Celebrating French Culture in Monterey, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Celebrating French Culture in Monterey, California with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget


My family has lived on the Monterey Peninsula in California for more than twenty years.  We were able to preserve our family’s French heritage by participating in many of the activities organized by the Alliance Française of the Monterey Peninsula.  The Alliance is subsidized by French Foreign Ministry.

We had some standard activities that we did at the Alliance every year that I have listed below, if other clubs want to do these activities, too:

July 14^th – French Independence Day Celebration with a cake decorated like a French flag, offered by the French Consulate.  We sang the French national anthem, the Marseillaise, and raised our fists to show everyone that the French are America’s oldest ally and helped clinch the US victory against the English General Cornwallis.

The French admiral de Grasse kept food supplies from sailing up the Chesapeake Bay to the English, which literally starved the English into submission.

We also celebrated the Fête de la Musique on June 21^st as the French have done since 1982.  This festival was created by Culture Minister Jacques Lang, because he discovered that one out two people in France had studied a musical instrument.  Lang wanted to celebrate this cultural achievement of the French nation with this festival.

Monterey counted as one of the 700 cities in 120 countries worldwide with our little celebration in one of our member’s homes.  This member could play the bassoon, and we all ate from cheese and fruit trays with wine in sophisticated ambiance.  Florence drank an Orangina.

One year my husband brought in lyric sheets for Jacques Brel songs.  He is a pop singer, but I think our bassoon instrumentalist like having a break from giving a concert.  Our family got everyone singing with our acapella lead-in. 

I think people who would like to retain or reclaim on of their family heritage lines might like to do something like this musical festival with music lyrics in the original languages to sing. 

At Christmas, we did a home celebration, but the whole French community supported buying Christmas logs at one of the French bakeries in town.  The Christmas logs are rolled cakes with French pastry frosting that are decorated to look like they have snow on them.  They are a rich dessert after a French Christmas Eve dinner.  They are good for one day only.

After Christmas, we would go to an Alliance party and have King’s Cake.  This is an Epiphany Cake that is made with almond marzipan and layered pastry.

There is a little porcelain figurine in the cake.  Whoever gets the figurine in their piece of cake gets to be king or queen.  The cake comes with two golden paper crowns.  Whoever finds the little figurine can choose a consort.  They also have to buy the next King’s Cake.

The Alliance also went on monthly walks at the Elkhorn Slough and viewed the wildlife there that changed on a monthly basis, especially the migrating birds.  Sloughs are estuaries that extend far inland and connect ocean water and fresh water.

The French government sent a few cases of Beaujolais Nouveau over at release time, too.  Club members gathered to quaff it with goat cheese, various nuts, and fresh fruit like figs and dried fruits like apricots and dates.  We would use this as a time to go through the French-language library that one member had in her house for winter reading.

In the winter months, the Alliance members would watch all the new film releases from the French government-subsidized cinema.  We watched classic French films, too, and would do round-robin analysis of the films.

Florence also practiced eating European style at Alliance restaurant outings.  We did not go to all of them, because many were at fancy restaurants that cost a lot for a family.  Florence was the only child in this group, too, which could make these outings boring.

So, we went to fun places where Florence held her fork in her left hand and her knife in her right hand and ate with French manners.  We told her she had to keep her hands on the table French-style, too.

The restaurants we went to included:

Monthly lunches held at an Alsatian restaurant and pastry shop.  Its dining room looked like a village square with a bubbling fountain in the middle of it.  We had quiches and soup or croissant sandwiches with soup here.

Quarterly lunches at a Parisian-style bistro for cassoulet, sweetbreads, magret de canard, onion soup, and steak frites.

Weekly croissant and baguette runs from a Paris-style bakery.

Frequent trips to a Big Sur restaurant with an all-window view on Bixby Bridge.  We liked the enchiladas verdes here.

Yearly trips to a Swiss restaurant for fondue.

Many trips to a Vietnamese restaurant for Pho, which was based on French pot-au-feu – Vietnam was part of the French colony of Indochina, and I wanted Florence to know about this country.  I did not know much about Vietnam myself and enjoyed learning about it.

One of the most memorable events we did with the Alliance was meet the Queen Mother of France, Marisol de la Tour d’Auvergne (House of Orléans).  She had sponsored publication of the book French America and was doing an author signing at the home of an Alliance member, who lived in Pebble Beach.

We mingled with everyone and when the crowd thinned out, I asked the Queen Mother if Florence could ask her some questions about theatre, since she loved doing musicals at her middle school at the Carmel Mission (Junipero Serra School).

“Of course,” she answered.

The French Queen Mother’s publicist was an English aristocrat, whose daughter was an actress in a West End Theatre in London.  She knew Florence’s etiquette teacher at the Carmel Mission, who was a retired etiquette advisor to Queen Elizabeth II. 

She smiled when Florence said, “Votre Altesse, may I ask you some questions about royal boxes at the theatre in France and England and some questions about comedic theatre in France and England?”

I had prompted Florence on the questions and slipped away to mingle.  Florence spent an hour with the queen.  When Florence came back to me, she was laughing and said, “The Queen of France says it is darling I have learned to play the recorder, triangle, glockenspiel, xylophone, and cymbals in music class at school.”

“More like training to be a Pied Piper of Hamelin,” I said.  I noticed the Queen Mother of France did not believe in Salic Law, which gives male relatives only the right to inherit thrones in France.

Before leaving, we shook everyone’s hand and told them how much we had enjoyed the evening.  We promised we would all read French America as soon as we could. 

I just smiled that they did have all the information in there on Charleston, South Carolina with its Huguenot Cathedral and Louisville, Kentucky with its thoroughbred horses, bourbon, estates on hills, fine dining tradition, the Derby, mint juleps (colonial drink obviously), and refined church architecture.

(There are two books I would recommend for people who are interested in developing their language skills for work in the US Diplomatic Corps.  They are somewhat dated, but still provide insider information: The Complete FSOT (Foreign Service Officer Test Study Guide including complete coverage of the FSO Selection Process by Robert Clark and Inside a U.S. Embassy: Diplomacy by Shawn Dorman.)

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

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Learning about the Ohlone Native American Culture on California's Central Coast with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning about the Ohlone Native American Culture (Monterey and San Benito  Counties in California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget and Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When my daughter Florence began her studies at the Waldorf Charter School in Pacific Grove, California, the students were studying the culture of the Ohlone Native Americans.

The Ohlone live on California’s Central Coast from Big Sur up to San Francisco.  (The Ohlone are also called Costanoan further down the coast by Carmel and Big Sur.)

The children were weaving baskets as an art project.  Parents were asked to help their children complete this art project at home, because basket weaving is very hard to do.

The thin branches you need to weave are straight and stiff.  You have to gently bend the branches until they are pliable enough to be woven in and out and be pushed down around a central knot.  I thought this was a cute craft and put it up as artwork on my office wall for years.

Florence learned in school that the Ohlone cooked with tightly woven baskets by placing rocks that had been heated in fire in baskets full of water.  The Ohlone also placed baskets on their baskets on their backs to pick berries and gather nuts, seafood such as oysters and crab, and birds’ eggs.

When we drove home, I told Florence that this kind of food collection was called foraging.

“Foraging is not as reliable as farming as a way to obtain food,” I told Florence.

“If the weather is bad, for example, the supply of berries and nuts might disappear,” I explained to Florence.

“That vegetable garden your school has is not an example of foraging.  You plant seeds in it, and if you have enough water and sunlight, you can have a pretty sure supply of food,” I said.  We had personal chefs in the school, who used vegetables from this garden to make the children vegetable soup and bread on Wednesdays.

The children continued learning about the Ohlone by going on a weeklong camping trip to Point Reyes and the Tomales Bay outside San Francisco.

There are many species of wildlife there, but the children spent most of their time hiking among the wildflowers. Their teacher showed them which of the wildflowers could be eaten.

I knew there were several things Florence and I could visit in Monterey County and San Benito County about the Ohlone after reading The Ohlone Way: Indian Life in the San Francisco – Monterey Bay by Malcolm Margolin.

It is hard to arrange field trips for an entire class, which is why we took the big class trips together, but went on smaller trips with just our family.

The first place we went in Monterey County was the Elkhorn Slough.  Sloughs are almost as endangered as the wildlife they harbor.  Sloughs connect ocean water with fresh water and extend far inland.

Elkhorn Slough has hiking trails, kayaking, and sightseeing boats.  It is home to egrets, sea otters, crab, fish, and hundreds of birds, which fly south over Elkhorn Slough in winter.  Other birds nest in the Slough and have nest high up in the trees.

There are several hiking trails in Elkhorn Slough.  The first time we went there, I took my family to see the Ohlone Middens (graves), which face the sea and are inaccessible.

The Ohlone descendents refuse to have the graves opened or moved to a museum.  Most people do not know what they are, so they remain unmolested.  Florence loved learning a Monterey secret that she could not tell anyone else.  The Elkhorn Slough itself represents the ecosystem that the Ohlone had to use for food.

The second place we went to for an understanding of Ohlone history was the Carmel Mission by our home. I told Florence that the Spanish founded the California Missions, which go all along the California coastline.

They are supposed be one day’s walk away from one another and usually grew wine and vegetables.  I told Florence that the Ohlone continued foraging and hunting, but worked on Spanish lands at the missions as well.

From Carmel Mission, we spent about 50 minutes going north to the mission at San Juan Bautista.  I told Florence that the Ohlone worked on Spanish mission lands here, too.

The interesting thing about the San Juan Bautista Mission is that it runs along the San Andreas Fault, which is why it has had to be rebuilt a few times.  We walked along the San Andreas Fault path to the cemetery outside town.

One side of the fault is twelve feet high and the other side sits below it.  I told Florence that if there were an earthquake that we would be down in the brush below quickly.  She started flailing her arms and screaming, “Earthquake!!”

“Run for cover!” I shouted, and we both tore down the path to the cemetery.

When we reached the cemetery, I told her that Anne-Marie Sayers, who maintains the Ohlone tribal lands, said many Ohlone Native Americans took Spanish names to avoid discrimination in Spanish America.

I told Florence that many of the graves we saw contained the remains of Ohlone not Spanish people.  The Ohlone were choosing to reveal their ancestry at this point in history, because people in California had become more accepting of people of different ethnicities.

A few years later when I was working as a freelance writer for the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 200,000), I covered an Ohlone storytelling festival.

My family went twice to the Ohlone Tribal Lands and checked out the sweat lodges and sacred waterfalls.

We learned that Coyote is the trickster character in Ohlone myth and resembles Anansi the Spider in African mythology.

Coyote causes trouble, but the tribal elders eventually convince him to come back to the village and have fun in the community.

I thought this was a very good tale for California, because almost all of our tribal elders have been coyotes in their youth.

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

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Introducing Northern and Southern Chinese Food to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Introducing Northern and Southern Chinese Food to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget



My sister worked as a waitress at the Ho-Ho Inn, a Chinese restaurant on Cass Street in Detroit.  She sat a plate of Egg Foo Yung in front of five-year-old me.

I had a way with words and quickly renamed this Egg Foo “Yuck.”  Tears ran down my cheeks as I thought about eating this worm-like mess of food.

The Chinese waiter called George came in and looked at me.  He took the Egg Foo “Yuck” and threw it in the garbage.  Then, he went to the freezer and brought me one of those ice cream treats that Chinese restaurants serve; a coconut-flavored outer shell of ice cream surrounding a mango core.

My sister came in and glared at me.  George said, “She ate everything, so I gave her an ice cream.”  I smiled sweetly at George.  My love for the Chinese, if not their food, began at that instant.

When I was fifteen, I raised $42,000 with 21 other young people to visit the People’s Republic of China in 1979.  We wanted to see how a “developing” country was able to provide a stellar education to its students in addition to visiting the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. 

I dreaded the culinary side of our trip and packed 100 antacid tablets in my suitcase.

I did not like pork, China’s staple meat.  I was suspicious of all seafood except shrimp.  I impolitely took half of the serving plate full of sweet and sour shrimp when that appeared on the table.

My tour mates curbed this piggy behavior by telling me the shrimp were cat, rat, or dog meat.  I subsisted on rice and soup broth for two weeks.  I left unknown soup ingredients in my bowl.  I cringe now when I think of wasting food in a country that still had a collective memory of famine.

At lunch on a commune outside Shanghai, our grandmotherly-looking tour guide with a round face, gray hair, and a body made rotund by swaddling in layers of clothing topped off by a blue Mao jacket asked me if I would like some pork.

“No, thank you, Ms. Woo-Ching,” I politely responded.

Ms. Woo-Ching placed a large serving of pork on my plate.

“Would you like some soup?” she asked.

I politely refused again.

She smiled and ladled out some wonton soup into a bowl, which she placed in front of me.

I, “the foreign devil,” recognized a lost battle.

“I’ll try a little of everything,” I said and watched in horror as something hot, white, and topped off with pork was placed in front of me.

The white stuff was bean curd.  I tried it and loved it.

“Ms. Woo-Ching, please tell the farmworkers that Chinese food is delicious,” I said.

In college, my friends and I went to hole-in-the-wall restaurants in Chicago’s China Town where daily specials were written in Chinese characters on chalkboards.

I was in third-year Japanese at the University of Chicago and could read characters.  I was able to order the daily specials, because I could read characters.  For 1/3 the price, we ate the food served in restaurants with red vinyl seat cushions and lanterns with tassels.

During senior year, I worked for a translation company that was also the U.S. advertising representative for several Chinese newspapers including the People’s Daily.  I was a salesman and sold sponsorships and handled all the public relations for the first Super Bowl broadcast in China the year the Chicago Bears won the Super Bowl.

Every time we signed a contract, we would go to a banquet, sometimes two, at the House of Hunan or Szechuan House in downtown Chicago to celebrate.  Years later when I read the Time-Life Foods of the World book on China, I realized that I had consumed a lot of shark fin soup, which is a traditional celebratory dish.

By the time I finished college, I thought to myself, “How could I have disliked Chinese food?”

When I was 31 and living in Wisconsin, I bought a wok and Kenneth Lo’s Encyclopedia of Chinese Cooking at a garage sale.  I cleaned and re-seasoned the wok into working condition.  The cookbook listed 40 different cooking techniques and said that this was “just an abbreviated list.”

I had to relearn how to chop vegetables for these different cooking techniques.  One chopping pattern resembles a trapezoid.  I never thought I would see one of those again after taking the Scholastic Aptitude Test to get into college.

To cook Chinese food you have to supply your pantry with things like dry mushrooms, oyster sauce, soy sauce, glass noodles, rice wine, ginger root, garlic, and dehydrated shrimp.

I tried several dishes, but my family had its favorites: Cantonese rice (fried rice with eggs, chopped pork, shrimp, carrots, peas, and scallions – a kind of Chinese hash), egg drop soup, and stir-fried beef in oyster sauce.

I taught Florence how to use Chinese chopsticks, which are square-bottomed at the end and long versus Japanese chopsticks, which are pointy at the end and shorter than Chinese chopsticks.

When Florence was a little older, I showed her China on the map and said, “Rice grows in the south of China where it’s hot and rainy in summer.”

I pointed to the north of China and said, “The Chinese grow wheat for noodles and dumplings here.”

I showed Florence how to stir-fry bok choy and hope she’ll visit China one day without antacid in her suitcase.

Later when I worked as a restaurant critic for the Monterey County Weekly newspaper (Circulation 200,000).  I reviewed Chef Lee’s, which has been in Monterey for two decades.

I was in charge of a banquet now and had to do the ordering and seating arrangements.  The menu follows:

-San San Soup – egg drop soup with scallops and shrimp

-Walnut shrimp

-Chef Lee’s Special Lamb

-Mongolian Beef

-Mandarin Fried Chicken

-Tsing Tao Beers

I was surprised to see lamb on Chef Lee’s menu, but after reading Nina Simonds Classic Chinese Cuisine, I learned that China’s northern regions have a large Muslim population.  Muslims do not eat pork and prefer lamb.

After our meal, we drank jasmine tea just like you are supposed to do.

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

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Introducing Wine Culture and Business in Napa Valley (CA) to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Introducing Wine Culture and Business in Napa Valley (CA) to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

One of my family’s favorite places to go during summer when my daughter Florence was young was Napa Valley outside San Francisco.

Little Florence was not going drink wine, but I wanted her to know about wine culture, since it is important to California’s economy.

We had three destinations on our usual Napa itinerary – Sattui Winery, the Robert Mondavi Winery, and Trader Joe’s to buy wine.

Sattui Winery has been a San Francisco secret for decades, because they have a market with items such as terrines, pâtés, baguettes, French cheese, salami, mesclun salads, and made-to-order sandwiches in addition to Italian soda, French soda, and wine. 

You can eat on the premises at picnic tables or benches.  Sometimes bands play.  Children can always play here, making this a nice outing for children.

You used to be able to do wine tastings for free, but now that their wines have won several awards, and the winery is a stop on the Napa wine train, you have to pay for tastings.

There are some things to do after eating.  We would always walk around the vineyard with Florence.

“These stone buildings look like the ones you can see in Tuscany, Italy or Languedoc, France.  Daddy and I saw wineries like this one when we were on our honeymoon in Italy, France, and Spain,” I said.

We walked by the edges of the vineyards where I told Florence, “Never pick the grapes in a vineyard to eat.  That’s a huge no-no.”

Laurent laughed and said, “The vineyard owners might come after you with hunting dogs for eating grapes in the vineyard.”

“That’s not funny,” Florence said.

“It’s vineyard etiquette,” I said.  “You might get yelled at in French and chased with a pitchfork, if they don’t have the dogs out,” I said, continuing my vineyard etiquette lesson.

After inspecting the vineyards, we would cross the street and go to the Dean & Deluca brick-and-mortar store to get some Le Perroquet brown sugar cubes for tea.

We would always inspect the cheese section.  Barcelona and the Catalan region of Spain surrounding Barcelona were very fashionable when Florence was growing up, so we would get a Catalan cheese like Garrotxa to eat.

When I bought that, Florence called it, “The gross cheese.”

We have started eating at Tarla’s in downtown Napa now that Florence is older, but Sattui’s is still a nice place to go with younger children.

The next stop on our Napa wine tour was usually the Robert Mondavi Winery.  The winery is white and towering with lots of arches – perfect for fashion photos.

The tasting bar is full of San Francisco’s upwardly mobile professionals, who describe the wine they taste as “dancing on the tongue” and “having a luscious bouquet.”

Mondavi was a genius at marketing; all Napa wines are excellent, but he created cachet.  I just liked to see how he placed wine glasses, wine buckets, corkscrews, and towels together with wine carriers for al fresco dining.  I asked Florence what she liked on the table in the era of marketing to children.

“The glasses with the picture,” she said, referring to an etched glass with the Mondavi logo.  I knew from my work in marketing research that children like logos and being associated with prestige brands.  Florence’s remark just confirmed every kid’s love for designer anything I thought.

I looked at some of the winery’s more high-end merchandising, which featured a flowing Hermes-like scarf surrounded with bracelets and earrings.

“A lot of people get dressed up to drink wine,” I said to Florence.

“When are some of the times people get dressed up to drink wine?” I asked Florence.

“Weddings, baptisms, Christmas, Easter, birthday parties, and Sunday lunch,” Florence responded.

“It’s better for your liver to limit wine to those occasions,” I said to Florence.

On the way home, we would stop at Trader Joe’s to go wine shopping.  They had wines from all around the world on sale, but I would head to the Italian wine section.

I always bought some Barolos from the Piedmont region, which is considered Italy’s best red wine.  I would also get some Amarone wines from the Veneto region outside Venice.

We would also scout the shelves for some bottles of Grgich, one of the winners in the 1976 Paris Tasting that pitted Napa wines against French ones.  When Napa wines won, the Napa region became world famous.

By the time we bought the wine, we were sun-burnt and ready to go home with our Napa Valley booty.

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

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Enjoying Parisian Brunches at Cafe de la Presse in San Francisco (CA) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Enjoying Parisian Brunches at Cafe de la Presse in San Francisco (California) with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

When Florence was young, my husband Laurent and I would take her to the Café de la Presse in San Francisco.

I would tell her that San Francisco is very Parisian for its literary scene like author talks at the City Lights Bookstore, museums, symphony, plays and musicals, and restaurants like Café de la Presse.

The Café de la Presse is jokingly called the “cantine” by French consulate employees.  (“Canteen”, meaning “lunchroom” in English).  The restaurant is famous for great daily specials that cost about $30 for a 3-course meal to fit the consulate employees’ per diem for food expenses.  On the weekend, the prices go up.

There is a huge parking garage by Café de la Presse, because it is located across the street from the main entrance to China Town.

You have to make reservations to eat in the lower level restaurant.  The upper level has a coffee bar, pastries, and magazines from the UK, US, France, and Italy.  You always arrive early to get some press to read.

We picked out our orders quickly and then looked like the Parisians that the Russian poet Marina Tsvetaeva describes in her poems as only having eyebrows and foreheads visible behind their newspapers.

I would always buy Corriere della Sera newspaper from Milan, Italy to read.  The Italians know all the dirt and publish it first.  I have been able to read Italian at a high level for a long time.  

I smirked as I read this newspaper, because I knew the copies had been ordered for the Consul General.  I guess he would have to go to San Francisco’s North Beach Italian neighborhood for newspapers and pre-press gossip.

My family follows the Mediterranean Diet; it is easy to do in California.  I used the plan set out by the Oldways Preservation Trust and checked it out with a doctor before we started following it.  We came to Café de la Presse to get a once-a-month meal of fine steak.

The Med Diet Oldways describes is traditional only for the last 500 years, because American foods such as tomatoes, potatoes, peppers, and green beans have only been present in the Mediterranean diet since Columbus and subsequent explorers of the New World brought them back to Europe.

Every trip to Café de la Presse would come with a mini-nutrition lecture from mom, “Your main meal of the day should have a protein-carbohydrate-vegetable mix with the vegetable and carbohydrate forming an additional protein, if possible.  Calcium comes in the form of milk, cheese, and/or yogurt,” I said.

“What does protein do?” Florence would ask.

“It’s important for your hair.  If you want thick hair, you need to eat it,” I said.

“Why is calcium important?” Florence asked.

“Calcium builds strong bones,” I said.

I added, “Orange vegetables like carrots and butternut squash have vitamin A, which is important for vision.  Your generation really needs that for all the work you do on computers.  Spinach has iron for blood and muscles.  Cabbage and mushrooms both help with constipation.”

Laurent asked, “What are protein combinations?” with Gallic concern.

“Vegetarians combine the amino acids in plant items to get what you would in meat.  We eat these all the time – stuff like turmeric rice with peas, beans and rice, bean and vegetable soups with quinoa flour mixed in.  Sometimes I add chickpea flour, which has a lot of iron in it to soups and powdered milk for calcium as well,” I said.

“I know you make up menus for the week, but do you really have a plan for doing this?” Laurent asked.

“I do.  

Monday through Thursday, we eat things like omelets, pasta with Alfredo sauce, soup, and potato dishes and casseroles.

On Fridays, we eat fish and oven-baked potatoes.

On Saturdays, we eat chicken or pork.

On Sunday, we eat shrimp or scallops three times a month.  Once a month we eat red meat.

We’re not starving on this diet.  We’ve been eating this way for twenty years.  (Make that 30 years as of 2017),” I said.

After lunch, we would usually take a walk in China Town and buy Chinese music, postcards, and chopstick holders.

Walking is important to the Med Diet, too, I like to think.  

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books