Travel

We arrived this morning in Italy, which makes us very lucky people.

Everything is different here. It’s like Brigadoon. You would think that air is air, sky is sky, light is light – it’s the same wherever you go, the same world, right? Nah. Italy is enchanted. They even speak a different language over here. Crazy, no?

Today – to tide over my jet-lagged body until dinner – I had half a salami sandwich. That’s all we had in the house at that point. I sliced a thin piece of whole grain bread off the loaf, slapped three or four slices of salami on it, folded it in half and took a bite. It’s not the same, baby.

Nowhere else in the world does a salami sandwich taste like this.

I took my sandwich outside to look at our vegetable garden and I noticed that our cherry tree had ripe cherries on it. Crazy, no? The problem is that it’s a big tree, which means that most of the good fruit is ten, fifteen feet off the ground.

An excerpt from  "Hungry for Paris"

Some ten years ago, I went to dinner one night with no expectations. A London newspaper had asked me to write about Lapérouse, an old warhorse of a restaurant overlooking the Seine on the Left Bank—it was doing historic Paris restaurants, and this one’s been around forever. I politely suggested that there might be better candidates, because as far as I knew, this place was still a slumbering tourist table flogging its past: it has several charming tiny private dining rooms with badly scratched mirrors—as the legend goes, these cuts were made by ladies testing the veracity of newly offered diamonds (real diamonds cut glass).

The editor was unyielding, so off I went. The stale-smelling dining room was mostly empty on a winter night, and though the young mâitre d’hôtel was unexpectedly charming and gracious, I was more interested by my friend Anne’s gossipy accounts of a recent visit to Los Angeles than I was by the menu.

Well, the first thought I had driving through the streets of Edinburgh (and then later by train on the Royal Scotsman) is that the most impressive thing about Scotland is the great big hairy-chested men that roam about - similar perhaps to the “We like great big hairy- chested men – we are the senior class” which we used to sing about so wistfully at Marlborough. Now I know about which I sang! Seeing these critters who do indeed roam the streets in thin tee shirts and shorts when the rest of the world around them are dressed in sweaters and jackets, only remind me that they toss trees (the Caber Toss) in contest at the Highland Games and that in Clan Fightin’ Days of Yore, they would tear off their kilts to go into battle - running naked through the heather and the thistles. Into Thistles? Naked? Who would dare pick a fight with these manly men?

So what do manly men eat? Well apparently they love dainty frothy deserts like Cranachan (a mixture of whipped cream, whisky, honey, fresh raspberries with toasted oatmeal soaked overnight in – what else - whiskey), Bread and Butter Pudding, and Edinburgh Fog with Sponge Fingers - whilst consuming a great deal of Whisky and Vanilla Fudge… together!

Sounds good to me! Also sounds kinda like Southern Cookin’ (see earlier recipe on Mary K’s Pig Pickin’ Cake). Surely if Texans (Scots Irish to the bone) like their bacon baked in brown sugar until crisp) we can down our whisky with vanilla fudge. (Interesting factoid, the most delicately tinted whisky is distilled in used Tennessee Bourbon kegs)

Thirty miles from San Francisco, Sonoma County is one of the world's great destinations. With beautiful farmland, a dramatic coastline, fields of wild flowers, world-class wineries and upscale restaurants, the valley offers travelers, especially oenophiles and foodies, the best of the best.

My wife and I needed some serious R&R. We wanted a trip somewhere casual, where we wouldn't get stuck in traffic jams, could enjoy beautiful countryside, have some good meals and do a bit of wine tasting. So we put our suitcases in the car with a plan to explore Sonoma County, from the inland wine growing valleys to the coast. There is nothing like a road trip to clean out the cob webs and refresh the soul.

Driving on Sonoma County's two-lane black-tops in summer, the sun owns the sky, shining down on well-tended fields and big-sky landscape. Mustard flowers blanket the fields, corn grows tall, the vines are fat with ripening grapes and cattle stroll lazily across green pastures in search of shade.

Largely agricultural, mom and pop businesses are much more common in Sonoma than in Napa, which is dominated by wealthy investors and large corporations. The 200 wineries along Route 12 and Highway 101--near the towns of Schellville, Sonoma, Glen Ellen, Kenwood, Sebastopol, Graton, Forestville, Fulton, Windsor, Healdsburg and Geyserville--are family run, for the most part.