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Something's Cooking in Vermont: A Week of Fine Foods

Program Number: 8934RJ
Start and End Dates:
7/21/2013 - 7/26/2013; 8/18/2013 - 8/23/2013;
Duration: 5 nights
Location: Brandon, Vermont
Price starting at: $895.00 - Price may vary based on date, departure city
Program Type: Food & Wine
Meals: 15; 5 Breakfasts, 5 Lunches, 5 Dinners    
Meal Options: Low Fat; Vegetarian; Low Salt    

Experience the beautiful country and fine foods in New England’s farm belt of Vermont. With dairying in decline, the hardy family farms had to rely on their ingenuity to stay alive — with delicious results! Explore New England foods, maple products, cider and the creation of culinary pleasures. Meet with local chefs, cheese makers, maple tappers and entrepreneurs who demonstrate the quality and artistry of Vermont foods, as well as a passion and drive that has re-invented the state from sleepy dairy region to an avant-garde, savory destination.




Highlights

• Learn about the production and sample some of the goodies of several area culinary artisans and growers.
• See firsthand demonstrations of gourmet perfection with the inn’s acclaimed Austrian chef.
• Get the inside scoop on how Vermonters developed a unique culture of sustainability, freshness and craftsmanship.



Activity Particulars

Minimal walking and standing; some stairs.




Date Specific Information

7-21-2013, 8-18-2013

Enjoy the latest in hearing technology — listening devices — on this date.




Brandon

With its entire downtown recorded on the National Register of Historic Places and the town’s bucolic location among the rolling hills of central Vermont, Brandon is a unique, historic destination near the Green Mountains.
Accommodations
Historic inn with outdoor pool and hot tub on the town common.
Meals and Lodgings
   Brandon Inn
  Brandon, VT 5 nights
 Brandon Inn
Type: Inn
  Description: A historic country inn located in the heart of the Champlain Valley with many shops, galleries and historic homes within walking distance of the inn.
  Contact info: 20 Park Street (Route 7)
Brandon, VT 05733 USA
phone: 802-247-5766
web: www.brandoninn.com
  Room amenities: Air conditioned, phones in rooms.
  Facility amenities: An outdoor swimming pool (in season), hot tub, television rooms.
  Smoking allowed: No
  Bathroom: Some bathrooms have large clawfoot tubs and some have showers.
  Elevators available: Yes
  Additional nights prior: Ask for the Road Scholar rate. Call the inn directly for availability and rates.
  Check in time: 3:00 PM
  Additional nights after: Ask for the Road Scholar rate. Call the inn directly for availability and rates.
  Check out time: 11:00 AM


Travel Details
  Start of Program:
3:00-5:00 PM - Brandon Inn Living Room You will be staying at Brandon Inn that night.
  End of Program:
11:00 AM Following the last class You will be staying at Brandon Inn the night before.
  Required documents:
The Road Scholar Health & Safety Form is required. None
  Parking availability:
No charges
Transportation
To Start of Program
  Location:  Brandon, VT
  Nearest city or town:  Brandon
  Nearest highway: Route 7
  Nearest airport:  Rutland Airport, VT or Burlington, VT
  From End of Program
  Location: Brandon, VT
    (Additional transportation information same as above)
Travel Details
 

Brandon/Burlington

 

From Airport

 
 

Service:

 

Commercial Van/Shuttle
Middlebury Transit
phone: 800-388-1002
Advanced Reservations Required

 

Per Person/One Way:

 

$75 - $100
Prices are subject to change.
 

Travel Time:

 

1.5 Hours 
 

Distance:

 

53 miles
   

Call for reservations and schedules. They will try to group other riders together to keep your costs down.
 

Brandon/Rutland

 

From Airport

 
 

Service:

 

Commercial Van/Shuttle
All Occasions
phone: 802-775-9563
Advanced Reservations Required

 

Per Person/One Way:

 

$45 - $50 per car
Prices are subject to change.
 

Travel Time:

 

1 Hour 
 

Distance:

 

34 miles
   

Cape Air comes into Rutland from Boston. Call All Occasions for transportation to the Brandon Inn.
 
Driving Directions
  North and South Motorists can reach Brandon via Interstate 91 and 87, which connects with U.S. Route 7. The Inn is on Route 7 in Brandon.
Elevation Note: None

Equipment Requirements: None
The prices listed for commercial services and facilities that are not included in the program cost, such as airport shuttles or extra nights lodging, are subject to change without notice. Since Road Scholar cannot guarantee the accuracy of these prices, we strongly suggest contacting the companies directly for the most up-to-date information.


Daily Schedule

Day 1: Arrival, Check-in, Registration
(Sunday, July 21)
   
 Afternoon: CHECK-IN: Please arrive at the hotel between 3:00-5:00pm. Check into your room at the front desk and then register with Road Scholar staff in the Main lobby. At this time you'll be given a welcome packet containing your name tag, up-to-date itinerary and other useful information.
 Dinner: Dinner at the Inn
 Evening: ORIENTATION: After dinner we will have our Orientaion. This will provide you with information about the hotel, program itinerary, instructors, venues and on site staff.
   
Accommodations: Brandon Inn
Meals Included: Dinner

Day 2: Maple sugaring/Cooking demonstrations
(Monday, July 22)
   
 Breakfast: Breakfast is served in the dining room.
 Morning: PRESENTATION: Inn keeper and chef Louis Pattis gives a demonstration featuring local ingredients. Louis and Sarah Pattis acquired the Inn in February of 1988. Louis is Austrian with a strong hotel background including being an award winning Austrian-trained Chef. Sarah is from England, she worked as an Occupational therapist, both in the States and abroad before becoming an Innkeeper. (She says the two jobs have many similarities!) They have four children, Mark, Anna, Nickolaus and Rebecca. Mark is currently serving in the Military, Anna and Nick are attending University and Becca attends the local high school. Anna, Nick and Becca continue to work at the Inn
 Morning: PRESENTATION: This morning's session is to include the art of maple sugaring and maple candy making. You'll meet Tom Olson of the New England Maple Museum. Maple sugaring has been an early Spring tradition in Vermont ever since the Eastern Woodland Indians discovered that maple sap cooked over an open fire produces a sweet sugar. To make their sugar, the Indians would cut a slash in the maple tree and collect the sap as it dripped out. Logs were then hollowed out, and filled with the fresh sap. White-hot field stones were then added to cause the sap to boil. When the first European settlers arrived, the Indians traded maple sugar with them and eventually taught the settlers the secrets of the maple sugaring process. The early settlers added their technologies to the process as seen in this antique photograph. Other Europeans added their own technologies to the process. They bored holes in the maple trunks and inserted wooden or metal spouts. They used wooden buckets to catch the sap, and then carried the sweet water on shoulder yokes to the metal boiling kettles. Early settlers, like the Native Americans, saved their maple as crystallized sugar. Maple sugar became the colonists own sweetener ending their dependence on foreign sugar. Also, it was never tinctured with the sweat of the southern slave as was cane sugar before the civil war. Early in Vermont’s history, each family made their own maple sugar for personal consumption. The sugar house was now their destination where the invention of the evaporator gave more control to the sugar maker's boiling process. Today, plastic tubing transports the sap from the trees to gathering tanks. From there it is transported to the sugar house where it is transferred to a central storage tank to feed the evaporator which boils off most of the water, leaving sweet, thick maple syrup.
 Lunch: Lunch is served at the inn.
 Afternoon: PRESENTATION: Classroom demonstration by local pastry chef followed by another demonstration by an area chef featuring Vermont products. Sample each demonstration.
 Dinner: Dinner is served at the inn.
 Evening: FREE EVENING: Enjoy a relaxing evenng at the Inn.
   
Accommodations: Brandon Inn
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 3: Dakin Farms, Champlain Chocolate, Shelburne Vineyard
(Tuesday, July 23)
   
 Breakfast: Breakfast is served in the dining room.
 Morning: FIRLD TRIP: Today we visit Dakin Farms, a producer of gourmet foods that include cob smoked hams, turkeys, cheeses and bacon. They also are a large producer of maple syrup and other Vermont products. Enjoy backstage access to their operation. Timothy Dakin settled developed his farm the beautiful rolling hills of the Champlain Valley in 1792. He'd be pleased to know that the same family has owned, operated and loved the farm for the past 40 years, and that they still perform many tasks in time-honored ways he might recognize -- slow smoking meats over smoldering corncobs, and collecting sweet maple sap just before spring arrives.
 Lunch: Lunch is served at the Ice House Restaurant overlooking Lake Champlain.
 Afternoon: FIELD TRIP:This afternoon we visit the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory. The growing team at Lake Champlain Chocolates continues with the highest standards of chocolate-making that Jim Lampman began with twenty years ago, and still uses only the freshest, natural ingredients. Later, we'll visit the Shelburne Vineyards for a presentation and tasting of their Vermont wines. From vine to glass, they strive to make the finest quality wine from Northern Varietal Grapes grown on their vineyards and regionally sourced from other Northern growers. With a lush Vermont landscape as its backdrop, their state of the art winery and tasting room sits nestled among the vines.
 Dinner: Dinner is served at the inn.
 Evening: EVENING PROGRAM: Enjoy movie night at the Inn.
   
Accommodations: Brandon Inn
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 4: Cheese Factory, Maple Museum/Ben & Jerry's
(Wednesday, July 24)
   
 Breakfast: Breakfast is served at the inn.
 Morning: FIELD TRIP: Today we travel to the Cold Hollow Cider Mill, followed by a visit to Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream Factory. In 1974, Eric and Francine Chittenden, descendants of Vermont’s first governor, were starting out as farmers near the base of the Cold Hollow Mountains in rural northwest Vermont. They started making apple cider for friends, with a press that Eric picked up somewhere. Before long, the couple saw real business potential in making cider the true, traditional way. In 1977 lifelong friends Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield completed a correspondence course on ice cream making from Pennsylvania State University's Creamery. On May 5, 1978, with a $12,000 investment the pair opened an ice cream parlor in a renovated gas station in downtown Burlington, Vermont. In 1979, they marked their anniversary by holding the first-ever free cone day, now a nationwide annual celebration.
 Lunch: Lunch is served at a nearby restaurant.
 Afternoon: FIELD TRIP: We conclude our day with a visit to Neighborly Farms for a cheese making demonstration and farm visit. Established as an operating dairy farm more than 30 years ago, Rob and Linda Dimmick along with their three children Bobby, Bailey, and Billy are continuing the tradition on the family farm.
 Dinner: Dinner is served at the inn.
 Evening: EVENING PROGRAM: Enjoy a game of BINGO for Vermont products.
   
Accommodations: Brandon Inn
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 5: Morning classes and demonstrations/Lunch/Afternoon Class
(Thursday, July 25)
   
 Breakfast: Breakfast is served at the inn.
 Morning: PRESENTATIONS: Meet Wendy Cijka, her family and one of their goats. Together, they do a presentation on milking, cheese making and tasting of goats milk products. Also this morning, Inn keeper, & Chef Louis Pattis demontrates cooking with Vermont products.
 Lunch: Lunch is served at the inn.
 Afternoon: PRESENTATIONS: Meet Sheri Sullivan, a local caterer with flare and the pastry chef from Café Provence. Located in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Brandon, Vermont, Café Provence offers gourmet cuisine with a casual touch. Café Provence uses locally grown, seasonally available produce, meat and cheeses and is a member of the Vermont Fresh Network. Chef Robert Barral offers daily specials, a friendly kids menu, a full service bar, on and off premise catering for all your special occasions, and weekly cooking and baking classes. Another member of the Provence family is Gourmet Provence located 1 block North of Cafe, offering freshly baked goods, cakes and pastries, specialty coffees, salads and paninis. Gourmet is also known for its extensive wine selection, Vermont delicacies including goat cheese and maple syrup and lots more.
 Dinner: Dinner is served at the inn.
 Evening: EVENING PROGRAM: Entertainment in the living room.
   
Accommodations: Brandon Inn
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner

Day 6: Food demonstration/Lunch and departure
(Friday, July 26)
   
 Breakfast: Breakfast is served at the inn.
 Morning: FINAL PRESENTATION: Jelly making demonstration (or similar) with local producer followed by a Scone making demonstration with Chef Pattis and wife Sarah who will talk about English teas.
 Lunch: Lunch is served at the inn.
   
Meals Included: Breakfast, Lunch

Free Time Opportunities
  
  Brandon, VT Discover New England
An excellent web site for everything in New England For additional information, visit www.discovernewengland.org
  Vermont Dept. of Tourism and Marketing
Vermont Dept. of Tourism and Marketing 6 Baldwin St., Drawer 33 Montpelier, VT 05633-1301 Phone: 802-828-3676 E-mail: info@VermontVacation.com If you would like to order a travel packet to help plan your next vacation to Vermont, use our on-line form To order your travel packet by phone, call our toll-free number: 1-800-VERMONT (US and Canada) For additional information, visit www.vermontvacation.com/
Important information about your itinerary: Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and completeness of the information featured on this website. Itineraries are based on our best information at this time. Circumstances beyond our control may require us to adjust itineraries or other details. We regret any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding. Information will be sent to you from your Program Provider approximately three weeks prior to the program start date. The prices listed for commercial services and facilities that are not included in the program cost, such as airport shuttles or extra nights lodging, are subject to change without notice. Since Road Scholar cannot guarantee the accuracy of these prices, we strongly suggest contacting the companies directly for the most up-to-date information.


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