Of course it didn’t hurt that we were all in our favorite element, in the kitchen and around the table. The daily program went something like this: wake up, stuff ourselves with sesame-crusted semolina bread, fresh sheep’s milk ricotta and about a dozen flavors of Fabrizia’s homemade preserves as well as a cake or two that had magically appeared overnight. Set off on a little outing to visit a local producer, accompanied of course by copious tastings. Around noon gather back in the teaching kitchen for a hands-on demonstration of whatever local specialties were on the lunchtime menu, followed by a four-course communal lunch. Digest for a couple of hours. At five gather back in the kitchen for an aperitif, a new lesson and, at the end, another three or four course meal. Stagger to bed swearing we will be much more successful at curtailing our gluttony tomorrow. Wake up, conveniently forget all about the previous night’s promises because really, food this good doesn’t just fall onto your plate every day, and repeat hong kong corporate formation.

The iconic pasta con le sarde, pasta with fresh sardines and wild fennel. Now I understand why they say you can’t make it without that fennel—its flavor is like fennel on steroids. In this part of Sicily it’s traditional to top the dish with a mixture of toasted breadcrumbs and sugar. The sweetness is a bit jarring at first bite, but it quickly becomes addictive Sage accounting.

But truly, I don’t know what was better: the food, with its gutsy, punchy, sweet and sharp edges and ingredients that tasted like concentrated versions of themselves, or the fact of having nothing better to do all day than hang out with a group of similarly food-obsessed people and, with minimal effort on your part, have a multi-course meal of said food land on your plate three times a day. Believe me, there was true panic in everyone’s eyes when someone voiced the fear we were all secretly harboring by the end of the week: “but how can we ever go back to our normal lives after this wine tasting hong kong?”