Going Whale Watching in Monterey Bay (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Going Whale Watching in Monterey Bay (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

There was limited seating on the field trip to go whale watching with my daughter’s Waldorf School in Monterey, California, so I did not go along as a chaperone.  Instead, I would be the point man on land.

“Call me if you need Coast Guard Rescue.  I’ll get helicopter rescue and boats if you need it,” I told Florence’s teacher.

Her teacher did not laugh.  He got my number to be called after 911 in case of emergency.  I was going to write in a café across from the wharf while the kids were out in the Bay.

I helped zip jackets for the windy field trip.  I loved seeing the parents get on the boat with binoculars and flutes.

“Stand by the parents with flutes,” I said to Florence.  The boats have to stay 100 yards away from the porpoise and dolphin pods and whales, but these animals and the sea otters and brown pelicans come very close to the boats, especially if summoned by flute music.

The whales even swim under the boats and thwack them with their tails.  This causes chatter to die down and provides as much thrill as diving on a roller coaster.  Even the smallest humpback whales are 42 feet long and could probably overturn a boat if they wanted to.

Whales tend to surface, glide, and leave a stream of brown, smelly debris behind them.  You spend a lot of time on the boat moving around to see the whales as a guide tells you about cetaceans (whales, porpoises, dolphins and so on).

The Monterey Bay has a dense concentration of marine mammals due to the offshore canyon, which is one mile deep.  The Canyon keeps the water cool.  Even in summer, the breezes off Monterey Bay are cold.  Many tourists are unpleasantly surprised by the weather in their shorts and short-sleeved shirts.

While I was sipping chai and eating a cinnamon bun, the kids were scurrying around trying to see whales in 1 o’clock, 5 o’clock, and 7 o’clock positions.

When I went out to the wharf to get Florence, her face was cold and red.  She had kept her jacket zipped up.

“Dolphins are so cute,” she said.

“Would you like a hot chocolate,” I asked.

“Yes.”  She got one of these and a chocolate chip cookie.

I knew in the age of Harry Potter that she was proud she was brave enough to go whale watching alone.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Visiting Salvador Dali's Home Town in Figueres, Spain and the Dali Museum (Monterey, CA) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Salvador Dali's Home Town in Figueres (Spanish Catalonia) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Figueres, Spain is a nearby outing in the Catalan Pyrenees mountains from Barcelona or the Languedoc-Rousillon region of Spain.

Figueres is sought out, because it is the childhood home of Spanish artist Salvador Dali (1904 – 1989), and the site of the Dali Theater and Museum.  The Surrealist exhibition and performance space was converted from a Neoclassical building built by Jose Roca i Bros in 1850.  According to Michelin’s Guide Vert Rousillon Pays Cathar, the glass cupola over the theater was built by Emilio Perez Piñero.

I like Dali’s satiric and critical artwork, but I also went to Figueres with my husband to help Spain’s economy.  When we visited in the summer of 2015, official youth unemployment hovered around 50%.

The Spanish are working themselves out of this fiscal crisis by maximizing attendance at tourist venues I think.  We arrived at the Dali Museum at opening time and the line wound around the streets with an hour wait.  Busloads of tourists were loading more people into the streets.  It is okay to wait when you are part of a group and the distress is part of the trip story experience.  I was already considering a postcard visit.

I was a little distressed by the admission price.  The Guide Vert listed admission at 13 euros.  The Museum’s website listed admission at 14 euros.   The price listed with a sign posted at the Museum’s door was 20 euros.  You could get into the Louvre with a few more euros added to the 20 euros.  Dali would have loved this huckstering to get the economy back in shape.

I wanted to spend my money on souvenirs, so I said, “Let’s just get pictures to say we’ve been here” to my husband.  He agreed, because he was probably thinking of what parking was costing us.

The decoration of the Dali Museum is wonderful for photos.  Dali topped the Neoclassical building with large egg sculptures and put pastry puff decorations on an orange background to make it appear fairy-like.  It was a great photo op.  We discovered a way to reserve tickets several months in advance if you speak Spanish or Catalan, too, on the side of the Museum rarely stopped at by tourists running to get in line.

Then, we went to some souvenir shops.  The paucity of choices attested to the bad state of the Spanish economy.  Only posters, calendars, and postcards were on sale.  We bought calendars and many postcards. 

I bought a postcard of Dali’s The Temptation of Saint Anthony.  It is not at Figueres, but in the Royal Art Museum in Brussels, Belgium.  (I have seen it.  Temptation, as usual, takes the form of a nude woman.)  Art books and guidebooks are expensive to produce.  T-shirts are relatively expensive to make in a depressed economy.

I thought of something that might boost the local economy, though, as we went back to the parking garage.  My idea deals with beating the heat, hydrating tourists in sweltering weather, and feeding tourists; sell chilled, bottled gazpacho vegetable soup along the line to get in the museum.

Make the bottles plastic to avoid breakage problems.  You can also recycle plastic for money.  Roving refrigerated carts could sell the gazpacho like ice cream carts do in Hispanic neighborhoods in California.  Eventually, other tourist items and recycle carts could be added.

Gazpacho is made with vegetables, olive oil, bread, and ice and crushed into a refreshing drink.  The green pepper and cucumber disagree with some people.  Otherwise, the cold soup is halal, kosher, vegetarian, and vegan.  A gluten-free version can be made without bread. 

And, that is my little token of appreciation to the Dali Museum in Figueres, written Figueras in Catalan, for a ride through the mountains to fairy-like, Dali-Land.

When my husband Laurent and I returned to Monterey, California from Europe, we loved finding out that there was a Dali Museum on the wharf in Monterey.  Dali spent several years in Monterey and painted and organized lavish parties around California.  His paintings of parties and curiosities from this period in the museum make it an unexpected outing for a trip to Monterey, California.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

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Photo by Laurent Paget

Visiting Fanjeaux (Languedoc, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Fanjeaux (Languedoc, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Fanjeaux is a logical if low-key place to begin a visit of France’s Languedoc-Rousillon region, which shares a mountainous border with Spain and lies along the Mediterranean Sea.

The Spaniard Dominic de Guzman (1170 – 1221), later Saint Dominic, stayed in Fanjeaux during his tours in the region.  Fanjeaux is also the site of one of Dominic’s famous miracles that was replicated throughout Languedoc-Rousillon; this miracle was the ability of Dominic’s writings denouncing the Cathar heresy to withstand fire against Catholic holy books.

Catharism was the French offshoot of the heresy known as Bogomolism, which was founded in Bulgaria in the 10^th century.  It spread throughout the northern Mediterranean.  Bogomilism rejected many of the tenets of Catholicism, and its followers often refused to tithe to the church.  Tithing was the practice of giving 10% of one’s goods to the Church as set out in the Bible.

Suppressing Catharism was the impetus behind starting the Albigensian Crusade (1209 – 1229) against heretics in the south of France.  Saint Dominic became involved in this Crusade.  He founded the Order of Preachers (OP) in Toulouse, France in 1216.  This order later became known as the Dominican Order.

According to Michelin’s Guide Vert Rousillon Pays Cathar, Dominic’s home in Fanjeaux was the saddlery (horse gear room) of the castle (now gone).  Today Saint Dominic’s home is a private religious institution.  You cannot visit it, but the Dominican nuns from the nearby Prouille convent (set up by Saint Dominic in 1206) sing prayers in perpetual devotion to their Order’s founder.

As I stood listening to the nuns’ sung prayers, I smiled and figured out angles to shoot photos on a crooked street.  I appreciated the nuns’ life, but was happy to take photos with my husband, glimpse at the pretty church in town, and enjoy the contemplative silence away from Saint Dominic’s home.

By Ruth Paget - Author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Photo by Laurent Paget

Vacation Souvenirs from the South of France by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Vacation Souvenirs from the South of France Bought by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

You never have to worry about coming home to a house empty of food after a vacation to the South of France if you plan correctly.  You could outfit another trip with the vacation booty you can pick up at grocery stores and gas stations, which sell “produits regionaux,” or regional products, along the way.

On my family’s recent trip to the French Catalan region by the Mediterranean (Rousillon), we brought home cassoulet, duck confit thighs, nut cakes, powdered sugar cookies, and Catalan touron.  Each of these delights comes with a little story.  I will begin my autoroute, or highway, tale with cassoulet.

Everyone agrees that cassoulet is bean stew.  However, there are three ways to prepare it reflecting styles from the cities of Castelnaudary (pictured), Carcassonne (pictured), and Toulouse.

The Old Foodie Blog featuring a A Food History Story and Recipe Every Weekday of the Year summarizes the differences among the three different cassoulet styles using the French version of Larousse Gastronomique as a source.

Cassoulet bean stews feature these ingredients by city:

Castelnaudaray:

pork
ham
knuckle of pork
fresh bacon rinds

Carcassonne:

The same ingredients as Castelnaudary cassoulet plus

shortened leg of mutton
partridges in season

Toulouse:

The same ingredients as Castelnaudary cassoulet plus

breast of pork
mutton (neck or boned breast)
confit d’oie (preserved goose) or confit de canard (preserved duck)

My favorite cassoulet is from Toulouse with confit de canard (preserved duck).  We bought several cans of it including a Toulouse one parading as Castelnaudary with confit de canard.  (It’s sold to tourists and still tasted good.)

We bought confit de canard from Périgourd just in case we want to make our own cassoulet.  It takes several hours to boil the beans depending on their age.  (Older beans are drier and harder.)  Once the beans are sufficiently soft, you then bake them with the confit and other ingredients until the beans become really, really soft, but do not lose their shape.

Or, you can heat the confit de canard and eat it with steamed potatoes and green beans.  A red Bordeaux or Cahors wine goes well with the confit de canard thighs like the ones we purchased.

Another goodie purchased along the highway was the package of nut cakes we bought from Rocamador.  Rocamador sits perched high above the Dordogne River.  It houses a sanctuary for a Black Madonna pilgrimage site.

We did not visit Rocomador.  You could never reach your destination in France, if you want to visit all the sites advertised by brown tourism panels along the highway.

We did eat the Rocomador cakes made from chestnuts, walnuts, and hazelnuts.  The nuts are ground into flour.  The nut flour replaces wheat flour in making the cakes.  The cakes had a good flavor, but were somewhat dry and crumbly in the hot weather.

As we entered Rousillon (French Catalonia), we bought rousquilles de Rousillon.  These are ring cookies coated in powdered sugar that melt in your mouth.  Rousquilles remind me of powdered sugar donuts that have longer staying power.

Rousquilles de Rousillon are a Catalan specialty from the Franco-Spanish border area.  They are flavored with vanilla, lemon, and anis.  The cookie itself is made with flour, egg, and honey.

Catalan touron, a popular Christmas candy, tastes good in summer, too.  It is made with honey, almonds, and anis.  It is a nougat, which reminds me of divinity fudge.  The more almonds you have the better the quality.

We did not save any touron for Christmas.  We ate it after vacation as a last vestige of lazy days at the beach and tours through Catalan towns.  Like the French, though, we hoard our little cans of vacation booty confit de canard and cassoulet for the winter months.

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

Ruth Paget Photography

Carcassonne - Laurent Paget Photography

Castelnaudary - Laurent Paget Photography

Ruth Paget Selfie