Because the world needs another food and drink blog...

...we're here to fill the void! Of course that's not the case, and that was one thing that kept us from trying this for a while. But eating and drinking is so much a part of our lives -- we spend most of our spare time at restaurants, farmers markets, wineries, breweries and in the kitchen that we figured we're as qualified as anyone. So here we are!
Who are we?
We live in the Washington DC area, the inner Northern Virginia suburbs, to be specific.

By day, we are professional writers and communicators working for the sprawling Government Industrial Complex here in Our Nation's Capital. We've spent the last 10+ years watching the DC area's food and drink scene explode. More and more interesting restaurants; farmers markets and gourmet stores popping up everywhere; an increasingly impressive wine scene in Virginia (Maryland too, apparently, though we have yet to check it out); craft breweries producing tasty suds...lots and lots to explore, and we try to do as much exploring as we can. We cook a fair amount too, and occasionally get ambitious, especially on weekends. 

We also like to travel and, like Napoleon's army, we travel on our stomachs. We take road trips around Virginia and up the coast to Philly, New York, Cape Cod (our happy place!) and occasionally Boston. Every now and again, we make it to the West Coast (Patti's from Orange County and has family in the Bay Area too) and the Midwest (since I'm from Indiana). Slightly less frequently, we make it to Europe, particularly France. Wherever we go, we build our entire trip around the meals, wineries and gourmet shopping, though we do occasionally feel guilty about not taking full advantage of the museums and other tourist sites.

What will we write about?
In this blog, we'll write about everything described above and then some, including the occasional commentary on the food and drink related books we read, shows we watch (the Food Network and Cooking Channel tend to be where our TV seems to be stuck) and stuff we see online. The way we figure, this is our chance to write about something we love, instead of something we are paid to write about. And while some blogs focus on one particular aspect of eating and drinking, be it cooking, restaurants, beer, wine, etc., our interests are broad enough (and our attention spans narrow enough) that we decided not to limit ourselves.

What's Gastonomy? Can we not spell?
We can indeed spell, and "Gastonomy" is a play on our last name, Gaston. Gastonomy is our brand of gastronomical adventures -- as we described above. And, just to add more fun, it seems to confuse the hell out of Google.

We hope you'll enjoy following along with them, and maybe even jump in and comment a bit. No promises on how long we keep this up, but as long as we're inspired, we hope you'll be entertained and keep coming back.