local restaurant.

An Experience You Take Home With You

This is the kind of moment that lives inside the work I do at Mending Miles Co. Gathering women around food, around culture, around the kitchens of the women who came before us.

🎟️ Excursion booked through local tourism executive Tatiana Musuc.

This is exactly the kind of travel I am honored to organize. If kitchens, vineyards, and the women who hold a culture together are calling your name, the next Mending Miles retreats are taking shape now. Moldova, the French countryside, Scotland, Gabon, and Tuscany are all in the lineup.

You can visit the retreats page to share where you would like to land next and receive updates as new trips and booking dates open.