Taking the Kids: Eating your way through Italy
Drum roll, please! As the cheese master takes his small hammer to the gigantic wheel of Parmigiano Reggiano.
We are in a small factory, Consorzio Produttori Latte Baganzolino, in Parma, Italy, where the way to ensure the region's famous cheese is up to snuff is by making sure it is solid, that there are no breaks or air pockets inside the cheese.
We look around at the 80-pound rounds stacked floor to ceiling. If the cheese master hears any breaks, the cheese can still be sold, just not with the special seals and stamps that indicate the product meets the industry inspectors exacting standards and criteria, and is worthy of the name Parmigiano Reggiano.
There are no holidays here, explains Giulia Marinelli, our Tours by Locals guide, because to meet standards, this cheese is made from fresh unpasteurized cow's milk from cows only fed a special diet of natural grains. The cows, of course, are milked twice a day.
Because it is widely imitated, Parmigiano Reggiano has become an increasingly regulated product. The only additive is salt and it's only produced in certain regions of Italy. The cheese aficionados in your family -- and hopefully everyone else -- will be fascinated, especially as a visit here is decidedly off the tourist track and one for bragging rights.
Parma is ground central for making this cheese, as it is for the region's famous Parma Ham, and we also visit Salumificio Conti, a company run by the women of the Conti family. Only a handful of these small companies allow visitors and you must book ahead with a guide like Marinelli. Wow! Look at all those hanging hams, typically aged up to 32 months.
Of course, we end the tours with a tasting.
Food has become increasingly important to traveling families as kids have expanded their palates by first watching the Food Network and then trying new foods on vacation. I can't think of a better way to experience a new culture than through food or a better place than Italy where it won't take any coaxing to convince kids to "eat local."
In Milan, we perused the huge food halls at the Rinascente Department Store where locals take a break admiring spectacular views of the Duomo while stopping at individual food bars perhaps for mozzarella, sushi, a green juice, a panini, even shellfish.
And when we spent a few days at an Umbrian farmhouse owned by Suzy and Bill Menard, proprietors of Washington, D.C.'s Via Umbria, which stocks and celebrates all things from this part of Italy, we picked vegetables in the garden, shopped along with locals at the grocery store and sampled special pastas in the surrounding medieval towns. The Menards will even arrange for cooking classes -- perhaps pasta or pizza.
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