Food Tourism

For my and Lisa's birthdays (they're about a week apart) we took off Memorial Day for a weekend in the California Gold Country.  This weekend was the Rocks & Rhones event at some of the wineries there, plus we thought we'd get some hiking and other fun in.

First thing: Snow?  In May?  In California?  This Global Climate Thrash thing is getting out of hand.

We did get to go wine tasting though, even though the hiking didn't happen.  Click through for a review of some of the wineries you probably haven't heard of before ... 

In 1850, pizza was the unsanitary street food of the Napoli slums.  Today every region of Italy has its own style of pizza ... and each region thinks they have the best, of course!  Rome even has two styles.

The pizza above was the first we had in Rome.  We had it, believe it or not, at a kosher pizzaria ... which had been recommended to us not because of being Kosher, but simply as one of the best pizzarias in the city.  Yovata, in the Jewish Ghetto.  Since we were eating in the Jewish Ghetto, it made sense to order pizza with a classic Jewish topping: artichoke hearts.  This pizza was soft and chewy, with generous amounts of mozzarella.

Since we just saw the produce of Israel, it's time for some produce of Rome!  The markets of Rome have been well-known, and popular since ancient times.  Above is a fresco from the Vatican Collection, either depicting plenty or marking the location of a public market.

More ...

For serious grocery shopping in Jerusalem, there's only one place to go: the shuk.  Specifically, I'm talking about the Mahane Yehuda Market in the New City, where you can pretty much buy any kind of Israeli food there is, either in raw ingredient or in takeaway lunch form.