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After a long day of travel (over 24 hours) we made it back to Aspen last night. What a great trip and what a great experience!

Just to summarize our trip: we flew into Florence where we spent the first three nights. After Florence we went to the cooking school outside of the town of Poppi in eastern Tuscany where we stayed for seven nights. We then spent one night in the town of Civitella in Val di Chiana followed by three nights in Montalcino before finishing up with our last two nights back in Florence. This was the longest trip either of us have had in many years and it is hard to pick out a single favorite moment, but here are some of the highlights. (Hopefully I'll post some pictures soon, but they are still downloading from the camera. Between the two of us we took nearly 2,000 photos.)

Highlights from Florence - Walking through the San Lorenzo food market. A few blocks from the Duomo is the San Lorenzo street market and in the middle of it is a large building that houses all of the food stands. This is mostly a meat market with rows of butchers selling everything from steaks to tripe. Coming from a location where most of our meat is pre-packaged and shipped a long distance it is refreshing to see the work being done right in front of you. We wished we could have bought fresh meats & cheeses to bring home!

Besides the amazing architecture of the Duomo and the unique desine of the Ponte Vecchio bridge, Florence wasn't exactly our cup of tea. Large and noisy with lots of tourists. Driving out of Florence in our rented Ford was a bit scary but with Kelly navigating we had no issues. (Note from Kelly: Jan is being modest here. Italian drivers & specifically those from Florence are fast, aggressive and unforgiving. He did a great job!)

On the way to the cooking school we took one wrong turn and ended a little off track, but found a 'short-cut' road that quickly turned into a twisty one-lane road cutting through the mountains. Not more than 40 minutes out of Florence and we were on remote roads twisting through the countryside. In spite of a little car sickness we both agreed that it was worth taking a wrong turn. On a side note, the mountains in eastern Tuscany are full of great roads for road biking and we saw quite a few cyclists out.

The cooking school as a whole was the highlight for both of us on this trip. Casa Ombuto is tucked into the hills and for many of the other students was pretty hard to find. For me it was similar to finding a friend's house back in Georgetown. No problem. We found out later that they have very little signage to the house as they don't want people just stopping by looking for a place to stay. The facilities at Casa Ombuto were modern and spacious and the service was designed for the guests to be at complete ease the entire time. There were 11 of us in total so it was a small group. We were the youngest of the group which consisted of 4 Canadians (Bruce & Janice, Jane and Nancy) 2 from the U.S. (Elaine and Pat), two Brits (Mark and Leslie), an Aussie (Maria) and us. After a few too many drinks at the opening dinner we were all good friends.

The cooking lessons were lead by Paola, a chef from the area who had previously owned a restaurant and had been doing private cooking lessons for many years including guest stints in Santa Barbara and Florida. There were four cooking sessions during the week. These started at 3pm and usually ended at 8pm. Paola would start by going through all of the dishes we were going to cook, having us take notes on the recipes and explaining the ingredients. After the explanation she would split us into teams (or occasionally on our own) to make the different dishes. Besides the last session, all of the cooking sessions involved some dish or component of a dish that would be served later in the week and the rest went into a 4 course dinner that we would eat that night. When she was describing the dishes we would all wonder how we could make so much food in such a short amount of time, but we managed to pull it off every time. We took a lot of pictures of the dishes and when I post those I'll let them do the talking.

The kitchen could get a bit stressful. Paola wasn't coddling us at all - "Chop that finer like I said the first time!" and at some point we all felt the humility of being corrected. It was the best way to learn. Rolling pasta is incredibly difficult to do well, but screw it up a dozen times you begin to learn what works.

Highlights from the kitchen - Kelly's expressions over some of the ingredients, like rabbit, octopus and whole chickens. Sliding a hand made pizza into a wood fired grill. Making ravioli by hand. And in general watching the chaos of 11 non-chefs scramble around a kitchen to make what would turn out to be a very gourmet meal.

To break up the week of lessons we had two days of other activities. The first day we had a group tour to a couple of sites in the region. The first stop was the walled city (our first of many) of Arezzo which was relatively uneventful. Our next stop was definitely unique - a small winery at an old restored villa. The owner was a doctor in Arezzo who restored the house and then started making wine as a hobby. When he discovered that he had a good wine he entered it into a wine festival in London and received a bronze. He received similar awards the following two years as well. The wine was very good and if you happen to be at our house for a special occasion you may get to drink some of what we bought.

Okay, my hands are sore from typing (need to get them back into shape for work ;o) so I'll let Kelly take over the next post. More later, hopefully with photos!!

Tuscany

I'm putting on more weight than I care to admit, but I may be doing my future races in the clydesdale division. Today we went out on an all day excursion of the region. We visited a winery, a textile factory, an olive oil farm and a farm that produces sheeps cheese. Pretty standard tour, right? Not exactly. The winery was small - only about 2 hectares and is privately owned by pyschologist (imagine an Italian Frasier). The house was originally built in 12th centuary and has been beautifully restored and maintained. The wine won awards the past two years at a London wine festival against several thousands other wines from around the world. More on the winery later. The textile factory was a hole in the wall of ancient walled city. Our tour guide (really just showing us around on her break) was the great granddaughter of the original weaver. The olive oil was all organic and produced using the original process used before the birth of Christ. The sheep cheese farm was tucked high on a hillside that you'd have a hard time finding with a map. Anyway, the dinner bell is ringing (although I'm not hungry). Ciao!

Casa Ombuto!

Good morning from Casa Ombuto! This place is gorgeous, so much prettier than it looks online. Definitely exceeds expectations! We met our fellow cooks at dinner last night, as well as the house chef, Paola, & the house manager, Barbara. Very fun group of people, 11 guests total, 2 other couples & a few ladies traveling together. Last night Paola made dinner for us, the rest of the week we'll make our dinner. We are getting spoiled, the food so far has been to die for! Meat & cheese and plenty of wine. We can't wait to start cooking later today. Wish we could post pictures to show you around! Hope you are all well, lots of love, JK & KJ

Buon giorno!

We're in Italy! Just a quick stop at an Internet Cafe before heading out into the markets of Florence. We've already had some great food and seen some amazing sights. Florence is a busy yet beautiful city. Tomorrow we head out to our cooking school!

Ciao for now!

Anticipation

The anticipation of an upcoming trip can really alter your life; work seems to be a by-product of your day and only one topic occupies your social conversations – “When are you going to Italy?” “What are you doing there?” “Have you ever been to Italy before?” Very standard and mundane questions but ones asked nevertheless and the great part is… you don’t mind answering them a thousand times over – “We leave on the 8^th” “We are going to a cooking school in Tuscany” “I have been to Italy before, but not Tuscany, and this is Kelly’s first trip to Europe.” I really can’t get enough.

And then there are the travel books, novels about Tuscany and the obligatory Italian lessons loaded onto the iPod. One side note to whoever produced the language lessons we purchased: Please do not spend equal amount of time on a two-syllable phrase like “La via” – “the street” - and a multi- syllable phrase like “Sono un mangione” - “I am a big eater.” Ok, I stole that second phrase from Rick Steve’s Italian phrase book, but that is only because the lesson went too fast for me to catch whatever phrase it was. I suppose it’s my fault for waiting until the last week to start listening to the lessons I purchased back in March.

Where was I? Oh yes, guidebooks. Guidebooks – Kelly loves them… and I… well, I will need them at some point I suppose. Ideally we will take first hand accounts and personal recommendations over any well travelled author. Fortunately, we’ve had numerous restaurant and winery recommendations from friends. The Food & Beverage Director from the Nell recommended a small pizzeria in Florence where he had spent the evening drinking Chianti with the owner. Johnny sells wines for a couple wineries there and has provided us with contact info. But ultimately, it was Arie who so politely reminded me that he has a good friend, Alessandra – Ale for short, who not only lives in Montalcino, but works at a very good winery with a Michelin rated restaurant. I can already taste the culture!

So, my point to this blog? There is none other than I’m excited to go and I just got 10 minutes closer to leaving by writing this. Arrivederci!