From Santorini, we took the ferry over to Crete. The plan was to spend our three mornings in a private cooking class, then visit a few nearby towns by bus in the afternoons, but that didn’t work out. During the first “cooking” class, we made a salad and some tomato-topped bread. No joke. For the second, the teacher was half an hour late; we were on the verge of leaving when she finally arrived, but after expressing our unhappiness with the state of things, we went ahead and did the second class, and made a few things like stuffed veggies and three different arrangements of spanakopita – though all with pie crust rather than phyllo!? While it was much better than the first class, overall we were still pretty unhappy, so we canceled the third. Continue reading
Food
6 corners of the Hexagon: Lille
We spent a long weekend in Lille, and to no one’s surprise, it wasn’t enough time to really get to know this vibrant city. But we did walk a lot, visit the basilica, and take the city bus tour, which was quite good.
We also visited the marché populaire and sat at a café drinking beer and eating frites in la Grande Place writing postcards of, justement, la Grande Place. We’re such tourists sometimes. 🙂
– – – – –
6 corners of the Hexagon: Week 3
While in Strasbourg for Bastille Day, we also visited the terrific Musée alsacien and had dinner at our favorite restaurant in Strasbourg: Poêles de Carottes. One of the employees (owners?) can be a little grouchy, but the food is terrific.
On the 15th we headed south from Strasbourg to retrieve the wallet in Annecy – more than 4 hours each way. To make the most of the trip, we rented another paddleboat and spent two glorious hours out on Lake Annecy. We also found a terrific fromager and stocked up on our favorite cheeses plus some local specialities.
Coming home, we stopped in Ribeauvillé in hopes of buying more of the wine we’d liked best during our dégustations the week before, but we were 45 minutes too late – everything had closed at 7pm.
Niederbronn’s weekly marché, held every Friday, was a little disappointing, as it is mostly clothing, with only a few food stands. (The one in the nearby town of Reichshoffen, on Thursdays, is much bigger and better.)
On Sunday, we went to la Fête de la myrtille in Dambach, bought a bunch of blueberries, and tasted blueberry wine, beer, and jam.
– – – – –
Happy New Year!
Good-bye 2009 and the unnamed first decade of the new millenium! Hello 2010 and another difficult to name decade! I spent nearly the entire year in France, other than my three weeks in Italy, and I’ll likely be in France for all of the new year as well. Best wishes to all!
Here’s some reading material and ideas for New Year’s Resolutions for you:
Apicius Culinary Institute, Florence, Italy
I spent my third and final week in Italy taking private cooking classes at Apicius Culinary Institute. I had spent a long time looking for another group class but just couldn’t find something that appealed to me yet didn’t cost a small fortune, and then I discovered that private classes were fairly competitively priced. For €1,060 I received
- 4 private cooking classes (2-2½ hours) followed by lunch
- 1 private and 1 group wine appreciation class (1 hour each)
- Private gastronomic walking tour (2 hours)
- 1 group cooking class (2 hours) followed by meal
- Recipes before each lesson
- Apron
Convivio Rome, Toffia, Italy
The second Italian cooking program I attended in September was Convivio Rome. While it’s not a vegetarian program, I contacted the school ahead of time and they assured me that I would have something vegetarian to cook while the other students cooked meat. For €999, the program included the following:
- 6 nights accommodation in a local cottage
- Daily breakfast in the local café
- 3 cooking sessions (2 hours each) followed by lunch
- 2 dinners, including one with wine tasting
- Guided tour of Rome
- Visits to nearby villages
- Olive oil tour and tasting session
- Transportation to/from train station
- Recipes before each lesson
- Welcome gift (a lovely kitchen towel from a nearby village)