Piemonte

Over the last few weeks, I have taken my final stage of the year (to Piemonte) and completed my classroom hours. Piemonte is a region in the far northwestern corner of Italy. Torino is the largest city and the whole region has quite a lot of French influence. Apart from this, it is one of my favorite regions. It is renowned for its wine, including Barolo, Barbaresco, Moscato d'Asti, and many others. It is also the capital of the white truffle, Italian rice production, and home to many wonderful gastronomic traditions. My class traveled there for 4 days...needless to say we ate and drank very well! As the grape harvest season is here, we passed kilometers and kilometers of huge green vines loaded with beautiful, deep purple grapes. At the end of the stage, we atended the annual Slow Food Cheese Festical in Bra, where the Slow Food headquarters are located.

We ate a lot of cheese on this trip. Almost every meal replaced the meat course with a cheese plate.

At the cheese festival, I took a seminar on American Cheese and Beer. It made me proub to be an American...we are producing some GOOD cheeses

Hobnobbing with Carlo Petrini and other Slow Food big wigs.

Our visit to Aquerello Rice included a tour of the very well preserved barracks that the migrant rice workers used in the past. Primarily women worked the rice fields who came from the south every year for about 6 weeks.

I don't want to eat rice again for a LONG time. We were served nothing but rice for 3 meals in a row. Here is a sampling of 3 different varieties, served with what else but rice beer.