GIVE YOUR MOUTH A CULINARY VACATION

It's one thing to read about a dinner featuring pheasant with sage and truffle. In the same way that it's one thing to read about space flight. But where orbiting Mars is a few years off for most of us, sampling a remarkable meal - in the environment where it originated - is a fairly straightforward affair. A culinary vacation will take you from one meal to the next, in the country where these foods became famous, where they were first mastered and served. There's almost nothing more satisfying than partaking of a particular region's culinary fare at your own pace and for that purpose. A culinary vacation is a dream.

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A culinary vacation features a tour of a country for the purpose of stopping in various cities to take lessons from top local chefs. You can find a culinary vacation in the ads of Gourmet, Fine Cooking, or Smithsonian magazines, and others. These trips are really for the serious cook. Some of the most popular destinations are France, Spain, Italy, and Mexico.

The stops are not the bland group-tour variety. Many culinary vacation operators arrange lessons in fine restaurants or schools, often housed in bed-and-breakfast inns, monasteries, castles, or other romantic sites. It will often include trips to farms as well, to watch cheese making, wine making, or the harvest. On a culinary vacation, you can expect to be in a rather small group, usually less than 20 people. And with fellow gourmands, there will be plenty to talk about and explore.





Deep Into The Culture
At sometimes more than $5,000 for a short excursion, a culinary vacation is not cheap. But they are popular because of the cultural experiences and cooking wisdom that tourists bring home.

Some recipes you can't learn from a book - like grandma's biscuits, maybe. The same is true of other recipes. Sometimes you need to meet professional chefs, or other peoples' grandmas, to perfect a recipe. A real hands-on lesson is the best way to learn. You experience the aroma, the texture, and the appearance of a perfectly made ratatouille or fresh pasta noodles.

So many great chefs, whether professionals or not, have learned instinctively how to measure flour with their hands, spices with their fingers, and doneness with their noses. Nothing can replace having this cooking experience with master chefs.





A More Complete Vacation
A culinary vacation is the only way to combine interactive learning with a dazzling trip. But if a week or so of cooking doesn't sound like a vacation to you, there are less-intense programs. Many spas both in the United States and abroad have added a few cooking classes to the menu of massage, facial, and yoga. Especially for someone with a busy, but healthy lifestyle, a few classes on quick, nutritious meals might be a vacation that really improves life.