Mama Margaret & Friends Cooking Tours, ItalyWhen it comes to once-in-a-lifetime cooking tours, Italy is truly the destination of choice. Mama Margaret and Friends has run cooking and wine tours in different Italian regions since 1995, giving customers the full cultural experience by visiting local homes, restaurant kitchens and wineries. Many tours also include a little walking to help burn away some calories! “In our cozy groups of no more than twelve, you can get to know and converse with your fellow travelers, seated around tables with your enchanting chefs, winery owners and others, all of them ready to share with you an appreciation for the finest and freshest ingredients, local specialties and experiences” – Margaret Cowan
Where do classes take place?Mama Margaret offers a range of Italian cooking tours spanning 5 different regions of Italy: Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna/Bologna, Tuscany, the Amalfi Coast (near Naples), and Sicily.
- the Cooking, Wine, Volcanoes & Walking In Sicily: Mount Etna & Stromboli Tour or - the Cooking & Culture Journey In Sicily's Baroque Towns Tour. While in Piedmont, this tour number rises to 4, including: - Taste Of Cooking & Wine Adventure In Piedmont's Barolo Wine Country Tour - Wine Lovers' Delights In Piedmont's Barolo Wine Country Tour - Cooking & Wine Adventure In Piedmont's Barolo Wine Country Tour - Cooking, Wine & Walking Extravaganza Tour In Piedmont's Barolo Wine Country, Cinque Terre/Portovenere, and Tuscany's Brunello Wine Country. If you're looking to enjoy a private tour with friends, your family, or the love of your life, custom-designed tours for extra special trips are also available on request. Accommodation:
For example, take a 3-night cooking course in Tuscany and you'll bed down in a rambling 13th century farmhouse set on a hill with splendid views of hills of vineyards and olive trees. Or choose one of Margaret's bologna cooking courses and you'll check in with a real Italian family right there in Bologna’s historic center before the father, a long time cooking tour guide, whisks you away to visit local parmesan cheese, prosciutto and balsamic vinegar makers.
Who teaches the classes?The answer is a multitude of chefs and local culinary experts from the region you choose to tour.Margaret Cowan herself first traveled to Italy in 1972, lived there for three years and continues her love affair with Italy in her twice yearly trips.
Margaret is also the author of the cooking school tour bible, 'Your Guide to 133 Decadent Cooking Holidays in Italy' (find her books here on Amazon.com Margaret's 'friends': Elio of Alba in Piedmont, Italy, works with Mama Margaret on her Piedmont, Riviera and Tuscany tours. He heads up the Associazione Trekking in Langa and has been Mama's expert in Piedmont's Barolo wine country in Italy since 1994. Marcello and Raffaella - a delightful couple who were born and grew up in Imola in Emilia Romagna and live in Bologna - provide Margaret's Emilia-Romagna, Umbria and Le Marche tours. Lara, Franco and Pietro take care of Margaret's cooking holidays in Sicily, which take in Mount Etna and the Aeolian Islands.
What types of dish and cooking techniques are covered? As with the locations above, the dishes you cook during a Margaret & Friends vacation are dictated by the region or regions you choose to experience. If you choose one of the company's Piedmont cooking tours, Italy will offer you up typical local dishes like onion tart, risotto pink with barolo, guinea hen with rosemary, and desserts like chocolate and hazelnut cake topped with zabaglione or bunet, a cocoa pudding with crushed amaretti biscuits. Or what about a Neapolitan cooking tour? Here you can enjoy delectable coastal dishes like seafood risotto, baked calamari with seafood filling and cherry tomatoes, mussels impepata soup (boiled with black pepper and covered with fresh squeezed lemon juice) and lemon tart. In addition to learning these dishes, you'll travel off the tourist path for some truly authentic experiences like: • drinking great wines with a smaller, family producer in Piedmont, too modest to say he’s sold his wine to the Vatican • tasting olive oil with an artisan producer who makes oil with a traditional granite wheel on his organic farm in Tuscany • visiting a producer in Modena to learn how they make traditional balsamic vinegar in series of ever smaller barrels, and taste 12- and 25-year old balsamic vinegar... like liquid velvet in your throat.
When do classes take place? It's very flexible, as Margaret explains: "Some of our tours have set dates, like our 6-day Bologna tour and our two Sicily tours. Otherwise, you can request whatever dates you like for all our other tours." Learn all about Margaret & Friends' wide range of Italian cooking tours and vacations at their official site here (there's even a free newsletter that you can sign up for on the homepage).
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These tours usually range from 3 up to 8 nights in length. For example, Margaret currently offers two 6-night cooking holidays in Sicily:
The accommodation you'll stay in varies depending on which cooking tour of Italy you choose, but rest assured that wherever you end up laying your head you won't be disappointed. 
A native of Vancouver, BC, "Mama" Margaret is the North American-based brains of her organisation. Through her many years spent eating and tasting her way through Italy, she has developed a vast network of local experts in each region to work with, and it's these friendly professionals you'll learn from each day during your trip. 
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