I am traveling to Paris next spring to celebrate a major birthday, and my entire trip is about eating and experiencing French food. As I was thinking about the itinerary, the more special, local food I discovered, the happier I became! Here are my top 5 must-dos in Paris for my perfect Paris food adventure:
French Brasserie
Entrance to the Market
Barcelona’s La Boqueria Market (also called Mercat de Sant Josep de la Boqueria) is a true feast for the senses. As soon as you walk in you can see, smell, touch, hear and of course, taste the wonders and excitement of the city’s best public market. It’s touristy for sure, but it’s also a working market, used every day by the locals who come to shop for supplies for their daily meals.
Here at the market you’ll find everything from brightly colored (and expensive) candy and rich chocolates to recently deceased (and fully intact) animals like bunnies and chickens. You can find every kind of egg imaginable (chicken, ostrich, quail, and more), all parts of the cow and pig from head to hoof, fresh baked breads, brightly-colored fish from all corners of the sea, fresh fruit, spices, and cheese. In short, everything you need to create a multi-course meal or just the perfect Catalan picnic can be found here. Foodies will be in heaven, though vegetarians might not enjoy it so much.
One of my favorite things to do when traveling is to learn to cook some dishes local to the area I am visiting. Not only is it a fun activity to do while you are on vacation, but it’s also a great way to take a little bit of the local culture back home with you. Every time you make the dish you learned to make on your trip, you’ll be transported back to that location through your taste buds.
In Barcelona, my husband and I opted to take our class from Cook and Taste, a company that operates classes out of a kitchen located right above La Ramblas. We arrived for our cooking class at 9am, met the other 7 students in the class, and then set out to tour La Boqueria Market and collect the ingredients we would need for our dishes.
After we’d shopped for bread, fish, rice, spices, eggs, and vegetables, we returned to the kitchen, where the instructor divided us into teams. Each team would be responsible for one course. When we weren’t cooking our dish, we could watch the other students prepare theirs as we sipped on some Rioja wine.
We watched the other students prepare a traditional Catalan dish of grilled bread topped with broiled, peeled veggies; a cold soup of tomato topped with aioli creme and walnuts; and a hearty risotto made with shrimp, mussels, clams, monkfish, and langoustines.
Classmates Making Paella
Seattle’s Pike Place Market is one of the city’s most famous sites, and one that is considered a “must” for most visitors. The market, which was built in 1907, is recognized as one of the best farmer’s markets in the US. It’s home to 200 permanent businesses, 120 farmers, and 190 craftspeople, and attracts over 10 million visitors per year. But what makes it so great is that it isn’t only a touristy site, but a real working market. You can come to shop for crafts, antiques, fresh produce, brightly-colored flowers, handmade sauces, souvenirs and fresh-from-the-sea fish, lobster and crab (which can be cold-packed and shipped home for you). Or….you can come to eat.
Pike Place Entrance
While Disney is primarily geared toward kids, they can be very clever. They went through the trouble to build an entire park with something called World Showcase; chock-full of scaled down versions of countries such as France, United Kingdom, Morocco, Japan, and Italy – just to name a few.
Some friends of mine and I spent the day there recently and just for you we put together this handy guide to enjoying EPCOT sans children.
It’s worth the trouble to discuss exactly where you’d all like to dine for lunch or dinner (or both!) before you head out to the parks. Here’s why:
Germany also has some pretty yummy wines. You should check them out!
So much to do! So little time! What are you waiting for? See you at EPCOT!
Photo Credit: Shari Keating
by Barbara Ann Weibel of Hole In The Donut
Like most kids, I grew up eating pancakes. Mostly we had plain buttermilk or buckwheat flapjacks, but sometimes Mom threw in bananas or chocolate chips for variety. On occasion she got really creative and made pancakes with Mickey Mouse ears. Ah yes, my sisters and I were pancake gourmands. Or so I thought until I visited New England.
Quiet in the fall, the Sugar House becomes a beehive of activity every spring as the sap is boiled down to produce pure maple syrup
Last October I finally took a long anticipated “leaf-peeping” trip to see the fall colors. Wandering the back roads of Vermont near the town of Woodstock, I spied a sign for Sugarbush Farm that invited visitors to “learn about maple syrup making with our sugar house tour and walk our nature trail to see the sugar maple trees.” I suppose I’d always known that maple syrup came from trees; after all, there’s a reason those trees are named ‘maples.” But I’d never given it much thought.
This boiler cooks off excess water, making a single gallon of syrup from every 40 gallons of sap
Intrigued, I crossed the red covered bridge, wound to the top of the hill, and followed the signs for three miles. Like bread crumbs, they led me to the 550-acre working farm of Jeff and Ralph Luce. Since 1945, the Luce family has been making maple syrup the old fashioned way, tapping 6,000 trees and collecting the sap each March with a sled pulled by two Belgian horses. Following time-honored traditions, the crystal clear sap is boiled down in their on-site sugar house until it turns to gold, requiring 40 gallons of sap to produce a single gallon of pure Vermont maple syrup.
These days, Sugarbush Farm has branched out into cheese production, making 14 varieties from the milk of their own cows. Smoked flavors spend three days and nights in their smoke house, which can accommodate 2100 pounds per batch. All cheeses are then aged at 38-40 degrees for 2-3 years in a cooler that holds 80,000 pounds of cheese. The Luces have definitely honed the art of sustainability. The cows are fed with hay grown on the farm and the sugar boiler is fired with wood from older trees that no longer produce sap and so must be culled from the grove.
The only concession to modern technology are the miles of PVC lines that collect the sap, replacing metal traditional buckets
After visiting the sugar house, watching the video about maple sugar production, and taking the self-guiding hike up the hillside to see how the trees are tapped, I returned to the main farm house. Built in 1860, the homestead now serves as the farm’s gift house and cheese wrapping facility. At the urging of the staff, I tasted all 14 flavors of cheese and then began sampling the four different grades of maple syrup. The moment the golden liquid touched my lips, I knew I had been sorely misled. Why, that bottled stuff we poured over our pancakes as children was little more than sugar water! This stuff – well – this was nectar of the gods. No more Aunt Jemima for this gal. It’s pure maple syrup from now on or nothing.
In the cheese-wrapping room, visitors are encouraged to sample all 14 varieties of cheese and four grades of maple syrup
Maple season is in the early spring, but Sugarbush Farm is open year round. Since there is no entrance fee, a visit to the farm is a fun and economical day trip for families. Central Vermont is home to numerous attractions and exquisite scenery throughout the year, but if you plan to visit during the peak “leaf-peeping” months of September and October, be sure to book accommodations ahead of time.
Photos courtesy of Barbara Weibel
© UpTake Networks, Inc. 2009
