Learning Spanish in a Conversation Club by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Learning Spanish in a Conversation Club by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I can do sales presentation in Spanish, answer questions in Spanish, ask for information in Spanish, and understand what I am told in Spanish, because I attended tertulías, or Spanish-language cocktail hours when I lived in Madison, Wisconsin.

Spanish tertulías are organized by the Cervantes Institute, a branch of the Spanish government and by Spanish universities in Spain to help promote the Spanish language, culture, food, beverages, fashion, and tourism in Spain.

Other European governments organize language promotion societies as well such as the Goethe Institute, Alliance Française, the Italian Cultural Institute, and various Greek organizations such as the Sons of Pericles and Maids of Athena.

Madison had a very good Cervantes Institute due to their strong Spanish-language program.  I was invited to these tertulías, because I organized French-language outings and parties for the Alliance.  I gave the Cervantes Institute ideas for programming.

I was learning Spanish on my own and loved having the chance to practice the language.  The University of Wisconsin – Madison had language dorms.  So, their Spanish speakers were quite good.  (Stanford University also has foreign-language dorms.)

The tertulías were held in various bars around Madison where we could buy tapas, Spanish appetizers, and chilled Tío Pépé sherry.  Most of the appetizers you find recipes for in The Food and Wines of Spain by Penelope Casas.

While we spoke in Spanish about local politics, the tertulía members’ time spent in Spanish classes in the US and Spain, and the best places to vacation in Spain, we sampled tapas, or appetizers, such as the following:

-egg quarters, folds of Serrano ham, and an olive on a toothpick

-mussels with garlicky mayonnaise

-toasted bread with tomato and garlic rubbed on it

-gazpacho shots

-bowls of white, almond gazpacho

-various kinds of paellas with mushrooms, mussels, shrimp, chicken, or rabbit

-San Isidro salad with ventresca tuna

-pickled peppers

-garlic shrimp

-red sangria

-white sangria

I was completely sold on the food.  I bought several cookbooks by Penelope Casas and have made Spanish food for more than thirty years now at home.  I think the Spanish Bourbons ate the food in Casas’ books, which was taken over by the Francoists.  Like the French Bourbons, the Spanish Bourbons also come from the Pyrenees Mountains between France and Spain.  The food in these two regions is similar.

I thanked the tertulía for my Spanish-speaking skills when I left Madison.  I have never studied Spanish in school except for one quarter in junior high school.  I can read Spanish with no problem, too, because I have read Spanish-language books and magazines for about twenty years. 

I think the Spanish government has promoted their language and culture in a most cost-effective method.  The Cervantes Institute uses bars where cocktail invitees buy food and drink from the restaurant.  They probably wanted me to buy many ready-made products at the grocery store, but I have gained a great cultural asset with learning to cook Spanish food as well as speak and read the language.

I am Mission Accomplished with my own Spanish personal goals.  I have even traveled to Barcelona, Pamplona, St. Sebastian, Figueras, and Puigcerda in Spain.

(For people who are interested in developing their language skills for work in the US Diplomatic Corps, I would recommend two books: 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 at Work by Shawn Dorman.)

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

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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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

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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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