Every holiday and celebration with any importance in life incorporates a feast. Food brings everyone together, both in the kitchen during the creative processes, to the final dénouement at the table. Hunting, gathering and feasting are the oldest forms of human social interaction.
What we eat, drink and how it is prepared and served is relative to the specific society. Amanqina anyone? Thi...
Tour Host Review
Patrizia and Paolo welcome you to their home Il Poggione, an ancient country house in Tuscany situated on a hill surrounded by grapes, olive trees and cypresses.
It is here, in their home, where they hold the cooking classes and provide the accommodations for Tasty Tuscany. They open their home to Tasty Tuscany students because they want them feel that they are truly welcome guests of the family...
Host of the Month
The Musee de l’Art Culinaire in Villeneuve-Loubet, France, confers a double favor on traveling food lovers: It’s in the Maritime Alps, which provides an excellent excuse to visit the Cote d’Azur; and its location in the childhood home of France’s greatest late19th-and early 20th-century chef, Escoffier, makes for an inviting, sometimes eccentric, low-key museum ...
Museum Pick
Grand Teton
Written By Patrick Totty Posted on Nature
School kids love to snicker when they first learn that French trappers, a no-nonsense lot, named the Grand Tetons (“Big Teats” in English) for their resemblance to women’s breasts. But once the laughter subsides, they’re just as much in awe as anybody else at images of these soaring, sharply etched mountains.
Sooner or later, they and millions of other people make the long trip across the United States to see the Tetons for themselves. Most start their visit from Jackson Hole, the region’s main settlement and port of entry.
Slowly but surely the indicators show that the travel industry is beginning to
pick up:
In May, comScore Networks, an Internet research company, reported that U.S.
consumers spent nearly $13 billion between Jan. 1 and May 4 at online travel
sites. That figure...
Once upon a time in Russia, caviar was humble peasant food, eaten by the bowlful at home. When the Caspian Sea’s sturgeon's eggs became a tsar's pleasure, caviar turned into a marker of great wealth. In the last decade, with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its state-run and regulated caviar industry, Russian caviar turned into a mass-marketed delicacy for the middle...
When most people think of New Zealand, wine isn’t the first thing that springs to mind. This is hardly surprising as New Zealand's entry onto the world wine stage has been a fairly recent – if meteoric – event. The country’s first commercial vineyards were only planted in 1973, and up until the 1950's virtually nobody in New Zealand drank wine except European immigrants. The...
Is there really anywhere in the world where the words Elvis Presley, Madonna and Manchester United mean nothing?
Well, yes, there is, and I’m sitting in the middle of it – it’s called the Sahara.
Mohammed, our chef, shakes his head when asked if he’s ever heard of the modern world’s biggest icons, and Ahmed, a Berber Tom Cruise with a voice from the...
Before 1976, when California cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays won a stunning victory in a blind tasting in Paris against the France’s premier wines, most U.S. wine drinkers looked to Europe for superlative wines.
Besides the wines of Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Cotes du Rhone and Graves in France, knowledgeable American oenophiles also looked to Hungary’s Tokaji region, home...
North Americans who want to visit German wine country usually head straight for the Rhine. Rieslings produced along that river's picturesque banks west of Frankfurt are familiar because they are readily available in the United States and Canada.
However, southeast of Frankfurt, a different river, the Main, wends through another beautiful wine region, Franken. The Franken...
The term Viennese cuisine (Wiener Kuche), makes you think of exquisite dishes of multinational origin food and the splendid, light wine that goes with it. You can truthfully say that Viennese cooking is the origin of all fusion cuisine. Looking back, we find that the Habsburg Dynasty once held sway over most of Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Russia, Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain. While...
The Musee de l’Art Culinaire in Villeneuve-Loubet, France, confers a double favor on traveling food lovers: It’s in the Maritime Alps, which provides an excellent excuse to visit the Cote d’Azur; and its location in the childhood home of France’s greatest late19th-and early 20th-century chef, Escoffier, makes for an inviting, sometimes eccentric, low-key museum whose objects haven’t...
The mountainous southern state of Oaxaca has so many contrasts and attractions that it could well be the major focus of any trip to Mexico. Its southern border is the Pacific Ocean, including the up-and-coming mega-resort of Huatulco and the lesser-known, but edenic, beach town of Puerto Escondido.
From the Pacific, the state rises into a high interior, then drops to a tropical lowland – a...
When visitors travel top Cape Town and the Western cape of South Africa, they are often amazed at the variety of cuisine presented there. The "Rainbow National" golf tour also produces "Rainbow Cuisine," a fascinating potpourri of fresh fruits, vegetables and seafood prepared in the Mediterranean style, along with classic stews and meat dishes in the European tradition, and a spicy mélange of African...
Amalfi speaks to my soul. Crystal clear azure water lapping against craggy black rocks, creating translucent foam. Magenta bougainvillea and lush verdant ivy cascading down steep walls, Terraces of fragrant lemon groves carved into the hillsides. Faded pastel homes clinging to the mountainsides. The enticing aroma of pizzas baking in wood burning ovens. These are but a few visions that lure me back seeking...
Ever since I tried the wonderful Menica wines of the Ribeira Sacra Denomination of Origin in Galicia, Spain, I haven't stopped talking about them. I am very parched at the moment while in North America because I can't seem to find any wines from this D.O., the reason being is it is a very small wine-producing region and the majority of its output is consumed locally.
When I first arrived in Italy in 1984, most menus in restaurants there had handwritten signs that sais, “We only serve full meals.” A full meal to an Italian is a primi, first course of pasta rice or soup; a secondo, a main course of meat or fish; and a contorno, a vegetable. Most places would offer a reasonably priced tourist menu that included all of these. However, after a few days of lunch and...
One of the major reasons why Paris may be the world’s most irresistible city is that it has the most mouth-watering food stores and open-air markets to be found anywhere. Whether you want to have a picnic of simple, whole-grain bread and cheese made from raw milk, or feast on such fine takeout fare as choucroute garnie and paella, the food markets of Paris have it all, and then some....
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Grand Teton
Before 1976, when California cabernet sauvignons and chardonnays won a stunning victory in a blind tasting in Paris against the France’s premier wines, most U.S. wine drinkers looked to Europe for superlative wines.
North Americans who want to visit German wine country usually head straight for the Rhine. Rieslings produced along that river's picturesque banks west of Frankfurt are familiar because they are readily available in the United States and Canada.
The term Viennese cuisine (Wiener Kuche), makes you think of exquisite dishes of multinational origin food and the splendid, light wine that goes with it. You can truthfully say that Viennese cooking is the origin of all fusion cuisine. Looking back, we find that the Habsburg Dynasty once held sway over most of Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Rumania, Russia, Italy, France, Switzerland and Spain. While...
The Musee de l’Art Culinaire in Villeneuve-Loubet, France, confers a double favor on traveling food lovers: It’s in the Maritime Alps, which provides an excellent excuse to visit the Cote d’Azur; and its location in the childhood home of France’s greatest late19th-and early 20th-century chef, Escoffier, makes for an inviting, sometimes eccentric, low-key museum whose objects haven’t...
The mountainous southern state of Oaxaca has so many contrasts and attractions that it could well be the major focus of any trip to Mexico. Its southern border is the Pacific Ocean, including the up-and-coming mega-resort of Huatulco and the lesser-known, but edenic, beach town of Puerto Escondido.
Amalfi speaks to my soul. Crystal clear azure water lapping against craggy black rocks, creating translucent foam. Magenta bougainvillea and lush verdant ivy cascading down steep walls, Terraces of fragrant lemon groves carved into the hillsides. Faded pastel homes clinging to the mountainsides. The enticing aroma of pizzas baking in wood burning ovens. These are but a few visions that lure me back seeking...
Ever since I tried the wonderful Menica wines of the Ribeira Sacra Denomination of Origin in Galicia, Spain, I haven't stopped talking about them. I am very parched at the moment while in North America because I can't seem to find any wines from this D.O., the reason being is it is a very small wine-producing region and the majority of its output is consumed locally. 
When I first arrived in Italy in 1984, most menus in restaurants there had handwritten signs that sais, “We only serve full meals.” A full meal to an Italian is a primi, first course of pasta rice or soup; a secondo, a main course of meat or fish; and a contorno, a vegetable. Most places would offer a reasonably priced tourist menu that included all of these. However, after a few days of lunch and...