MM and I usually take a long vacation in May and head out of the country. Over the years, we’ve been haunting our favorite country – Italy. Early this year, we’d started contemplating changing our habits by heading to Spain instead.

And then the pandemic happened.

Working from home, trips out of the house only for necessities, and next to no social contact, outside of the occasional face time or video conferencing. Add all of the stress of upheaval, change, and anxiety, and we knew we seriously needed a vacation (okay, maybe that’s just me… 🙂 ).

So what are we to do?

We needed a plan – sitting around doing nothing would absolutely have to happen, but we didn’t want to get to the end of our time having nothing to really show for it. One night, on a walk around our neighborhood, we came up with it – We can’t go to a different country, but something we could bring home was the food from other countries! Okay, I came up with the food part, and MM pointed out the accompanying beverage requirement.

Over the following week, we identified countries and meals to try. I’d find the recipes, and MM would look into the wine. We’d build in some flexibility as well, in order to make sure we weren’t pressuring ourselves, and therefore making a chore of it. The countries we planned – France, Spain, Italy, and Ireland.

We put more emphasis on France and Spain, since Italian and Irish cuisine are already part of our lives more regularly. Though at MM’s urging, we did try a dish we’ve had a few times in Italy that we’ve never had in the US really successfully! That was quite an adventure!

And so, dear readers, over the course of the next few weeks, I’d like to share some recipes and experiences from our European Stay-cation. Stay tuned!