Making a Pirates of the
Caribbean Lunch by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Over
the next few days, these good spirits buoyed me into writing my resume. Not working left me in a lurch for
awhile.
What
was hardest was that I did not have any friends in Norfolk (Virginia). I knew I would, at least, have adult
conversations at work. My journals were
my friends. I also read books.
Right
after we moved in, though, my mother and her friend came to visit us. Laurent prepared a nice dinner for them.
We
started with homemade chicken soup followed by mussels steamed in whole
wine. The mussels tasted so sweet with
just a wee edge on them from the wine.
We
drank a white wine from Rioja wine from Marquès de Caceres winery with the
mussels.
After
this seaside treat, we had salad followed by a cheese course made up of brie
cheese, camembert cheese, and stilton cheese.
We ate imported chocolate candies, which we could procure from the
commisary’s international section:
-Rocher
d’or
-Mon
Cheri
-Raffeolo
Laurent
made espresso with steamed milk from our espresso maker. Our guests went back to the hotel to relax
while we cleaned up the dishes.
I
went to mass the next day with my mom’s friend and my small family. Our family church, St. Pius X, looked like a
concrete slab (the South has had church bombings, and Virginia is not
traditionally Catholic). We were
observing the holiday of the Pentecost.
I
like Pentecost, because it negates the horrible image of the Tower of Babel,
where language divided humanity. On
Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to speak languages to
spread Jesus’s message.
Once
I learned about this holiday in France, I used it as my annual vow to keep up
my study of foreign languages.
Since
I had more time than money in Virginia, I would use my time to study Spanish
and keep up with Japanese. (I work on
Italian now – 2018.) I would have to go
through many boxes at home to find my language textbooks.
I
would go to the library for reading material in Spanish and read the church
newsletter, which had information on the Caribbean and Latin America.
After
mass, my mom, her friend, and the rest of us set out to do a tour of the Naval
Base. The ships fascinated them, but I
could not see the forest for the trees as I looked at them. I had waited at too many gates to appreciate
another naval installation.
After
touring the Naval Base, everyone came back to the apartment where I prepared
Florence’s birthday party. Florence, the
sweetheart, squeezed lemons, so we could make fresh lemonade like I used to do
with my great-aunt Winnie.
I
made my Catalan salad as a starter with endive halves in a star-pattern topped
off with a creamy dressing.
(My
maternal family were English captains in the merchant marine, which became
pirate as necessary, especially when silver from the mines at Potosi (Mexico)
tried to get past the Spanish Main in Puerto Rico outside San Juan. All navies were like this, including the Barbary
pirates from North Africa, who probably sailed for various kingdoms in
Andalusia -southern Spain and Portugal.
My
family’s ship, the Naiad, also fought at Trafalgar, so I gently let Florence
into the English Navy part of our family history with food. The Catalans - capitals at Barcelona and
Perpignan - form the elite of Cuban society, too. They used the Spanish navy as a merchant
marine for slaves and rum made from sugar cane.)
Back
to lunch, which you can use to teach history:
Black
olives occupied the center of the starter and anchovy strips ran down the
center of the endive halves. Whether or
not this was authentic did not matter; it looked good and tasted great.
I
made gambas al ajillo, shrimp with garlic, after that. I find garlic in olive oil and removed it
once the perfume had risen from the hot oil.
I added the peeled shrimp and cooked these until they were no longer
translucent.
I
turned them once halfway through the cooking and added freshly chopped Italian
flat leaf parsley, sea salt, and pepper at the end.
Everyone
loved the shrimp, especially the birthday girl, who practiced saying, “gambas
al ajillo” until she got it right.
(I
believe in fun tasting Spanish lessons.)
The adults drank a dry Riesling with the shrimp that made me think we
had never left France.
By
Ruth Pennington Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
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