La Tavola Le Marche Cooking School

Translated " A Table in Marche " So this week its back to school, cooking school, and intensive week learning with a chef how great, or great!!! Will it be like old times with me sitting in the corner for not paying attention or disturbing the whole class! No it's better they give you a never ending glass of wine to start the day, now if they had done that when I was at school I may have paid more attention, or well maybe slept the afternoons away. But no sleeping Pete you have some learning to do, there will be plenty of time for that later, what like after 10 pm when it finally gets dark, the days are long and it's only spring. So the today we arrived at 2pm for checkin and are shown to our room. We are greeted by a very excited Ashley and her husband Jason. You may ask they don't sound like Italian names and you world be right they are a young couple in there early 30's who came to Italy for their honeymoon and fell in love with the whole Italian world. They went home after the honeymoon and studied Italian for 9 months and gave up their chef jobs in the U S. They could not afford to buy a house in the States but could start a new life in Italy and that was 7 years ago and today the run a very successful cooking La Tavola Marche great web site to check out. This place is like a grand old country house over 3 stories and dates back some 400 years with a enough space for 18 people when full. We have arrived at the beginning of the season so there are only a few other couple booked in over the week so the classes will be intermit and a few days will be one on one. The road in is a bit interesting, no, it was an italian crazy road not wide enough and bend after bend and as it has been a wet season till now, the dirt road with its big pot holes, dodge one get two, dodge two get one, get my drift! The car is now looking more like a rally car and in need a wash, but that won't be happening you now me I don't wash cars I just hire a clean one. They have a large pool and outdoor entertaining areas to cater for a full house + also for some locals that drop in for an occasion meal at nights or for Pizza night every Thursday. Our room is on ground level and it open directly out onto a stone paved area with our own little table, chairs and umbrella and surrounded by loads of pots with spring flowers in full bloom. The geranium here are so prettying and enjoy the longer and cooler spring than we have in Tamworth. We enter our room through our own small country kitchen with a small table covered in a cloth with a grape vine and it bunches of purple grapes, into our bed area, well it's tight either side of the bed just 300 mm either side as perhaps a queen bed was not designed to fit that space some 400 years ago when this room would have been for the animals to be housed in Marche's long cold snowy winters. But today it's just the perfect spot for these 2 traveller to kip down for a week. One small window to view the garden and the walls are 600 mm thick so the view is like looking through a tunnel and with the typical window shutter to keep out the morning light and the cold. I go into the bathroom and it is surprisingly big and with a toilet that makes me feel as if I,m 4, I have to jump up onto it, hmmm not sure how Sandy will cope may have to put a couple of bricks either side, it is the tallest and the biggest toilet I have ever seen and its like loads of toilets we have come across, don't have a seat as we would know, its not designed for comfort so not the place to sit and linger!!!! But it beats the squat toilet that was at the beach in Fano the other day! Back out from our room we look into the green treed hills and the big white fluffy clouds seam to move so fast here, as we are in the mountains the clouds are low over the mountains so it all just seams to rush by. At the top of the hill is an old roman ruins from a roman town in the 1100's so that will be a place to explore on a morning walk. So it off to the kitchen for our 1st class as what we are cook this afternoon is served to all the guests this evening, I'd better pay attention....