Delicious food is one of the most important aspects of your vacation? At least a vacation is the best time to enjoy good food, spend time with your loved ones and explore the local culture via its specialties and eating habits.

Most of us have already discovered a special recipe or a new favorite ingredient during a vacation and thereby taken a lasting souvenir home with them. Even more exciting than eating in a good restaurant is becoming active yourself – for example during cooking courses or tours that give insights into the production of local specialties.

Cooking courses with your host

Hofgut Hafnerleiten is the ideal place for culinary explorations. Before the Hofgut Hafnerleiten became the refuge in nature that it is today, it was Lower Bavaria’s first cooking school. Following the participants’ wish for an accommodation during the cooking courses, the owners created the so called boathouse. During the following years they built more themed houses, among others the meadow house and the tree house, two pond suites and several holiday homes – all of them, as the names suggest, surrounded by meadows, forest and water.

A kit for preparing your own meals

At the Hofgut Hafnerleiten, the meals as well as the atmosphere are characterized by Mediterranean vitality and coziness. Every evening, the guests gather at a long dinner table to enjoy a four-course-meal together. If you prefer to stay among yourselves, you can order a “Dinner for Two” – or prepare your own meal. Recently, residents of those houses with an integrated kitchen have the option to order a basket containing ingredients. These are always seasonal, produced in the region or even in the hotel’s own garden and portioned for two so that there won’t be any left over ingredients. And the chef and host Erwin Rückerl provides you with the matching recipe and some useful tricks – the best souvenir, do you agree?

Cooking for your wellbeing

Of course, Erwin Rückerl still gives cooking courses with a focus on Mediterranean dishes such as pasta, antipasti or fish. In several seminars you can learn a lot about barbecues, wine and coffee or you take one of the courses about healthy eating, for example on the topic of cooking without ingredients containing starch.

At the Hubertus Alpin Lodge & Spa, you also have the opportunity to attend cooking courses with a focus on the participants’ wellbeing. They are taught by the cooking coach Gabriel Simon-Pinero, who has travelled around the world and gathered experience, finally discovering Ayurvedic cooking. He can teach you how to use fresh herbs and aromatic spices for preparing delicious meals that promote your health.

Discover local products

You do not only want to use local products for cooking, but also to learn more about their production? At Agriturismo L’Adagio, this is part of the “Teaching Farm” concept that is designed to teach young guests how olive oil is obtained. They take part in the harvest at L’Adagio’s olive grove and watch how the olive mill with its traditional millstones is used.

If you always wanted to know how cheese is made, you can visit the cheese dairy that also supplies the Hubertus Alpin Lodge & Spa with its “Romadur”. There, you can watch the different steps from processing the milk to maturation in the cellar. And of course, in the end you are offered a taste of the delicious result.

Read more: SUSTAINABLE CUISINE — EVERYTHING BUT ONE-SIDED

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