Cooking School June 5-6

                                                          June 5-6                                           Trip to Date

Miles Walked                                          8.1                                                     298.9

Feet Climbed                                         760                                                    34,370

Song of the Day:  Red Red Wine by UB40

Red red wine you make me feel so fine

You keep me rocking all of the time

Red red wine you make me feel so grand

I feel a million dollars when you're just in my hand

It seems as though the last two days of cooking school field trips have been spent around alcohol related activities.  On Friday, we visited a local lemoncello "factory"; on Saturday, we visited a winery.  And much lemoncello and red wine was consumed during these visits and over the course of the past few days.  

Lemoncello is an Italian liqueur made from lemon peels, water, sugar and high proof alcohol.  Basically, you mix lemon peels, water, and sugar and let it sit in the dark for 30 days. Then you mix in the alcohol and let it sit for another 7 days.  That's basically it.  The Italians say the secret is in the quality of the lemons, which are from the Sorrento area of Italy.  By the way, we will be staying in Sorrento for a few nights next week.  This particular "factory" (a term I use very loosely, as the factory was smaller than a single car garage!) also produces other flavors, including cherry, coffe, and licorice.  They are now producing about 60,000 bottles per year.  We were able to taste all the flavors and all were excellent, although the lemon was our favorite.  Here is a photo of the whole group after we had finished the presentation and consumed many samples along the way:

We also visited a local winery on Saturday morning.  Linda and I have been to lots and lots of wineries over the years, and I have to say, this was one the best.  The presentation from the owner Lucio was terrific, and his descriptions of both the wine making and wine tasting processes were quite coherent.   The winery is located in a very historic building from the 1800's that was part of the Bourbon regime. The owner also described how the original vintner  went to a wine exposition in France in 1870 and brought the Cabernet and Syrah grapes to Italy.  We tasted a couple of 2011 Cabernets and also a Chardonnay and all were excellent.  I asked the owner if his wines were sold in the United States, and he said not yet, although he really wanted to.  So, I have introduced Lucio to a friend of mine in New York who is an importer of Italian wines to the USA. Hopefully something good will come out of this.  Here are a couple of photos from the winery.  The first is of Linda and Liz (one of the guests, from New York City) along with Patritzio, one of the leaders from the cooking school.  The second is the oak room in the winery.  The owner Lucio is the guy on the left with the papers in his hands:

We also ate at a very nice restaurant for lunch on Saturday.  Probably our best pasta of the week.  One interesting story from this dinner had to do with the invention of Carbonara as a pasta dish.  It is actually a very new dish to Italy.  At the conclusion of World War II, the U.S. Soldiers had a steady diet of bacon and eggs for rations.  This became the base ingredients for the invention of the carbonara dish.  

I forgot to tell another dinner story from earlier this week.  You might recall that we visited an olive oil producer named Vincenzo earlier in the week (lovingly referred to as Jesus or Fabio by many of the women in our group).  After visiting Vincezo, we ate dinner at the home of Vincenzo's Mom.  There were a total of 13 people at the dinner.  Vincenzo told us that in the Italian culture, you never set a table for 13 people.  13 is an unlucky number in the Italian culture, because this is a the number of people at the Last Super (Jesus, plus the 12 disciples).  So, he set 14 place settings, although no food was placed at the 14th setting.

Our Friday cooking class was for Pizza.  Truthfully, it was the kind of class you would teach a 5 year old.  Which probably fits my competence level....All we did was take a ball of dough, spread it out into a 12 inch circle, and then cover it with whatever ingredients we wanted for our own pizza.  They then put the pizza in a wood oven.  The pizza was actually quite good.

Here is another photo from yet another stunning Italian hill town.  By the way, I want to compliment Linda on her wardrobe this week. The diversity of her clothes is amazing given how little we brought on this trip. 

We have mostly had an enjoyable week at the cooking school, although it had more attributes of a group tour than we realized when we signed up.  The only group tour we have done was to Egypt and a Nile cruise in the late 90's.  While we  enjoyed most of the outings on this trip, it has seemed like we were often being herded.  We likely wouldn't do this one again.

Tomorrow we head off to Capri.  We have a 7:00 train, and should arrive at Naples around 10 am.  We then take a ferry to Capri, and should arrive there by noon or so.  We are looking forward to getting back to hiking and independence.