ArcaMax

Duck, fish or beef? We're seven strangers from around the world ranging in age from 22 to 60-something standing in the drizzle at a Paris outdoor market trying to decide what we should eat for dinner -- after we've shopped for the ingredients and cooked the meal together.

How about rabbit?

"I've only done rabbit once," laughs Chef Eric Monteleon, who is leading our motley crew.

We've signed on for a cooking class with La Cuisine Paris (www.lacuisineparis.com), one of just a handful of places here that offer classes in English that are popular with young chefs and their parents, as well as adults, says Jane Bertch, the former Chicago banker who started and runs the school with her partner Olivier Pugliesi-Conti.

We're fans of including cooking classes in our travels, learning to make mole with our kids in Oaxaca, Mexico and pasta with other young travelers in Lucca, Italy. We learned to make crab cakes on a Windstar cruise ship, after following the chef to a local market in Croatia. Wherever we go, at the very least we make sure to visit local food markets. (Read about some of our other recent experiences in France in my trip diaries http://www.takingthekids.com/category/travel-diary/page/3/. Exploring foreign food is a different -- and fun -- way to experience a local culture, especially as more places offer classes for children.

Take a day off from the slopes with a Comfy in the Kitchen class at the iconic Little Nell in Aspen, Colo. (www.thelittlenell.com) where the first round of kids' classes proved so popular they are continuing all ski season.

"Although I like to cook, I don't always have the required patience to teach boisterous boys how to make much beyond a cake or a plate of brownies, so when the opportunity for them to be truly immersed in the cooking world came along, with some of the finest talent in the Western U.S, I jumped at the chance," wrote Aimee White Beazley about her family's experience at the Little Nell class (http://www.takingthekids.com/travel-diary/in-aspen-kids-playing-with-their-food-is-encouraged/).

"The food was great and it was more like art than I thought," 8-year-old Tanner reported.

These days, with junior chefs demonstrating their skill on TV cooking shows, blogs and in magazines, there are a growing number of kids' cooking classes -- everywhere from the Cavallo Point (www.cavallopoint.com) Cooking School in San Francisco's Cavallo Point Lodge to the Essex Resort & Spa in Vermont (http://www.essexresortspa.com/cooking-classes-vermont-en.html) to Blackberry Farm in Tennessee (www.blackberryfarm.com). Hotels like Hyatt (www.hyatt.com) have not only made their kids' menus healthier (bravo!), but have designed them so that kids can make their own culinary creations at the table (top your own breakfast taco, or build your own whole wheat sub for lunch).

But there's probably no where more fun to indulge your inner chef than in Paris, no matter what your age. Learn to make French macarons, eclairs, croissants or baguettes. (Classes start at 65 euros, just under $90 USD.)

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