Until this past summer, our family’s home base has always been France. Spending all those years travelling in Europe has left its mark on our kids. Their favourite food of all time is gnocchi. It’s not French, but it was popular in our French grocery store, and year after year on both of my daughters’ birthdays when they get to choose their meal, it is always gnocchi.
Now that we’re in Calgary and about to celebrate our first Christmas in our new home, I was trying to think of some meaningful gifts for our kids, because let’s be honest, they don’t need a thing!
When Kevin turned 40 this summer I decided to gift him experiences: seasons tickets to the Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra and family tickets to the Moscow Ballet’s Nutcracker when they were in town. We loved this because we don’t want to keep filling our house with ‘stuff’ and we get a night out together making memories.
Perusing ideas online, I came across The Spice Chica in Calgary and I immediately knew this was something I wanted our family to experience together. Chef Marina offers all kinds of different cooking classes, but the one that caught my eye was the gnocchi making class. I immediately got in touch with her and when I told her our story, she invited our family for a private cooking class where we could learn to make gnocchi together.
It was the ultimate early Christmas present for us!
We arrived to find a smiling and friendly Chef Marina, who we hit it off with right away. She was great with the girls and had us all busy cooking, learning, and getting our hands dirty.
The girls loved every minute of learning how to make their favourite food.
And I loved seeing my husband in an apron.
If you don’t’ regularly give the gift of experiences, I highly recommend it. It’s something I’ve been doing for years because moving as much as we do, and always travelling at Christmas, means that it’s more practical to do something together rather than carry around things. It’s fun to find activities to do as a family, and it makes amazing memories.
Chef Marina had us making tri coloured gnocchi, adding beets and spinach for colouring, which conveniently ended up being Christmas colours and the colours of the Italian flag(we were learning too!).
We floured our mountain of gnocchi and got it ready to take home, but we were having such a great time that The Spice Chica, Chef Marina, suggested we whip up a couple of quick tiramisus. Who were we to say no!?
At this point we were having so much fun that it really did feel like we were on vacation, because that’s normally when we get a chance to do something fun like this together as a family.
As the girls each made their own tiramisu, Kev and I chatted about all sorts of things with Chef Marina like we’d known each other for ages. She’s from Argentina and loved hearing about how our Argentinian friends in Congo would have regular pig roast parties on the beach. When we found out that she hires out her personal chef services for house parties, the wheels started turning! Would we have her come over and roast a pig for us when the snow melts, or would it be a giant paella party in the backyard? The possibilities were endless, really!
Meanwhile, the girls were almost done making their desserts and Kevin, surrounded by espresso, tiramisu and gnocchi, had gone into full-on vacation mode, feeling like he had been transported to Italy.
Talk about a great way to spend the day! And far more affordable than an actual trip to Italy.
Calgary friends, if you’re still looking for something unique and special to gift your loved ones, I highly recommend The Spice Chica. We had a great time and left with dinner, a freezer full of gnocchi, and tiramisu for tomorrow!
And what just might be the best part- we now have a new friend in Calgary! Thank you Chef Marina for your warm and generous hospitality! We look forward to the next time we’re in the kitchen together!
