Tag Archives: Slow Food Movement

TRAVEL: Get cookin’!

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Chef-instructor in Paris | ©Greg Gross

Create some international “flava” and see the world at the same time. Feed your mind while learning great new ways to feed your face.

For me, a cooking vacation fills multiple bills at once.

I’m an expert on nothing and a student of everything, so I travel to learn. With the possible exception of electric eel wrangling, I’m a fan of almost any kind of hands-on travel.

Also, I love to cook. (Didn’t say I was good at it, just that I enjoy doing it!)

For some of us, some culinary training is needed. Between our penchant for fast food and food just done fast, we seem to be un-learning our way around a kitchen.

Think about it. If you moved your family to a place with no McDonald’s/KFC/Domino’s et al, could your kids survive?

For that matter, could you survive?

Without the invention of the microwave oven, a lot of Americans under the age of 40 would probably starve.

There’s something just plain cool about being able to combine some of “this” with a little of “that” and turn it into something people want to eat. Why would I want to give that up for pushing buttons on an irradiated box?

Also, food has a story to tell. You learn a lot about the world, including your own world, through that history.

You learn, for example, that things like fried chicken, barbecue and other “soul food” originated with American slave families learning to make do with the least of everything, and that Native Americans and their foods played a major role in creating African-American dishes.

You learn too that it was Europe’s craving for spices from Asia and Africa that sent waves of sea-faring explorers like Columbus and Magellan across the world’s ocean — and ultimately led to the rise of imperial Europe — and a hell of a lot of drama thereafter.

Remember the last time you went out with family or friends for dinner at some ethnic restaurant, and you all left raving about the meal you just had? Learning the backstory on some of those cuisines might lend some spice of its own to your next night out.

But why stop there?

France and Italy have long offered cooking classes to visitors, not only in Paris and Rome, but in some of the world’s most beautiful countrysides.

The Italian region of Tuscany has practically made an industry of this, using farm stays and cooking classes to keep family-owned farms going — with the blessing of the Italian government, no less.

The same is true across France, as regions like Provence vie with Paris over which represents the soul of French cooking.

In nearly every case, the teaching focuses on using fresh ingredients, bought at fair prices from local growers and prepared with “old school” methods. Nothing artificial, nothing processed.

“Genetically modified?” Don’t even think about it.

All of this has contributed to the rise of something that calls itself the Slow Food Movement.

Don’t want to go to a class? If you’ve got access to a kitchen, a chef-instructor will come to you.

I did this a few years ago with an American-born chef living in Paris, who “apprenticed” in the kitchens of his French in-laws. He leads you first to the market streets like Paris’ Rue Cler, where he teaches you how to spot what’s good, then takes you back to your own kitchen and shows you what you can do with it.

Next stop: lunch.

At the other end of the scale are full-fledged cooking tours, either escorted or self-guided, which put you in kitchens with like-minded fellow Gordon Ramsay-Tony Bourdain wannabes. Airfare will usually be separate, but almost everything else generally is included.

A miniscule example of cooking tour companies include:

  • CookingVacations.com and Epitourean.com
    One company, two sites. Cooking Vacations focuses of cooking tours in Europe, the Caribbean, South America and South Africa. They also do a 10-day cruise between Athens and Rome aboard the cruise ship Marina, with several cooking classes along the way. This one includes airfare. Epitourean offers shorter cooking tours in all 50 United States for us vacation-challenged Americans.
  • Cooking-vacations.com
    What a difference a hyphen makes. This outfit focuses strictly on Italy. Not to be confused with the hyphen-less Cooking Vacations site above, okay? They also other cultural offerings, including food market tours in which you learn how to shop for what’s good. After one of these, you may never go near plastic-wrapped produce again.
  • The International Kitchen
    These guys include Morocco as part of their culinary schooling.
  • Culinary Vacations
    these guys put their own spin — on the whole cooking class thing. One of their Italian culinary tours is run as a bike tour. Learn Italian cooking techniques, consume serious amounts of your own Italian dishes — and burn it all off every day. Guilt-free foodie? Yeah, I could do that!

ALSO CHECK OUT:
Here come El TacoBike!
AGRITOURISM
AVIATION QUEEN: Travel globally, Eat Locally
Find Your Niche! — FOOD

AGRITOURISM

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Guadalupe Valley vineyard, Baja California, MX | © Greg Gross

It’s one of those forms of vacation we call “niche travel.” It’s a chance to learn, meet people, re-connect with Nature and see the world at the same time. This niche has gone global, and it’s growing.

But you can get a taste of it right here at home.

Winery tours and dude ranches were among the earliest forms of agritourism. You could argue that farmers markets fill a part of that niche, too.

These days, though, it’s gone much further. The number of things lumped under the agritourism banner is incredibly broad; I couldn’t begin to list them all. Everything from horseback rides and corn mazes to agriculture fields where visitors can pick their own produce and “entertainment farming.”

Those are farm stays that not only give the visitor an education on how their food is produced, but lets them get hands-on in with the process.

You can see where your coffee comes from on Hawaii’s Big Island, and why it costs so much. You can see what it takes to make your favorite glass of wine from France or Italy or Argentina or South Africa. You learn what milk tastes like after you get it from the cow yourself.

These experiences can be as brief or as lengthy, as laid back or as strenuous, as you like. And when you tell folks back home that you got some international “flavor” on your vacation, you’ll be speaking literally.

Indeed, some of the most unforgettable memories of any trip are the ones you bring back on your tastebuds.

Being from New Orleans, I thought I knew a thing or two about shellfish, until I tasted fresh oysters harvested off the Normandy beaches in France. Ohhhh my…!

That’s one of the beauties of travel. There’s always something else, something more, out there, waiting to take you farther — and further — than you thought you could go.

But you need not travel long, far or expensively to get a taste of agritourism. America’s farmers and ranchers, especially the little guys, are warming up to this concept.

Odds are, a check with your local county government or farm bureau will yield plenty of agritourism opportunities within an hour’s drive — or maybe just a health walk or bike ride — from your own doorstep.

IBIT guest columnist Tracy Gross was interviewed on the subject of agritourism by travel writer Rudy Maxa on his radio show. You can hear it here.

There’s a very cool little synergy that takes place in all this.

On one side, you’ve got small farms, dairies and the like, run by families who often can trace their labors back through generations. Many of those families today are struggling to survive in the suffocating shadow of corporate agribusiness, which is daily driving under small family farms around the world.

On the other side, you’ve got a lot of consumers out there who want to know more — a lot more — about where their food comes from. Some of them are “foodies” or people into the Slow Food Movement, but many others are just regular consumers trying to safeguard their long-term health.

They’ve heard a lot about the chemicals, hormones and genetic modifications in the foods we all eat — and it scares the hell out of them.

Agritourism has become the tie that binds — and benefits — both.

The family produce grower who can’t hope to compete with the corporate mega-farms can turn their farmhouse into a bed-and-breakfast that includes a close-up look at the operation, demonstrations, cooking classes — all of which helps them to keep going.

In turn, the visitors can learn and see firsthand how their food becomes “their food,” what it takes to bring it from a seed in the ground to a meal on their plate. They can get to know some of the people behind all those faceless product labels, which is always a good thing.

And they can remind themselves what real, fresh, unaltered food tastes like.

For those who’ve spent their lives eating whatever came out of a can, a bag from a fast-food joint or chemically treated supermarket produce, the flavor shock at a farm or a farmer’s market can be almost overwhelming.

In some countries, agritourism is viewed as a way of keeping not merely family traditions, but whole cultures, alive — to the point that the United Nations is starting to offer financial support to major agritourism projects around the world.

So if you’re looking for a travel experience that active, affirming and tasteful all at once, especially one that gies you almost endless options, consider giving yourself a taste of agritourism. Your palate will thank you.

IF YOU GO
Agritourism World has an extensive list of locations and activities from which you can choose.