Paul Bocuse: The Lyon (France) Touring Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Paul Bocuse: The Lyon (France) Touring Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Introduction

I chose to name this game after Paul Bocuse, the Michelin-starred chef whose home base was in Lyon.  Bocuse was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for his service to the French nation for popularizing nouvelle cuisine, preparing meals for French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and agreeing to sell frozen nouvelle cuisine under his name to Japan (and the sausage eaters of downtown Lyon).

Background Reading

Paul Bocuse’s cookbooks are a joy to read, but the dishes described in them are difficult to prepare:

-Paul Bocuse’s French Cooking translated by Colette Rossant

-Bocuse à la Carte translated by Colette Rossant

Lyon has some terrible history that they choose not to forget.   Many of the crime stories have been turned into television series and movies.  Lyon’s history is the subject of many nonfiction and fiction books:

-The Killer of Little Shepherds by Douglas Starr

Belle Epoque serial killer – a true story crime fiction like Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood.

-Shantytown Kid by Azouz Begag

The problems of a star pupil from a minority group in France living in Lyon

-Resistance and Betrayal: The Death and Life of the Greatest Hero of the French Resistance by Patrick Marnham

-Unhealed Wounds: France and the Klaus Barbie Affair by Erna Paris

-Cours and Traboules de Lyon by Gérald Gambier

-The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Places to Visit in Lyon

-Musée de Beaux Arts

Located in a former Benedictine Convent, this museum houses art from Egypt to a large collection of Impressionist paintings.

-Old Town Lyon

The Quartier Saint-Jean and the Quartier Saint-Georges resemble Italy with their ochre-colored buildings with a few red ones here and there.

-Musée Gadgne

Puppetry and History of Lyon Museum

-Archaeology Museum

Lyon is an ancient Roman town.

-Les Halles de Lyon

Covered marketplace with 48 different shops.

-Colline de la Croix-Rousse

Lyon’s “traboules,” or covered passageways between courtyards of buildings around several blocks are located here.

-Fabric Museum

Lyon had a large silk industry during the Renaissance Period that is dealt with here.

-Museum of Decorative Arts

-Resistance and Deportation Museum

Lyon was known as the Capital of the Resistance during the Second World War.

-Printing Press Museum

Lyon was an important bookmaking center in the 15^th and 16^th centuries.

Typical Foods of the City of Lyon

-Tripe sausages

-Blood sausages

-Chicken Liver Salad

-Langoustines (crayfish) dumplings - quénelles

All of those dishes above come with huge salads from local markets or gardens owned by the city’s bouchons - local cafes.  Beaujolais Nouveau is the drink of choice with a lunch like this.

I think “high-on-the-hog” body parts go to Collonges outside the city Lyon for the Michelin-starred restaurants to use while Lyon still has some of the world’s best butchers and clean-up crews.

Fortunately, Bocuse did begin to make frozen gourmet dinners under his name for the Japanese markets in the 1990s that the locals in Lyon also got to make for dinner at night.

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

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Visiting Lyon (France) with the Belle Famille by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Lyon (France) with the Belle Famille by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On another weekend trip from Paris (France), Laurent and I took the T.G.V. (Train Grand Vitesse – Very Fast Train) to Lyon where the Rhône and Saône Rivers meet. 

The third river around Lyon is supposed to be the Beaujolais.  Watch out for this quiz joke if you eat in Lyon’s “bouchon” diners.  Bouchon refers to Lyon’s sausages and traffic jams.  Lyon is huge toll area for vacationers coming back from the Mediterranean here to reach Paris.  It is also the headquarters of Interpol to make sure the tolls reach Paris I think.

You are supposed to buy a huge bag of nougat de Montélimar for the family to eat while waiting to go through the toll as you listen to the “tubes d’été” –summer hit songs and talk about the TGV running on World War II tracks and having no room for souvenirs.  (The TGV has air conditioning, but it does not work well. Snark, snark, snark à l’américaine.)

I read Le Figaro newspaper looking through the want ads for work on the way to Lyon.  We arrived around 1 pm at the train station where Laurent’s cousin and uncle picked us up.

Laurent’s uncle went home to cook while his cousin showed us the principal sites in Lyon – the Colline de Fourvière, the Basilique de Nôtre Dame de Fourvière, the Roman ampitheatre, and the Odéon (indoor theatre).  We walked through the streets of Old Lyon, which reminded me of Italy.

Laurent’s cousin made the trip special by giving us a tour of Lyon’s secret passageways that led from courtyard to courtyard around entire city blocks.  We came out somewhere across town.  The tunnel passageways are called “trabouls.”

I remarked that these were better than the “cours de miracles” – criminals’ lairs - that Victor Hugo described in Nôtre Dame de Paris. 

“These could be mapped for tourists,” I added.

“The locals know where they are.  We never know when we might need to use them again,” he said in a sinister voice.  He was a theatre major in college, who wanted to do films, so we all walked around pretending to shoot people.

Laurent said, “You have to eat mint candy to be authentic after killing someone in France.”  I love insider French data.

When we went back to Laurent’s uncle and aunt’s house for lunch, we stopped and inspected the ruins at Champonost from the ancient Roman era.  There are archiducs, menhirs, and dolmens all over France.

Laurent’s uncle was recreating ancient Roman cuisine by roasting a leg of lamb that had been marinated in olive oil and herbes de Provence at an outdoor grill oven when we returned.

We drank a Châteauneuf-du-Pape wine with the lamb.  Châteauneuf-du-Pape is made a little further down the Rhône River around Avignon, where the papacy had its see when the Catholic Church had to leave Rome for several centuries. 

Châteauneuf-du-Pape is a blend of several varietals (grape varieties) with a papal insignia on the bottle.  It is one of my favorite wines, because it tastes good with lamb and has a very distinguished bottle decoration.

After eating we looked through French antique books and talked about the TGV being modern, but running on World War II tracks.  The uncle from “the Mines school” was the one to pooh-pooh to about possible derailments.  I do not think this is the rail situation anymore.

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

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City Neighborhoods Game: Lyons and Strasbourg (France) Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

City Neighborhoods Game: Lyons and Strasbourg (France) Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Objectives:

-Promote French Conversational Skills

-Promote Analysis Skills

-Promote French Writing Skills

-Promote Knowledge of French Culture

Level 1 – Gathering Background Information

To play this game, you need to read the book entitled La Ville des Temps Modern: de la Renaissance aux Révolutions by R. Chartier, G. Chaussinaud-Nogeret, and Hugues Neveux.

This book is in French only at the time of this writing.

Basically, the three authors write that different sections of Lyons (France) have schools, universities, libraries, public transportation, highways, and markets that met the needs of the city and nation of France during its days as a huge silk fabrication center.

Different kinds of housing and zoning regulations keep neighborhood denizens in their sociological niche usually.

Level 2 –

Look up various maps of Lyons (France) and its surrounding region, including relief maps

What are the city planning challenges in Lyons (France), especially for public health?

Look up public health to find out all the areas that this subject covers, if you would like to earn more

Find out the population of the City of Lyons at the time that the authors examined it and find out what the population figures are for today

What impact could this demographic (population) change have on managing the town?  Examples of items to think about include:

-housing

-sewage

-electrical grid

-school classroom size

-buses needed to take children to school

-health concerns such as vaccinations to attend school and work

Level 3

Write up what are the various neighborhoods in town such as:

-working class areas

-residential areas

-industrial areas

-civic centers

-arts areas

-university areas

(About 2 paragraphs for each neighborhood)

Level 4

After examining Lyons and its neighborhoods, can you guess what its major industry or industries were and are in the past and present?

How well is the City of Lyons set up to meet the current needs of industry in their town?

Level 5

In this level of the City and Neighborhoods Game, you are going to examine the City of Strasbourg (France) by examining the following book:

Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Strasbourg (available on Amazon.com)

Level 6

Practice your French and write a 2-page summary describing what each neighborhood is like in Strasbourg based on the Dictionnaire Historique des Rues de Strasbourg.

Level 7

Look up various maps of Strasbourg (France) and its surrounding region, including relief maps.

What are the city planning challenges in Strasbourg (France), especially for public health?  Examples of items to think about include:

-housing

-sewage

-electrical grid

-school classroom size

-busses needed to take children to school

-health concerns such as vaccinations needed to attend school and work

Level 8

What are the various neighborhoods like?

(Working class residential, industrial zones, lawyers’ and public servants’ quarters, European politicians quarters, and quarters where the traditional nobility lived)

Level 9

Based on what you have examined, what do you think the main industry or industries were and are in Strasbourg?

Level 10

What are neighborhoods like in your town?

What kinds of markets and commerce do you have?  Can you order foods and pick them up at the markets?

What kinds of stores are in your neighborhood?

What kinds of industry and stores are in your neighborhood?

Level 11

Use the US Census figures for our neighborhood that are available online.

Many retailers would like to know the following basic information before investing in a community:

-income levels

-educational levels

-age distribution

Level 12

If national retailers do not want to come to your community, because of those 3 factors above or crime statistics for your area, think about how to provide these services locally.

The following books provide information on the “why” and “how” of committee formation and management:

Democracy in America: The Complete and Unabridged Volumes 1 and 2 by Alexis de Tocqueville

Robert’s Rules of Order – Newly Revised by Henry Robert III

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

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