Winter is the best time to get cooking and plan a foodie tour in italy
Despite my deep desire and best intentions, I didn’t make it to Italy this year. The seasons passed and other priorities took precedence. And now I find myself facing the depth of a Canadian winter, an ocean away separated by snowbanks and blustery wind chill factor, how is a summer-loving Italophile to cope?”
Well, central heating and thermal winter wear apart, it is the perfect season to indulge in some well-deserved comfort food. My guilty pleasure on a frigid January evening is to skip dinner altogether and put an apple pie in the oven. That heavenly scent fills the entire home and I swear it is the perfect remedy to a snowy night indoors. Of course, when you add that scoop of vanilla ice cream on top, it becomes truly sublime.
Photo by Natalia Yamboglio
Since I don’t ski, skate or snowboard—bad Canuck, I know—however, I do walk, work out, clear the snow off my driveway and besides the odd pie dinner, my winter survival kit involves making soul-nourishing, carb-loving (usually) Italian food. A lot of the dishes stem from meals I grew up with while others I have branched out to other parts of Italy to learn recipes from other regions.
Whether you are making a polenta or a caponata, anyone who grew up in an Italian household with their mamma at the culinary helm can attest to the rigorous way Italians adhere to “the right way” of preparing any particular dish.
Beyond the art, history, medieval towns, diversity of landscapes from rolling hills, mountaintop villages and pristine beaches in Italy, foodies (and those who haven’t yet discovered they’re foodies) flock to Italy combining holiday time with sharpening their cooking skills and knowledge.
And since I like to keep it real and as authentic as possible, following long-held, tried-and-true traditions passed on from generation to generation, these are food tours that even your nonna would approve of.
In the next blog post, I had the pleasure of interviewing YouTube foodie couple, Eva & Harper, creators of the wildly popular channel, Pasta Grammar. He is American. She is Calabrese. Together they are Italian food storytellers who create engaging, informative weekly videos presenting a behind-the-scenes look at how to prepare countless, unadulterated dishes recreated as if you were in a kitchen in their place of origin in Italy. I can attest that you will learn something with every video. The success of their channel led to curating one-of-a-kind food tours from Naples to Sicily. Find out how they put Eva’s hometown in Calabria on the map and are spreading the love for the real deal of southern Italian gastronomy via YouTube and their coveted on-location tours.
Behind the scenes, Eva of Pasta Grammar shares her deep knowledge of authentic Italian dishes from every region of Italy on their weekly YouTube video channel.