Fun Cooking Holidays in France

Looking for a cooking holiday in France ? Then come to The SecretGarden-France, where you will enjoy a wonderful cooking holiday tailored to your skills and experience. Rinus & Lesley (Chef & teacher) Woermeijer welcome you to join them in their beautiful old farmhouse (dating from 1834) and orchard, tucked away in the Loir Valley of France, where you will work with Lesley during the day in the various hands on cooking sessions, and in the evening you will enjoy the food you have prepared and cooked.

During your free time you can enjoy the garden and orchard at L’Huilerie and the wonderful villages and countryside around.

During your cooking holiday you will learn a number of key skills

• Soups
• Pastry, sweet and savory
• Bread making
• Sauces
• Desserts

We have a variety of cooking courses to suit your plans, budget and experience, all our cooking courses are created based on the skills and experience of those attending.

We have courses that range from 2 hours to 5 day all-inclusive, allowing you to build a cooking course into your existing holiday plans or base your holiday around the cooking courses we have to offer.

The cooking courses are all hands-on, no standing around just watching a demo, you are here to enjoy the full experience, it is a cooking holiday so you will be doing the cooking and having fun of course, it is your holiday after all.

The priority for us, is that you enjoy your holiday so we have included a few key things below that will ensure you have a good time :-

• Hands on – its the best way to learn
• Equipment – we have a large fully equipped kitchen and we provide the equipment, ingredients, recipes, you provide the enthusiasm
• Fun – its your holiday so we are all about being relaxed and friendly, food is more than just the eating, its about the whole experience
• Local produce – we enjoy going to the local markets, vineyards and farms to buy local food
• English spoken – Lesley is Scottish so she has a good understanding of the English language (ha ha) and Rinus is on hand if we need any Dutch or French translations
• Sunshine – well most of the time, we are in a micro climate so we do enjoy wonderful warm/hot sunny days as well as the cold winter days

While we are all about the cooking, it is not possible to enjoy that without enjoying the local produce and wine, so we will be venturing out to local wine caves and markets, picking up ingredients and supplies for the recipes that we will be preparing and cooking during the cooking courses.

Depending on the cooking course that you have selected to attend, there is also free time built into the days so you can enjoy the gardens, local area and a little further afield, the local area has so much to offer with various activities (vineyards, walking, cycling, fishing, golf, water sports, etc),

You are welcome to come and join group of other like minded people on a cooking course, where you will have fun and learn new skills at the same time. Or if you have a group of friends and/or family and you would like to enjoy some cooking courses as part of your activity holiday, then we can arrange cooking courses and dates to suit you.

We have special offers for groups of 6 or more attending a cooking course, making it a very good option for group holidays.

The surrounding area has a lot to offer (vineyards, cycling, fishing, golf, water sports, etc), so if you or your partner wish to attend one of the cooking courses, and the other would like to go off and do something else, or even just enjoy the garden, we can accommodate that to, we are happy to have a non cooking partner join you during your stay and enjoy the food that you have been creating during your cooking course.

Check out the information on the courses pages for more detail.

If you have any special requests for items to be included in the itinerary of your cooking holiday, we will be happy to discuss the options.

You will leave your cooking holiday at The SecretGarden-France with skills and confidence to effortlessly produce family meals, intimate dinner and dinner parties.

Impress your family and friends with the skills you will learn and take away from The SecretGarden-France.