Eating our way across Tuscany

It should not be surprising that a good amount of our time was spent eating...we can confirm the saying, "You will never have a bad meal in Italy!" One of the highlights for me was our cooking class with Alessandra in Cortona. She has a beautiful linen shop in town but also gives group cooking lessons in her home. " I do not pretend to be THE REAL ITALIAN COOK in terms of being the one and only true one, but more a REAL, down to earth Italian mother who feeds her family, and her friends, with good food, sense of humor and a lot of love and passion!"
We started the day shopping the different markets for our fresh ingredients - the vegetable market, meat market, bakery, and wine store. Everywhere we went the owners had to approve her menu.

Some of our accomplishments included Polpettine all'ascolana (meatballs made with olives), tagliatelle alragu di Funghi (handmade pasta with mushroom tomato sauce), Carciofi saltati (fried artichokes), Risottino alla Milanese (risotto with bone marrow), and Tiramisu. When the cooking was done we all sat around her table and ate....we laughed, and some of us cried!, and congratulated ourselves until we were so stuffed, but we discovered that a few sips of Grappa settles the stomach!