It’s been a few weeks since our last post, so clearly, we have a bit of catching up to do.  Here are the highlights from our most recent adventures.

Weekend in Jungfrau: We met up with Mike and Mary for another ski trip, and despite a world-famous ski race being held on the mountain, decided to head back to Grindelwald/Wengen (located in the Jungfrau Region of Switzerland).

• Cons:  The Lauberhorn ski races meant tons of people, turning the time to get to the top of the mountain from 30 minutes to almost 2 hours.  Basically, imagine Black Friday expect instead of Target everyone is trying to get to the mountain, and instead of wearing sneakers and pushing a shopping cart, your wearing ski boots and carrying around 10 pounds of gear.  It wasn’t great.
• Pros: Despite a rough start to the day, we got to see an incredible air show (consisting of 5 fighter jets and an old Swiss Airbus) in some of the most beautiful scenery imaginable.  The Swiss military planes obviously don’t get a lot of action these days (or really ever for that matter), so unlike the typical American fly-by, these planes continued their display for nearly an hour.  At one point, we decided to clip out of our skis and actually hike a small ridge to watch in awe.  Here’s a quick video, thanks to our buddy, Mike.

Jets are faster than my camera skills

Blue chip day with pals

Can you spot the airbus?

Cooking School in Bologna, Italy: Sarah just turned the big 3-0, and Chris outdid himself by sending Sarah to Italy for a week of cooking classes.  If you’re thinking that a week of cooking is like buying a woman a vacuum cleaner, you couldn’t be more wrong.  It was simply fantastic.

Each day, she brainstormed with a chef to conceptualize the day’s dishes; visited a local market to hand-select produce, proteins, and dairy; cooked in a fully-equipped professional kitchen; and, best of all, she didn’t even have to clean the dishes.  It was all the fun and none of the work.  We will save you the details of the full daily menu, and instead, focus on the highlights:

• Deboning: Sarah’s top priority for the class was learning how to properly debone various proteins, and the instructors definitely delivered.  She worked with chicken, rabbit, duck, goose, and a rack of lamb ribs – all of which she deboned, some of which were pretty.
• It Smells a Little Fishy: She also learned to descale, gut, and fillet a variety of fish including but not limited to: tilapia, sea bass, cod, squid, mackerel, and even sardines
• Pasta: Though it wasn’t the focus of the class, no Italian cooking experience would be complete without a little pasta, so she stuck to the basics – making homemade tagliatelle with traditional bolognese sauce, lasagna, tortelloni (stuffed with cheese), and tortellini (stuffed with meat and served in traditional brodo).  Buon Apetito!

Haggling with Fishmongers

Tortelloni with rabbit ragu

Morning market

Sarah left Italy feeling full – both of inspiration and food.  For her, the biggest takeaway was understanding how to become a more resourceful and thrifty cook.  She learned that in Italy, like so many other cultures, some of the best dishes were born out of poverty; indeed, many of these dishes have been long forgotten, but a great number continue to serve as the cornerstone for their food identity.  She learned to save parmesan rinds to flavor soups, to use rabbit heads/old hen’s legs to make a delicious stock, to use that same stock meat to make delicious meatballs, and to repurpose day-old bread as a substitute for parmesan.  So many cooks/cultures toss products that are not needed in a dish, but Italians use every last piece.  Being the waist-conscious people that we are, we don’t think we’ll be indulging in the bowls of pasta or duck breasts that Sarah had in Italy, but perhaps a new age of thrifty cooking has arrived.

Day Trip to Laax (Braaah): Switzerland now has the most snow it has seen since 1990, so after a day of birthday presents and fun in Basel on Saturday, we headed to Laax, Switzerland for … you guessed it, a day of skiing on Sunday.  Sadly, the winds caused many of the lifts/runs to be closed, but we had a pretty solid day out on a very powdery mountain.  The best parts? Watching the resort employees clear 2 feet of snow from the roofs of the gondola stations and listening to “Call Me Al” being blared from the top of the mountain.  There may be a high risk of avalanche in some parts of Switzerland, but damn it, people just need to hear the sweet, sweet tunes of Paul Simon.