Cooking School in Tuscany! — Hello Pension, Goodbye Tension!

It was a complete blast!

But before I get to it, how did I become interested in cooking in the first place, to the point where it is one of the great pleasures in my life? And exactly how does it lead to my objective in life, and the purpose of this blog: leading an engaged life in retirement?

Believe me, it wasn’t something I learned growing up. Food in the Momeyer household was . . . uncreative, repetitive, and bland. Salt and Pepper were the only spices. Vegetables came out of cans, and potatoes out of the freezer. Creativity if expressed at all was in the form of sandwiches: brother Doug invented peanut butter and pickle and brother Rick invented peanut butter and tomato. Dinner was served at 5:30 EVERY night, and over by 5:45. If we ever had a dessert other than jello, it was because Grandma Momeyer was living with us and baked a pie.

Going to restaurants wasn’t a relief either. I believe I went out to dinner a total of 10 times before I left for college, at a total of 3 restaurants. They were not that special, but were so few that I remember their names to this day: Johnny Garneau’s Smorgasbord, The Flame Steakhouse, and Kaufman’s Tic Toc Coffee Shop.

So I arrived at adulthood with neither the skill nor the interest in cooking. That all changed when I moved to New York as a lonely and nearly friendless bachelor. Living in Little Italy began to open doors to a new culinary world. I discovered it was a skill that was best learned by doing, and I got into the habit of cooking 3 and 4 course dinners for . . . myself. And truth be told, as a bachelor offering to cook for a date was the easiest way to connect, in every sense of the word.

Then I started cooking - - or should I say practicing? - - for friends. Dinner parties were a special challenge, and as a symptom of my nerve or stupidity, or both, I would make sure the first time I ever prepared a dish it was for a dinner party of people invited for the first time. There were notable failures, in which I occasionally refused to eat my own food and advised guests to do the same. And then there was an otherwise delicious peach cobbler in which I had sliced the peaches with the same knife I had previously used to slice lots of garlic for the main course pasta dish. . . forgetting to clean the knife before paring the peaches. I don’t recommend garlic peach cobbler.

Cooking for family was a special delight, and a challenge. Daughter Lily was a vegetarian from age 8, while son Jack would eat red meat at every meal if offered. You try figuring out what to serve . . . but it all worked out as they are both healthy adult diners.

So cooking has been a passion for 35 years, and when I made the decision to retire, it was with the idea of going to a cooking school in a different country every year. I’ve been to all 7 continents, but there are lots of countries I’ve missed whose cooking styles are diverse and appealing: Greece, Turkey, India, and Russia are at the top of that list.

But not the very top! I have long held that Italian food is not only the most healthy but the most varied, learnable, and delicious. No wonder the Italians have the highest longevity rates on the planet, though having the lowest birth rate on the planet surely helps those figures.

So I decided to go to Tuscany to cooking school. My selection of which school to attend was really complex: I googled “cook in Tuscany” and the first school on the Google result page was “Cook in Tuscany.com.” That was easy. And the branded motto on the web site was “cook.eat.play.” Sign me up.

I shared my plan with my friend Howard, who after hearing of the school format cried “I wanna go!” I told him to check with his wife Marsha, who was happy to bless the plan, and so it was that we went to school together.

But before we get to the cooking school itself, what was the first and best lesson? For anyone on the verge of retirement, it was the excitement of having the plan, of knowing it was one day closer each day, of having something to go To and not focus on missing the From side. I planned it well in advance of my actual retirement date, and was incredibly encouraged when my friends and family expressed their support for a very neat way to enter a new phase in life.

It was headquartered in Montefollonico, which I had never heard of either. But you couldn’t find a more charming walled hill city in all of Italy, or anywhere else for that matter. Like all hill towns in Europe, there are 2 buildings at the top: a church and a castle. The church is still a church, and the castle has been converted to a Hotel, unfortunately not the one we were staying in.

The teachers were not all professional chefs but “nonnas” . . . mothers and grandmothers who cook for their families, and have been doing so for decades. That was a big part of the appeal: I’m not doing this to become a chef, and being a cook in my own kitchen is my ultimate goal.

And every day, it was a new nonna, and new dishes, all of which became our lunch, usually consisting of 5 courses. Among the lessons:

Pici: pasta made by hand, without eggs;

Tagliatelle with truffles, for which we had gone truffle hunting. Well, not exactly “we” . . . but a dog trained in the art of truffle hunting;

Focaccia, which could have been the whole meal as far as I’m concerned, but there were 4 other courses;

Grilled chicken stuffed with ground pork . . . whoever thinks of these things, bless their hearts!;

Apricot tarts: nothing more needs to be said;

Zucchini carpaccio in a lemon oil sauce;

Handmade made ravioli and tortellini

Making cheese by hand: it had never even occurred to me until this lesson exactly what curds and whey are. This is Dr. Cheese, who I encouraged to do a TED talk on the subject.

I could go on, but you get the point.

Every day was a new lesson, featuring 5 courses, and was followed by a lunch consisting of what we had just learned to prepare. It was all hands on, in the end the only way to learn to cook. And of course, lunch was accompanied by wine. At night we all would go to 7 course dinners at local restaurants, and of course, dinner was accompanied by wine. How I managed to gain only 1 pound in 16 days in Italy I will never know. Everything was creative and lively and extraordinarily well managed by the owners/proprietors of the Company, George and Linda Meyers. It actually seemed like they were having as much fun as the rest of us.

And my fellow classmates: they were a diverse hoot of a group! A mother/son, an aunt/nephew, 2 Australians, 3 Canadians, and Howard and me. Howard somehow became Harold . . . blame the wine! But nearly every second with this group, learning to cook, dining, shopping, drinking, was a sheer delight. And now that we are all back home we exchange recipes almost daily.

If you’re inclined - - please be inclined - - here is the website:

www.cookinTuscany.com

And it was not over after the week in cooking school. Howard, or Harold, and I rented an Alfa Romeo with a six speed stick and took in Umbria. I never thought I would grow bored of my BMW here, but blame the automatic transmission. Then it was on to Rome and all that Rome has to offer. The only thing I think I missed was meeting the Pope, but at least I’ll have something to look forward to next time.