Albert Schweitzer Game - Part 4 - Urban Planning and 5 Winter Menus - Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Albert Schweitzer Game - Part 4 – Urban Planning and 5 Winter Menus – Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Urban planners learn about traffic flow and roads in their studies I would imagine, especially for ensuring that waste and garbage leave a city while food comes in, especially food that can be store and eaten in winter.

As an example in Monterey County (California), we have many descendants of Italian-Sicilian fisherman.  There are two winter meals we can almost always eat here that you can buy, store, and/or make:

-New England Clam Chowder

-Chicken Piccata with broccoli

-Pudding-based desserts (3 small bites)

or Cioppino Seafood Stew instead of Chicken piccata

I learned to make all of these items when I move to Monterey 20+ years ago after eating them in restaurants, so I would know what they were supposed to taste like.

Roads, ports, and electric grids are maintained in good order, so those two meals can be made in Monterey County I think. 

There are other dishes that are made here, but this is what you can find in almost all Italian restaurants here as a tourist.  Check menus on websites before making reservations to be sure.

Alsace combines the best of France and Germany together.  It is very Merovingian in that way.

What I mean by that is that France has great roads organizing market distribution of agricultural products and the Germans make almost indestructible buildings for storing and distributing food. 

Many Germans and Eastern Europeans also like union, trucking jobs that allow them to travel Europe and buy nice things for their families as well.  These are not minor points when provisioning a city and making sure that garbage and waste leave every day in large cities while food comes in.

The cities in France tend to be organized in concentric circles where agricultural markets can exchange goods quickly in a discipline manner.  You can buy fresh seafood platters in Lyons, France for this reason just as you would in Brittany, France.

This theory of concentric circles of agricultural distribution is discussed in Fernand Braudel’s unfinished series of books The Identity of France and Georges Duby in Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West.  Duby was an economist and historian.

Task 1:

Read both of those books to understand France’s sweet markets and rural life.

Task 2:

Read Pagnol’s works to understand the life of “rich peasants.”

5 Winter Meals that Alsatians Make Even if They Might Deny It

-choucroute with various pork sausages or goose sausages

-pork chops with applesauce

-egg noodles with sautéed mushrooms and butter

-roast duck with green olives

(olives are bottled and sold all over France)

-poached fish with light cream sauce and mushrooms

Those meals above can be made in the US with a little planning.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Albert Schweitzer Game - Part 3 - Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Albert Schweitzer Game – Part 3 – Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Rounding out the Alsatian menu with protein, carbohydrates, and fruit has allowed Alsatians to withstand severe winters and wars for centuries. 

Much of their agricultural bounty can be bottled or canned to last over winter.  Alsatians can live off the agricultural products grown in their region, if they have to.  Many of these products are familiar to Americas.

As you read through the agricultural products associated with Alsace, I am giving French Club members 3 tasks to do:

Task 1:

Try to think of recipes you can make in the US with the items that are not Alsatian, but use the same ingredients.

Task 2:

Read Marguerite Spoerlin’s La Cuisine Alsacienne and make the recipes, using substitutions if you have to.  Venison and goose, for example, are difficult to find in US supermarkets.  You might be able to order them at Customer Service counters, but they are not on the shelves.

Task 3:

Think of homemade soups to make and what you can use as thickeners.

Alsatian Vegetables – Main Ones

-White asparagus

The best white asparagus is supposed to come from the Alsatian town of Hoerdt.

-Mushrooms

Various kinds

-Baby carrots

-cabbage

Alsatian Carbohydrates

-egg noodles such as those made by Lustucru

-baguette slices

-kugelhopf

(Germans eat egg noodles, too, in the form of spätzle.)

Alsatian Fruit Orchards:  A Tart Maker’s Paradise

Alsace is famous for its fruit orchards, whose produce is used to make both fruit tarts ad eau-de-vie such as Poire Williams.

Some of the produce that grows in the orchards of Alsace includes:

-plums (quetsches – purple plums)

-apples

-cherries for cherry pie

-apricots for clafoutis – similar to American cobblers from the South

There is a Dole, France like the Dole name for pineapples and presidential candidates.

Learning how to make quiche crust will save you money in the long run, if you figure out how much a homemade crust costs versus store-bought ones.

Task 4:

How much does each store bought crust cost?

How much does it cost to make a homemade crust?

Happy figuring!!!!!!!!!!!!

By Savvy Mom Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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3-Country Buying Tour Game- France, Switzerland, and Germany Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

3-Country Buying Tour Game– France, Switzerland, and Germany:

 

Alsace (France)

Basel (Switzerland)

Stuttgart (Germany)

Suggested by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

In France:

Strasbourg –

Capital of the European Parliament

(The elected officials are here.  The bureaucrats are in Brussels, Belgium.)

-Beer Steins

-Moselle Glasses with green stems

Château de Haut-Koenigsbourg

-Books about Falconry and Heraldry

Riquewihr

-Kathe Wolwert Christmas Store here is open all year. 

The headquarters for this store is in Nuremberg, Germany.  They sell wooden nativity scenes, tin Christmas tree ornaments, and probably Mobil wooden toys for children.

-checked tablecloths, napkins, aprons, and placemats

Colmar

-The Issenheim Altarpiece in the Unterlinden Museum is the main reason for visiting this museum and the Madonnas carved in wood

-Canals run through town making it a Little Venice

-Colmar is the wine capital of Alsace, which is known for dry and fruity Rieslings

-Art books at the Unterlinden Museum

-Caraway Seeds to go on Muenster Cheese back in the US

Switzerland

Basel

-Group Banking Introduction to Swiss Financial Products?

-Fondue lunch with Fendant du Valais wine from Switzerland

-Cow bell souvenirs

-Rolex watches

-Mont Blanc pens with GPS

-Cartier Jewelry

Germany

Freiburg – Black Forest

-Hand carved Cuckoo Clocks

-Beer steins

Stuttgart –

Car Capital, Wine Growing Area (Riesling), and Chocolate Manufacturing Town (Ritter Sport)

-Ritter Sport can arrange factory tours

-Baltic pearls

(In the same stores sell Mont Blanc pens and Rolex Watches)

-Group Banking Introduction to German Financial Products?

-Porsche Museum

-USB-Ports with toy Porsches on the end

-Mercedes-Benz Museum

Both Porsche and Mercedes-Benz have their main manufacturing facilities here. All other German carmakers have sales rooms, too.

-Audi – luxury car brand made by VW

-VW

-BMW

-Metzingen and Brueniger Land 

Malls with Designer Clothes and Accessories

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Frederic Bartholdi: The Alsatian Beer Buying Game for France Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Frédéric Bartholdi: The Alsatian Beer Buying Game for Alsace (France) Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Bartholdi is the sculptor who created the Statue of Liberty and many of the funicular trains that go up into the Pyrénées Mountains in French Catalonia.  He was born in Colmar, Alsace, which is why I named the game after him.

I do not know if he drank beer or not, but Alsace is a huge beer producing region as well as a wine producing region.

I found out about Alsace’s beer-producing regions when I lived in Stuttgart, Germany for five years and went grocery shopping in Strasbourg, France once a month at Auchan in Ilkirch-Graffenstaden.  That particular Auchan had a great book section as well as groceries and home supplies.

On one weekend grocery trip to Strasbourg (France), I found a book called La Route de la Bière en Alsace by Gabriel Thierry and Elénore Delpierre – Itinéraires de Découvertes.

There is an entire culture in Eastern France devoted to beer that extends from Northern to Southern Alsace.  If you can read French, you can use this book to plan a trip to Alsace’s Beer Country.

There are several beer festivals listed in this book, but the big one is held in a town of Schiltigheim, which has been brewing wine since the 14^th century.  The beer festival has been held in Schiltigheim since the 19^th century.

If you are interested in attending this festival, look at their website for information on it, hotels, and restaurants.

There are four breweries in Schiltigheim that might be able to arrange for tours, if you look at their website for information:

-L’Espérance

-Adelshoffen

-Fischer

-La Perle

Fischer has a large brewery in downtown Strasbourg (France) that probably does tours, if you check their website.

For the other regions, I have listed the number of breweries in each beer-producing region just to give an idea of how large the Alsatian beer industry is in Alsace:

-Downtown Strasbourg

5 Breweries

-North of Strasbourg

5 Breweries

-Outside Strasbourg

5 Breweries

-Haut-Rhin

5 Breweries

-Brewer Cooperatives

4 Breweries

The Beer Culture of Alsace (France) is relatively unknown and unexplored. 

A trip to Strasbourg for the month-long Christmas market in December might be a good time to explore Alsace’s Beer Route and to buy some lovely French food and wooden toys for children like Playmobil products or Kathe Wolwert Christmas tree decorations.

By Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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