Vacations: Recipe for Fun

When Deborah Owen, 53, a partner in a North Hollywood, Calif., accounting firm, took a vacation last August, her days were long. She was exhausted each evening. There were constant deadlines to meet. The work was messy. Oh, and by the way, she can't wait to do it all again.

Owen, who has a passion for food--she toys with the idea of going into the restaurant business at some point--spent five days studying and cooking with professional chefs at the Greystone campus of the renowned Culinary Institute of America (CIA). The school is in St. Helena, in the heart of California's Napa Valley, about 1 1/2 hr. north of San Francisco. "When I put the chef's hat on and stepped into one of the best kitchens in the world, I felt a tingle," says Owen, who spent $850 on the course.

For those who dream of cooking like the pros, spending a week in a continuing-education program at the CIA provides a unique travel and learning experience without having to enroll full time in cooking school. "These are not people who want to sit on a beach. They want to know that they've created something by the end of the day," says Mark Erickson, master chef and vice president for continuing education at the CIA.

The Greystone campus--an offshoot of the CIA's main campus in Hyde Park, N.Y.--features four "Career Discovery" programs, aimed at those who are thinking of entering the culinary profession or who are already working in it. Students learn about such topics as food preparation, food presentation, business aspects of the industry and industry terminology. Classes are six-hour morning or afternoon sessions, given over a four-or five-day period. This schedule leaves students time to explore the nearly 500 wineries and numerous gourmet restaurants in Napa and neighboring Sonoma counties. Tuition ranges from $725 to $995. About 30% of the continuing-education students are 50 or older, notes Diana Delonis, education-program manager at Greystone.

At Hyde Park, which is 90 minutes north of New York City, five "Boot Camp" programs are available. These are geared more toward techniques, skills and presentation of personal cooking and baking in the home. Tuition for these intensive courses, each lasting five full days, is either $1,850 or $1,950. More than half the students in Hyde Park are past age 45.

Owen's class at Greystone, an introduction to the professional kitchen, ran from 2 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. daily. Along with 17 other students, she started the day with classroom instruction devoted to a particular form of meal preparation. During one session, they learned grilling, during another braising, then on to deep frying, and so forth. Next the students, outfitted in full chef's attire, moved into the kitchen and in teams of three created a specific menu for the evening. Dishes Owen prepared included grilled salmon, fried squid and risotto. "Despite all the complicated dishes I cooked, I enjoyed learning how to make the perfect tortilla probably more than anything else," Owen says.