Rallye: French Barbizon
Painting School Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget
Rallye Set-Up for Teens
and Older
Armchair
and in-country travelers to France and art lovers everywhere can do this rallye
(aristocratic, junior cocktail party) with a French buffet (see below),
activities for young and old, dancing, singing, poetry writing, and art
activities.
Matrons
organize these parties and play music they like to dance to in the dining room
while the teens and college grads dance in the salon (living room). (Sometimes they laugh about mom’s music,
too.)
I
would hand out lyric sheets for the music, so everyone could learn the words
and rhythms of several languages. Rallye
participants can appear to effortlessly dance and sing to these artists when
they go to corporate office parties and nightclubs with a little practice:
Eros
Ramatozzi (sings in Italian and Spanish)
Beyoncé
(sings in English and Spanish)
Céline
Dion (sings in French and English)
Madonna
(sings in English and encourages lots of dancing)
Tina
Turner (sings in English and also encourages lots of dancing)
MC
Solaar (French Rapper of African origin)
Dio
(Canadian who sings in English with songs that can bring out the Sans Culotte
Revolutionary in even aristocrats)
Jean-Michel
Jarre (For his French Electronika album featuring various artists)
Rachid
Taha (French rapper with Algerian ancestry, who sings in French and Arabic)
Joan
Armatrading (Sings in British English)
Falco
(Austrian singer who sang in German and English)
Hand
out lyric sheets, so rallye participants can learn the rhythms and words to
these songs in Arabic, American and British English, French, Spanish, German, and
Italian.
Rallye Buffet Food
Items and Drinks
Rallyes
are not strong on food usually, because the teens and college grads want to
look good in their designer clothes and not stain them for photographs.
However,
I think there are many non-messy nutritious items that you can serve at rallyes
in homes or on picnics as you tour the village of Barbizon and the Forest at
Fontainebleau to see first hand what the Barbizon painters wanted to preserve
in their paintings.
I
would serve food items such as the following:
Baguette Sandwiches - cut these into
2-inch pieces, so you can mix and match a variety of them
Jambon-fromage – (ham and thin slices
of Brie de Meaux or Brie de Melun)
Jardinière – (seasonal vegetables
with homemade mayonnaise made of egg yolks and olive or sunflower oil)
Thon – (baked tuna fillet
with homemade mayonnaise and lettuce and tomato)
Fromage – (Brie de Meaux or Brie
de Melun with butter)
Jambon – Beurre – (ham with butter)
In
France, you can buy sandwiches like the ones above at almost any bakery. The chain Chez Paul sells these sandwiches in
almost all the malls of France for in-country tourists, who are looking for a
quick bite to eat as they purchase souvenirs.
The
French do not subsist on sandwiches alone.
After going to the bakery, they go to the “traiteur” known as a
“delicatessen” in the United States or “feinkost” in Germany for salads to go
with sandwiches.
You
can buy the following salads at a traiteur for your rallye buffet table. They are not very expensive or difficult to
make at home, though, if you know how to cook.
Most of them can be made ahead of time and served at room
temperature. They are also surprisingly
healthy for you:
Champignons à la
Grecque (Mushrooms in the Greek Style) – Despite the name of this dish, this dish
is French. It is a pickled salad using
Parisian button mushrooms, tomatoes, and onions. The pickling comes from boiling the
ingredients briefly in vinegar and lemon juice with olive oil added at the
end. Pickling these ingredients keeps
them from spoiling quickly in the heat.
Moroccan Tangerine,
Crushed Walnut, and Ice Berg Lettuce Salad with Orange-Blossom Water Dressing – This salad is
modified from Paula Wolfert’s recipe in Couscous and Other Good Food from Morocco.
Steamed Carrot Purée
with Cayenne Pepper to Spread on Baguette Slices – serve this item like
hummus
Baked, Peeled, and
Sliced Pepper (Chiles) Salad with Olive Oil Dressing – This dish is dressed
lightly with olive oil
Boiled Brown Lentil
Salad with Lemon Juice, Olive Oil, and Cumin – this is an Egyptian salad that many
people in Provence also eat
2-inch Sections of
Vietnamese Imperial Rolls – these rolls usually contain shrimp, pork, rice noodle,
and cilantro inside a rice paper cover – Vietnam was once part of the French
colony of Indochina.
Patatas Bravas – this dish is from
Spain where many French people go on vacation.
You cut potatoes into cubes and fry them in olive oil until cooked. Then, you sprinkle cayenne and sea salt on them. They are served at room temperature with
toothpicks for easy serving on trays.
There
are many great appetizer ideas in:
Claudia
Roden’s Mediterranean Cookery
Clifford
Wright’s The Little Foods of the Mediterranean: 500 Fabulous Recipes for Antipasti,
Tapas, Hors d’Oeuvre, Meze, and More
Culinary
Institute of America’s Hors d’Oeuvre at Home with the Culinary
Institute of America
All
of these French rallyes have dainty desserts.
The teens and college grads do not eat them usually; the chaperones eat
them with coffee between making introductions of guests as they arrive to other
guests invited to the group.
The
rallye organizers usually introduce each guest to different groups, let them
know where the bathrooms are so they can freshen up, and invite them to get
something to eat and drink when they feel like it.
The desserts are
usually items such as:
-small
fruit tarts with pastry cream bottoms
-éclairs
with chocolate pastry cream filling
-Napoleon
pastries (Mille-Feuille layered phyllo pastries with pastry cream)
Drinks for a Mixed-Ages
Rallye in France:
Drinks
for a mixed-ages rallye would be Italian and French sodas with a non-alcoholic
punch. Non-alcoholic punches are usually
made beforehand with ingredients such as mango nectar, Grenadine syrup, and
carbonated water.
You
keep these punches refrigerated until serving with one set out on a tray to
show what the punch cocktail looks like garnished. Punches are usually served in
triangular-shaped glasses and are usually garnished with a sword skewer of
Maraschino cherries and pineapple slices.
Obviously,
what you do for a French Barbizon School of Painting Rallye Game can be done
indoors or in th “plein air” or outside as they painted.
Final Question – “What are the characteristics of the Barbizon School,
especially those that differentiate it from the Impressionists who also painted
outside?
By
Ruth Paget, author of Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Click here for: Ruth Paget's Amazon Books
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