Food Vacations - 500 Places for Food and Wine Lovers - page 88

Susan Trilling's Seasons of My Heart cooking school in Oaxaca, “Land of the Seven Moles .”

she's describing methods that have been
handed down from generation to genera-
tion in Zapotec villages like San Felipe Tejala-
pan. As you learn to make mole, you may
first visit a village home where chocolate is
ground on an ancient stone mecate . For
each meat or vegetable cooked in class, she
knows the specific matching sauce that tra-
ditional cooks have always used. Herbs are
studied not just for their culinary flavoring
but for their medicinal and spiritual proper-
ties as well. Students may visit local artisans
to see how they produce food “the old-
fashioned way”; several of the tours and
longer programs are built around important
festivals and whatever foods local custom
dictates for those festivals.
The cooking school's adobe home,
with its red-domed roof and surrounding

terraces, is a wonderful place to drink in
the beauty of the Etla valley. Most course
participants find accommodations else-
where, but if you book early you can snag
a charming bed-and-breakfast cottage just
above the hill from the school.

Rancho Aurora, AP #42, Admon 3,
Oaxaca ( & 52/951/508-0469; www.seasons
ofmyheart.com).
( Oaxaca City.

L $$$ Camino Real Oaxaca, 5 de
Mayo 300, Oaxaca ( & 800/722-6466 in
the U.S. and Canada, or 52/951/501-6100;
www.caminoreal.com/oaxaca). $ Las
Golondrinas, Tinoco y Palacios 411, Oa-
xaca ( & 52/951/514-3298 or 52/951/514-
2126; [e-mail]).