Introducing Japanese Culture to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Introducing Japanese Culture to Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

When I was the Youth Services Librarian for Monterey County California, I organized workshops around the County to introduce young teens to introduce young teens to Japanese culture.  Monterey County is the size of New Hampshire and Vermont put together. 

I drove a lot from Big Sur to Pajaro (the farmworker side of Watsonville, the organic strawberry capital of the United States).  All of my Hispanic colleagues at the library told me that they wanted more programming about cultures besides their own.  They wanted me to come to Salinas Valley festivals and do library outreach, of course, but they loved it when the Chinese magician-acrobat who performed at summer reading also told them about the traditions of the Shanghai Circus.

The publishing world had recently described young teens (middle schoolers) as tweens due to their developmental needs (i.e. junior versions of graphic novels, manga, and manwha – Korean graphic novels).

I went to Jo-Ann Fabrics in Monterey (CA) and bought some gaily-patterned origami paper to make little farmers with triangular hats, sofas and samurai hats.  All of these items are part of Japanese culture.  The book I used was written in Japanese, but had illustrations, so I could still make the origami.

Florence already knew how to do origami from her Japanese class at the Waldorf Charter School she attended as a young girl.  In her Japanese class, the children learned Japanese songs, dances, listened to haiku poems in Japanese, wrote haiku poems in English, did calligraphy with Japanese ink and rice paper, and learned ikebana (flower arranging).

I had some qualifications to teach these workshops on Japanese culture as well.  I had lived in Japan as an exchange student with the Youth for Understanding program on a scholarship from Chrysler Corporation.  I wrote a young adult book about this experience called Eating Soup with Chopsticks that is available on Amazon Kindle (the print version by iUniverse was taken out-of-print by the author).

My family hosted exchange students from Japan, Belgium, and Spain through Youth for Understanding, Sister Cities, and People-to-People International for long- and short-term stays.  I also helped Japanese nurses, who were studying at Wayne State University, learn English through People-to-People. 

I learned all about Mexico and Latin America at programs with speakers at Wayne State University as part of my political science requirements for high school at Cass Tech in Detroit. (Our government teacher said, “Anything with a budget is political science.”)  So, I went to every political science meeting held at Wayne State University with permission from my school principal and wrote up what was happening in the world.  

I had Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Bolivian, Greek, Hungarian, and African-American friends who invited me into their homes for home dance parties and sweet sixteen parties.  Detroit is also like Chicago in that every nationality of the world has restaurants and bars in their “ethnic’ neighborhood there.  They all cater weddings, baptisms, and other special events.

When I went to the University of Chicago for college, I studied East Asian Studies, which allowed me to study Buddhist art, the Japanese language, East Asian history (China and Japan), and study art of the West at the same time.

I did several activities while I worked at Ernst and Young to help me build my skill base.  I helped build the telephone list of potential donors to call for the First Japan Festival in Chicago that staffers at JETRO (Japan External Trade Organizations) could contact for funding.  I lived across the street from where I worked and would go home to Marina City for lunch to fundraiser.  

I put together my telephone list and would meet with the Number-2 in charge at JETRO about twice a week to give her the list of names with phone numbers and addresses of people I had found.  (You can do a lot in downtown Chicago, if you are strong enough to walk in all weather situations.)

Another volunteer project I did was to help publicize the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program in the program’s first year by doing presentations throughout downtown Chicago, including at Youth for Understanding Returnee workshops run by returnees and program volunteers.  I made several friends at these returnee workshops, who remain my friends today.

I also showed the tweens at the Japanese culture workshops images of the Tokaido Road between Kyoto and Edo (modern-day Tokyo) that the Japanese painter Utagawa Hiroshige painted.  I used information from the book How to Look at Japanese Art by Stephen Addiss to structure my discussion.

I showed Monterey County children books about Chinese landscape painting, so they could compare Japanese and Chinese art as well.  We looked at some Japanese manga (cartoons) and anime (cartoons using the techniques of film on paper) to see how the Japanese artists Hiroshige and Hokusai influenced Japanese manga techniques..

I had some library books about Japanese gardens (notably Kumamoto in Kyushu and Ryoan-ji in Kyoto), ikebana flower arranging, kimono books, and the Japanese tea ceremony that I showed the tweens, too.

We had a ton of art books that showed children how to draw manga and other art projects.  I ordered an art school of nonfiction books for these talented children and made sure they all knew how to get the books from other branches through online ordering.  (There was a music school of “how-to” books in the Monterey Country Free Libraries that I bought for the kids, too.)

The artist Jose Ortiz, who painted Chicano murals in Salinas and has exhibited in museums, did drawing workshops for the Monterey County Library kids and teens as part of summer reading, too.

When Florence and I left these Japanese culture workshops, all the kids were drawing buildings in perspective it seemed.

There were also origami clubs in several of the branch libraries of the Monterey County Free Libraries.

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

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Sampling Mexican Cuisine in San Juan Bautista, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling Mexican Cuisine in San Juan Bautista by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Every feast of Saint John the Baptist on June 24^th or around it, my family and I would go out to San Juan Bautista for lunch at Les Jardines Restaurant.

The first thing you have to know about driving in San Juan Bautista is that roosters strut around the town and in all the roads.  They are pets.  They will never be coq au vin.

Their owners do watch over them, but you are in the roosters’ town, and you must slow down for the roosters and kids.  That is driving etiquette for adults.

There are actually three restaurants that I like in San Juan Bautista: Dona Esther, Les Jardines, and a Basque restaurant that has changed names over the years depending on which family member owns it at the time.

We usually went to Dona Esther when Florence was little, because children, parents, and grandparents usually eat there.  There is a lot of good, warm food; wandering mariachi bands on Sunday; and children can practice their “nice manners” here.  Children at Dona Esther do not play video games.  They talk with their families and learn how to speak with people of all ages, including grandparents.

Les Jardines is a more adult affair, which makes Tex-Mex food, but serves it European style.  I like Les Jardines, because I can get menudo soup everyday of the week here instead of just on Sunday like I do at El Rancho in Marina, California.

Menudo is a Mexican tripe soup with spicy chicken-tomato-pepper broth.  It comes steaming hot with dry parsley and a lime-like citrus fruit from Mexico called a citron.

You squeeze the citron juice into the menudo and put parsley in it.  Menudo is supposed to be a cure for hangovers, but I just like the flavors.  There are a lot of nutrients in this soup and something like zero calories.

For people who are squeamish about eating tripe, they should remember that one of the specialties of French cuisine is tripe a la Caen.  The French travel to that city to specifically eat this dish, buy Calvados (apple brandy), and visit the tomb of William the Conqueror.

Laurent usually orders a carne-asada platter (thin-cut, grilled steak), which arrives with a mound of stewed, black beans, sour cream, torn iceberg lettuce with California black olives; Spanish rice; and soft, corn tortillas.

Les Jardines does not stint on the soft, corn tortillas.  You get about six to make carne asada meat into a quesadilla-like fold over full of the ingredients that I just mentioned.

I like cheese or chicken enchiladas with chile verde sauce made from tomatillos (Mexican green tomatoes) and various green peppers.  The chile verde sauce can probably be made spicier upon request.  Peppers contain Vitamin C, which is good for fighting colds.  I especially like somewhat spicy peppers, because they help clean your sinuses, which fights colds, too.

I like refried beans, Spanish rice, and shredded lettuce with California black olives and a dollop of sour cream on top along with Spanish rice.  European olives are lovely, but many people do not like how salty they are.  California olives do not clash with the salsa flavor wise either.  I also like promoting American agricultural products and not putting Americans out of work.

Chipotle knows people in the suburbs like this, too.  That is why McDonalds created this chain for people, who are afraid of going into inner-cities for food.

When I go to Les Jardines, I always get Negra Modelo amber beer.  It has a flavor like light molasses, but is not as strong as Guiness.

And, you must get flan at Les Jardines for dessert that floats in a pool of warm, caramel sauce.

After dinner, we would walk around the garden and look at all the cactus plants.  They had several ducks in the garden behind chicken wire that would quack at the roosters, who could roam freely.  Florence would quack at the ducks and chase the roosters away from the “cute” ducks.

Florence knew all about Saint John the Baptist from Catholic School Bible classes.

I told her that many people in France had the tradition of jumping over a bonfire to celebrate Saint John’s Day.

“That is an unsafe and stupid tradition.  Do not do it, even if it is said to be very authentic by the French.  You can shove someone into a fire very easily, if they are jumping over it,” I said.

“Mom’s word of wisdom for the day,” Florence remarked and laughed.

I always tried to think up a didactic lesson for an after-dinner lagniappe in San Juan Bautista. 

Laurent ate mints and tried to look like Hitchcock.  (A major scene from Psycho  was filmed at the Mission in San Juan Bautista.)

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

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Making Moroccan Cuisine by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making Moroccan Cuisine by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sitting in my Parisian kitchen when Florence was a baby I sipped a Lavazza coffee, I thought of how bored I was with French food seasoned with thyme, bay leaf, and parsley for seasoning – this flavor combo is called bouquet garni.  French grocery stores sell the herbs in mesh bags, so you can easily put it in soup for flavoring.

I thought the dishes listed on Moroccan menus outside restaurant doors in Paris looked good, but Laurent always said the restaurants were too expensive.

I think he wanted me to learn how to cook.  I had some cookbooks in my bookshelves and used Mediterranean Cookery by Claudia Roden to cook Moroccan food.

I perused the pages of Roden’s book and learned about the traditional utensils and finally discovered that the clay pot with a high triangular lid in markets was called a tagine.

Moroccans prepared stews in tagine pots and called the stews, tagines, too.  You have fewer vocabulary words to remember, if a language is structured this way.

I made two tagines.  The first one was called tagine bel hout (fish tagine with tomatoes) and the second was a tagine made with chicken and vegetables.

I used a Moroccan preserved lemon in salt to make a Moroccan, baked fish dish made with lemony, flavored cilantro.  You can buy preserved lemons at the Super Market in France.  Preserved lemons in glass jars give North Africans in France jobs, so I bought them.

To make Moroccan baked fish, I boiled and peeled tomatoes and cut them in thick slices with olive oil all over the bottom of a pan.

I put chopped garlic, cilantro, and a little cayenne with oil between the cod fillets and put them on top of the tomatoes.  More tomatoes went on top of the fish.  Slices of preserved lemon went around the edges.  I baked the dish for 45 minutes after doing all the preparation work.

Laurent does not like preserved lemon, so I retained the technique without that particular ingredient.  I modified this dish when I lived in Stuttgart, Germany to go with the local ingredients of that country.

In Germany, I would place chopped onions on the bottom of a round, baking dish along with dry garlic flakes.  Then, I would place frozen, white or salmon fish fillets on top of the onions.  I placed sliced and peeled potatoes and put them around the edges of the fish.

This looks like a flower.  I put about ¾ cup of olive oil over all of it with some salt.  I covered the dish with a baking lid and baked the fish for one hour in a 500 degree Fahrenheit oven.  My Italian neighbors got the recipe before I left Germany.  I love knowing I started a trend with Calabrians around my building in Stuttgart.

Another Moroccan dish I showed my daughter Florence how to make when I was studying French children’s literature and francophone children’s culture at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin was Moroccan tangerine and walnut salad.  I used a recipe for this dish from Paula Wolfert’s Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfert.

The recipe had an exotic name, Shlada Bellecheen.  Basically, you thoroughly clean iceberg lettuce and crisp it in the refrigerator.

When the lettuce is chilled and crisp, you tear it up into bite-sized pieces and spread it out over a platter.  Then, you spread chopped walnuts over the lettuce.  The tangerine sections go around the edges of the plate.  The dressing was simple: lemon, orange-blossom water, and a little sugar.

Our family would eat this once a year on the holidays and put it in a cut blue-and-yellow fish-shaped plate on Thanksgiving.

When my francophone culture class at Edgewood College asked us to do a children’s culture project, I took in this salad as my project.

I told my classmates, “Royal women in Morocco cooked for their families to ensure religious purity.  What that really means is that they wanted to make sure their families were not poisoned.”

The young women in my class laughed.  They already spoke Spanish and had learned to speak French fluently in our French-only class.  They were all going to be French teachers for middle-school and high-school students in Wisconsin.

I also shared with them some more information about the salad, “In Detroit, we say that nuts are meat.  If you combine them with tangerines, which have an ovary around seeds, you are pretty close to having a full-protein according to Madhur Jaffrey’s World Vegetarian.

Children like this salad, because of the tangerines and sugar, but you should limit serving it to once a year due to the sugar.  You can certainly adjust the level of sugar you use.

Florence initially did not like this salad, but I think she takes it to work now sometimes.

I have some book recommendations for Moroccan food and general books on the Mediterranean below:

-Couscous and other Good Food from Morocco by Paula Wolfer

-Traditional Moroccan Cooking: Recipes from Fez by Madame Guinaudeau

The following books contain some information on Moroccan food:

-Little Foods of the Mediterranean: 500 Fabulous Recipes for Antipasti, Tapas, Hors d’oeuvre, Meze, and More by Clifford A. Wright

-A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden

-Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden

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

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Making Turkish Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making Turkish Food with Juilliard Graduate Florence Paget with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I was hired as an art and restaurant critic by the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 100,000) based on the work I had done in my memoirs writing class with Beat poet David Gitin at Monterey Peninsula College in Monterey, California.  (“Just send in some college art history papers and the work you have done for me to the paper and call them,” he said.)

The first assignment I worked on for the Weekly was for the Turkish Festival held on the Monterey Wharf.  I took Florence with me to Border’s to hear the Turkish singers and band that was going to appear play the café at the bookstore.  We also met the artist who would be doing the ebru paper marbling at the Festival.

When I studied French children’s literature and francophone children’s culture at Edgewood College in Madison, Wisconsin, I had to study children’s culture of a francophone society as a class assignment.

I already knew much about the Vietnamese, who are a minority in France along with “White Russians” and Algerians.  The white Russians are aristocrats, who have fled the Soviet Union and Russia over the decades for political oppression.  The French were the colonizers of Vietnam and the rest of what was called “Indochina.” 

They fought in Vietnam before the Americans took over.  I also studied Khmer art by going to the Guimet Museum in Paris often when I lived there and going to exhibits on my “Louvre Supporter Card” that got me into all the museums of Paris for free.

Indochina was made up of today’s Vietnam, Cambodia, Thailand, and Myanmar (former Burma). 

I had to give the Weekly this information to cover art openings in Carmel.  (There really are Monet paintings in bank vaults in our dinky Monterey Peninsula.)  I studied East Asian civilization, art history, and the languages of China, Japan, and Korea at the University of Chicago as well.  I obtained official transcripts for them from the University before I was allowed to be a “young mom” art critic.

I studied the culture of Islam for children from the perspective of religious ceremonies and food.  I took Florence out to discover Islamic children’s culture with me in Madison at a Turkish restaurant downtown called Husnus.

I had read about Turkish food in a cookbook before going out with Florence.  I ordered cheese and spinach borek for us.  These are triangular folds of phyllo dough baked in butter.

I told Florence that cheese has calcium in it that was good for building strong bones.  I picked up the spinach borek and told her that spinach has iron in it for making your blood strong. 

“The spinach borek is also made with onions sautéed in butter.  Onions help prevent colds,” I said.  All these sayings are a southern gardener’s drug store wisdom that has to be verified, of course, with your nutritionist, but I rarely catch colds. 

(Note:  The only time I caught colds was when I worked with the children of farmworkers and their parents in Monterey County.  Many of the Oaxacan workers form southern Mexico in the County come from a tropical climate.  They are not vaccinated in Mexico nor in the US.  I was sick several times, because of this, but was able to get over the infections.)

After the meze (appetizers), I ordered hummus and baba ghanoush for Florence and me with warm pita bread.  Both of these items were almost unheard of at the time.  Hummus is a chickpea puree made with a liquid-type of sesame seed butter, lemon juice, and garlic. 

You are only supposed to eat a little hummus at a time, because it is an appetizer.  If you make a meal of it, you can get fat quickly.  Hummus is incredibly inexpensive to make at home, but it takes time to make at home as the only good homemade hummus is made from scratch with dry beans.

Baba ghanoush is my favorite puree spread.  It is a pain to make at home.  It takes about 6 – 8 eggplants to get a small bowl of this spread made.  Basically, you roast the eggplants, add the liquid-type sesame seed butter, lemon juice, and garlic.

Turkish tabbouleh (parsley and bulgar wheat salad with lemon juice and olive oil) is made with more bulgar wheat than parsley unlike the Lebanese and Syrian versions that I ate growing up in Detroit, Michigan.

I told Florence, “I prefer buying the tabbouleh made at Magic Mill Market in town, because it is made with quinoa, which is a full-protein.  Quinoa comes from Bolivia and Peru.  These are two countries in Latin America high in the mountains.”

(Quinoa is now grown in the US in Colorado and in the Canadian Rockies.)

I told Florence what I knew about protein-combinations at the time and why this food was very good for building muscle and keeping you from catching colds.  I had studied vegetarianism while perusing the shelves in the various libraries at the University of Chicago. 

I told Florence, “If you all you eat is banana-nut muffins, you can probably knock out a welter-weight Muhammad Ali.  And, they are a lot cheaper than steak.  I ate those all the time at the University of Chicago.”

Florence nibbled everything and said, “All this tastes okay.”

“Yes, and it is not expensive, and I can make everything here.  The Magic Mill Market carries all the ingredients and so does Whole Foods, which is opening a store here soon.  I can make all sorts of gourmet lunches and dinners with the ingredients in these two stores.  If we eat at home most of the time, we can afford to go to nice restaurants four or five times a month,” I said.

After our discussion, I ordered Turkish baklava for dessert, which is made with pistachios and honey rather than walnuts like the Greeks do it.

“Your daughter is the only American child, who has come in here,” the waiter said as he handed me a Turkish coffee at the end of the meal with a piece of loukum candy. 

He also gave Florence a box of loukum candy for behaving like a little lady and trying the Turkish food.

I paid the bill and wrapped Florence up in her scarf and hat and headed out into the windy, cold Wisconsin day on one of our many visits to Husnus when we lived in Madison.

On the way home, I told Florence, “It is important to know about Turkey.  Turkey was the head of what was once the Ottoman Empire that includes modern-day Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt, and other countries.  Many of the foods eaten in Turkey are the same as those eaten throughout the former Ottoman Empire.  Some regions use spicier ingredients, but that is the only difference.”

Florence already knew what the food of Turkey was like when I took the family to the Turkish Festival on the Wharf to write about it for the Monterey County Weekly (Circulation: 100,000).  I wrote the following article about one of the most educational Turkish Festivals ever to be held here.  (We had been to several before I wrote about them for the paper.)  I have done some editing for items in the article that are no longer relevant.:

“I’ll admit it.  The real reason I want to go to the Turkish Arts and Culture Festival this weekend besides falling into a trance as I listen to Sahin Gunsel sing Turkish love songs while he plays the oud; tapping my feet and clapping my hands as I watch folk dancers in brightly-colored costumes; and seeing what Turkish towns look like at the Orhan Coplu art exhibit among other Turkish delights; is to admire skill of the belly dancers. 

I love the sheer veils, sequined tops outlined with gold coins, finger cymbals, and sinuous movements of this art form that began as a ritual dance, representing childbirth in a region extending from Morocco to Turkey.

I feel no guilt about sampling Turkish food made by women who learn to cook without cookbooks and measure.  Amazingly, the chefs at the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, the hub of the 600-year-old Ottoman Empire, operated on the same principle.

An Ottoman chef threw out Empress Eurgenie’s French chef, who was seeking an eggplant puree recipe for his sovereign, because he arrived in the kitchens with paper and measures.

The Ottoman chef said, “”An Imperial chef cooks with his feelings, his eyes, his nose.!”

So, the French empress never ate Turkish food again unlike the fortunate souls who will attend the Turkish Festival this year.

Among the succulent menu offerings at the Festival are doner kebap, slices of ground lamb seasoned with garlic  that resemble Greek gyros and Levantine shwarma; adana kebap, ground lamb meatballs seasoned with garlic, onion, cumin, and red peppers, if the chef comes from southern Turkey; and borek – buttery phyllo crust-pie filled with creamy cheese and spinach.

Of course, there are dolmas, grape leaves stuffed with rice and seasoned with mint; musakka, baked slices of layered eggplant in tomato sauce; and kisir-cracked wheat salad with parsley, tomato, and onion with lemon-oil dressing.

Other Turkish delicacies to be sampled will be cucik, a yogurt and garlic sauce, which goes well with the doner kebap, piyaz – white kidney bean salad seasoned with parsley, dill, mint, and onion topped off with lemon-oil dressing; and Shepherd Salad, a tomato, onion, and cucumber dish made with the freshest vegetables available.

And, finally, there is the traditional ending to a proper Turkish meal – a cup of strong coffee.  When you have drained the last drop, then turn the cup upside down and let Ilge Ozersen read your fortune in the grounds remaining in the cup.

Don’t miss your chance to view the Turkish art on display, which includes Arabic calligraphy (Beautiful writing that enhanced a word’s meaning.  The calligrapher used his skill to decorate religious manuscripts with flowers and geometric shapes as well.

The Hadith, the collected sayings of Mohammed, prohibited the use of human form in religious manuscripts to prevent idolatry.  The artwork on view at this Festival featured manuscripts with gold gilding (Turkish artists painted gold onto their works rather than embossing as done in Europe.), tapestries (the decorations on the tapestries include figures such as sultans, Mosque motifs, and flowers), ebru (paper marbling), and carpets.

Women weavers have anonymously made Turkish carpets one of the world’s premier art forms, since time immemorial.  One-of-a-kind carpets carry tribal symbols, the guls, which vary in the same way that Scottish tartans do.

The weavers vary tone and minute details to create movement among the repeating shapes on the predominantly red carpets.

With artwork like this on the floors, the Turks naturally remove their shoes before entering a home like the Japanese do.  Flowery “Garden of Paradise” carpets can make a dessert lush and attest to the weaver’s skill in coaxing circular shapes out of an angular medium.

Festival-goers can also view silk prayer rugs decorated with a mihrab, the Mosque niche that points in the direction of Mecca, and a lamp that represents Allah.

A trip to the Turkish Festival would be incomplete without knowing a little about Turkey’s wise-fool priest, Nasreddin Hoca.  One day, the Hoca was discussing the completeness of creation with a friend during a walk.  Hoca said, “I think horses would have been much more useful to mankind, if they had wings.”

Just then, some pigeon droppings fell on Hoca’s turban.

“Allah knows best,” he said.

Florence giggled about that joke at home.

The Turkish Festival, lovingly prepared by the non-profit Turkish American Association of California, truly offers many delights not to be missed, including a children’s tent with folk dancing, face painting, and story telling.

End of Article –

  

I bought some extra pistachio baklava to go home in boxes to eat with tea and more discussion with Laurent and Florence both about how we took a trip to Turkey without spending any money on airfare or hotels.

The following books have information on Turkish cuisine and Mediterranean cuisine food in general, which includes Turkish food:

Books on Turkish Cuisine

-Classical Turkish Cooking: Traditional Turkish Food for the American Kitchen by Ayla Algar

-The Art of Turkish Cooking by Neset Eren published by Hippocrene International Cookbook Classics

-Arabesque: A Taste of Morocco, Turkey, and Lebanon by Claudia Roden

-The Cooking of the Eastern Mediterranean: 215 Healthy, Vibrant, and Inspired Recipes by Paula Wolfert

-Mediterranean Grains and Greens: A Book of Savory, Sun-Drenched Recipes by Paula Wolfert

Books on Mediterranean Cuisine in General, which includes Turkey

-A Mediterranean Feast: The Story of the Birth of the Mediterranean from the Merchants of Venice to the Barbary Corsairs (with more than 500 recipes) by Clifford A. Wright

-Little Foods of the Mediterranean: 500 Fabulous Recipes for Antipasti, tapas, hors d’oeuvre, meze, and more by Clifford A. Wright

-Mediterranean Cookery by Claudia Roden

-A Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden

I would get books like these at the library in DeForest, Wisconsin where we lived at the time.  The Library had free inter-library load with the University of Wisconsin and wealthy neighborhoods around Madison.

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

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