Cooking with Kary: Cooking School Italy, Where would you go and what would you cook?

My hubby and I love to travel and what we really enjoy is meeting the locals. We have traveled across the pond where they speak the Queens English, a Scottish Brogue, Gaelic, Italian, German and French.
Last year we had a once in a life time adventure traveling to the Galapagos in Ecuador, where no translator was required to communicate with all the critters. We have been fortunate to have traveled to the Caribbean, Mexico, Puerto Rico, South and Central America as well as North to Canada and Alaska.

St Andrews New Brunswick Canada

Nova Scotia

One of our favorite cities is New Orleans where any number of dialects can be heard, from Cajun, Creole, French or plain ole Southern, no matter what the accent or dialect half the fun is trying to communicate. And it goes without saying that Doug and are always interested in the ingredients and how a meal is prepared.

So where would I go, so many choices. My first thought is Italy because I have a passion for Italian food, I mean who doesn’t? Several years ago Doug and I spent six days in Venice where we explored every alley way, getting lost in the twisting turning streets that are Venice. We visited museum after museum, churches, had fun trying to speak Italian and got to know some of the local vendors and shop owners. There was a lovely market around the corner from our hotel that sold slices of the most amazing chocolate cake. We stayed at a locally owned hotel that served breakfast from 7am to 10 am, period no exceptions, so no cooking for me.

We only visited a very small slice of Italy, so I would love to visit Tuscany or some other village in Italy. What an experience it would be to wander through the local market’s taking in all the sites, sounds and scents, searching for the freshest ingredients and chatting with the locals.

When planning a trip I usually begin by searching the internet first, looking for local lodging and any information about the country. Before I started to write this post I decided to search the web for cooking in Italy and landed on Tuscany Cooking Vacation.

The site is lovely, informative and in English. If the website was in Italian I would have looked for a website in English. In my opinion I think having a website translate to a variety of languages would be a definite benefit, specifically when you are advertising a vacation spot.

I also searched for markets in Italy and came across a number of sites, many in English. If I was in Italy searching the web for a local market the odds are pretty good that the websites would be in Italian. I would spend a few minutes searching for a site in English that already uses Translation software and if I could not find one I would most likely ask a local where they shop. And if they could not provide the information, I would ask a local to translate the website.

I feel most comfortable attempting to speak Spanish, Italian and a little French but other dialects are completely foreign to my ear, so an English translation of a website would be perfect for me.

Many other countries popped into my mind when I was thinking about this post. Finland is on my bucket list and is where my Grandmother on my Mom’s side is from. I have fond memories of my Grandmother cooking and speaking to us in Finish. My Mom says her one regret is that she never learned how to speak Finish and neither did I.

Morocco would be another great place to visit, where I imagine that the markets overwhelm the senses with color and the air is filled with the aroma of spices. I am sure it would be a great adventure in cooking and being introduced to exotic new foods would test my palate. My brother loved Moroccan food and worked in a Moroccan restaurant in Palm Springs, California for a number of years, which I was fortunate enough to have eaten at. Delicious and fun!

Also on the list; the Great Barrier Reef, the Amazon River, Bali, an African Safari and our next trip is a Rhine River cruise in 2016, can’t wait for that!

The places I want to visit are endless, so little time, so many cultures and cuisines to experience. If you could go anywhere in the world where would that be?