Making Catalan Meals In Hampton Roads (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making Catalan Meals in Hampton Roads (Virginia) by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I have always known that it is possible to live very well without gobs of money from growing up in downtown Detroit (Michigan), Chicago (Illinois), and Madison (Wisconsin).  

If you live in a community with a library that is part of a county-city-university system with lending privileges from special libraries, you have access to many great lifestyle items, if your community supports the library financially.

In the Norfolk-Virginia Beach system, the libraries collected books, films, magazines, newspapers, and CDs and ran a low-key summer reading program for children.  With the materials that were made available to me in this library system, I could work part-time and raise a child. 

This situation was possible thanks to the hold system, which I could access online.  The hold system allowed me to just come into the library and pick up the books I wanted on the way home from work or with Florence.  Many times I picked up books and let Florence go to the children’s section to pick out items, which I could see from the circulation desk.

Norfolk has much history in it like France as a former English colony and one of the original thirteen colonies that formed the original United States.  There is Civil War history in Virginia, too, with battlefields from the Civil War and Revolutionary Wars.

I was also thankful that we lived in a vacation destination that had historical sites like Jamestown, Williamsburg, and Yorktown to visit in addition to museums.

It was a hot drive to get to these places, but we would just get in our old Nova (which means ‘no go’ in Spanish) and crank up the air conditionaing and go on our field trip.

You can tell when summer is truly arriving in the South when air conditioners start whirring.  You listened for it when you walked through parking lots, especially at grocery stores.  The heat made me want to sleep.

I felt this way at 80 degrees.  I wondered how I was going to feel at 100 degrees.  One of the truly Southern things I had done was to put us on the budget plan with the electricity company.

This plan spread out summer electric bills over 12 months instead of 3.  I wondered how I was going to hold up in sweltering summer weather.

My contemplation was cut short by our arrival at the apartment.  Pretty soon I would be making a meal and turned on the air conditioner.

Florence and Laurent sat down and watched cartoons while I made my own Homage to Catalonia (author George Orwell) meal.  Catalonia is rebel just like the South I thought.  I put on a CD with White Wedding and Rebel Yell on it and made lunch.

Using Colman Andrews’s recipes from his book Catalan Cuisine, which is the food of Barcelona and that of the Cuban elite with modifications for New World food products, I put olive oil in a pot and added minced garlic, cubed Japanese eggplant, and zucchini to begin cooking our lunch.

Once the liquid had evaporated, I added tomatoes and peppers and cooked them until the liquid had evaporated as well.  The sauce I made had evaporated.

Andrews’s recipe called for roasting chicken, but I was beginning to feel the heat in the kitchen despite the air conditioning and decided to just cut the chicken breasts and thighs into bite-sized pieces and sauté them.

The rest of the menu I put together was Spanish, too: champignons al ajillo (garlic mushrooms) and ensalida San Isidro (San Isidro Salad).  I was sure people in Catalonia probably ate these items, so I felt I could keep my Homage to Catalonia theme on track.  I had big worries in life.

I did not fret over washing the mushrooms instead of brushing them like the gourmet magazines suggested.

If I had gotten the mushrooms fresh from a seller at a mushroom cave outside Paris (France), I might have just brushed them.  However, I knew that even people with colds picked over mushrooms and might pass germs to other customers in a store or market, so I washed the mushrooms.

After I chopped the mushrooms, I cut them into thin slices and set them aside and then washed some flat leaf parsley (Italian parsley) and chopped it.  I minced the garlic despite my fatigue and put it into some hot olive oil.

When the aroma of the garlic rose, I added the mushroom slices.  When these mushrooms reduced, I added sea salt and a handful of parsley, turning everything around until the parsley slightly wilted. 

The mushrooms made a meaty tasting sauce with the olive oil that we soaked up with pieces of bread.  (The U.S. is truly blessed with wonderful raw materials for cooking.)

Laurent said he liked the mushrooms, but preferred shrimp made this way.

I looked at Laurent and thought to myself, “Napoleonic meanie!.”

I liked these mushrooms sautéed in butter and a little olive oil with steak.  I could feel my cholesterol move up with that thought.  (Roxbury County – New York comment – My McFarland genes were crying out for steak, sheet pan baked potatoes, and a shot of whiskey poured in mug of tea with honey and lemon.)

We ate San Isidro salad with lots of sliced green onions and then moved onto the main course: the pollastre amb samfaina, which roughly translated means “chicken and ratatouille.”

I sautéed the chicken, putting in the dark meat before the white, because it takes longer to cook.

When the chicken was done, I added the samfaina and heated it all the way through.  I appeared in the dining room with a colorful mound of food, which was letting off savory steam.

Laurent and Florence took second helpings of the pollastre amb samfaina.  They had forgotten that they did not like eggplant and peppers.

Laurent and I had Lavazza coffees for dessert while Florence ate an ice cream sandwich. 

Laurent walked to the bedroom for a two-hour nap.  Florence played quietly and read in her room while daddy was sleeping.

I started washing dishes and had a cognac when I was done.  I read the New Yorker magazine and Martha Stewart Living magazine while they slept and liked living in the “Sleepy South.”

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

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Visiting Jamestown (Virginia) - Interactive Site Visit by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Jamestown (Virginia) – Interactive Site by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Mess crank was the new family vocabulary word.  This word meant up at 4 to arrive at work by 4:30 a.m.  I carried Florence out of bed and buckled her into the back seat still sleeping, so she would not have to stay home alone while I Laurent drove to work. 

Many times I would stop at Dunkin Donuts on the way back from the Naval Station after dropping Laurent off and buy a donut and orange juice for her and a donut with coffee for me.

Laurent was able to work in the officers’ dining room, because there were master pastry chefs, managers of corporate dining rooms, small country storeowners, château caterers, and wine merchants among his ancestors and immediate relatives.  (I read him the fairy tale of the golden goose and told him, “You are a merchant goose, and I am the true finance goose,” to tease him about his MBA in finance and accounting.)

The first day of mess crank was also Florence’s first day of school.  Mom and her friend came over to give Florence a hug before she went to school.  I drove Florence to school and hoped that she would have a good day.

I came home and waited most of the day for the dining room table to be delivered.

I had been serving my lovely meals on a fold-up card table with a paisley tablecloth on it.  The new dining room table became my desk and made me feel like I had my feet on terra firma.

I could tell waking up at 4 a.m. was going to wear us all down the next day when I picked up Florence from school.  Her teacher told me that she was naughty at school.

That ruined my day.  I looked forward to talking with Florence’s teacher at the end of the day.  I felt guilty, if Florence did not behave.

I have always thought children misbehave, because they have an unstable home life.  I thought about what I could do to set up a routine for Florence, but knew I could not plan much while I was in job limbo. I tried to plan field trips, so Florence would think we were on vacation until we could a routine set up.

For our next field trip, we went to the Jamestown Recreation site.  We made the pilgrimage to the Morale, Welfare, and Recreation Office.  We left exuberant about the reduced fees given to military personnel on everything from amusement parks to bowling alleys. 

Knowing we had access to these things made me feel we could still have an all-American childhood for Florence despite low Navy wages for airmen on aircraft carriers.  (I was looking for a job to supplement Laurent’s wages obviously and wanted to plan my own retirement.)

The museum at the Jamestown site had many hands-on exhibits that seem to be the specialty of American museums.  The navigational tools area has the most fun exhibit that lets you move bars around to determine latitude and longitude.

Florence watched a television segment about the Susan Constant, one of the boats that brought over Jamestown settlers three times.

Outside, we visited the re-created Native American village, the Jamestown Fort and houses, and replicas of the Godspeed and the Susan Constant.  The Susan Constant is a tiny vessel.  I could not believe how small those boats were.  I would have been terrified to cross the ocean in either of those ships.

After our visit, we drove to colonial Williamsburg.  Even with a military admission reduction, a visit to this place was beyond our means, so we contented ourselves with walking around the town and admiring the red brick buildings from the street.

I was thrilled to find a Rizzoli bookstore.  I leafed through a cookbook called The Flavor of the Riviera by Colman Andrews.  Andrews was the editor of Saveur magazine, a former LA Times restaurant critic, author of Catalan Cuisine, a biographer of Ferran Adria who owned El Bulli outside Barcelona, and a cookbook author.  I just loved reading his work like I used to read the restaurant criticism of Jay Jacobs in Gourmet magazine as a child.

“There is civilization in Hampton Roads after all,” I thought to myself.

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

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Making a Pirates of the Caribbean Lunch by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Making a Pirates of the Caribbean Lunch by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

Over the next few days, these good spirits buoyed me into writing my resume.  Not working left me in a lurch for awhile. 

What was hardest was that I did not have any friends in Norfolk (Virginia).  I knew I would, at least, have adult conversations at work.  My journals were my friends.  I also read books.

Right after we moved in, though, my mother and her friend came to visit us.  Laurent prepared a nice dinner for them.

We started with homemade chicken soup followed by mussels steamed in whole wine.  The mussels tasted so sweet with just a wee edge on them from the wine.

We drank a white wine from Rioja wine from Marquès de Caceres winery with the mussels.

After this seaside treat, we had salad followed by a cheese course made up of brie cheese, camembert cheese, and stilton cheese.  We ate imported chocolate candies, which we could procure from the commisary’s international section:

-Rocher d’or

-Mon Cheri

-Raffeolo

Laurent made espresso with steamed milk from our espresso maker.  Our guests went back to the hotel to relax while we cleaned up the dishes.

I went to mass the next day with my mom’s friend and my small family.  Our family church, St. Pius X, looked like a concrete slab (the South has had church bombings, and Virginia is not traditionally Catholic).  We were observing the holiday of the Pentecost.

I like Pentecost, because it negates the horrible image of the Tower of Babel, where language divided humanity.  On Pentecost, the Holy Spirit gave the apostles the ability to speak languages to spread Jesus’s message.

Once I learned about this holiday in France, I used it as my annual vow to keep up my study of foreign languages.

Since I had more time than money in Virginia, I would use my time to study Spanish and keep up with Japanese.  (I work on Italian now – 2018.)  I would have to go through many boxes at home to find my language textbooks.

I would go to the library for reading material in Spanish and read the church newsletter, which had information on the Caribbean and Latin America.

After mass, my mom, her friend, and the rest of us set out to do a tour of the Naval Base.  The ships fascinated them, but I could not see the forest for the trees as I looked at them.  I had waited at too many gates to appreciate another naval installation.

After touring the Naval Base, everyone came back to the apartment where I prepared Florence’s birthday party.  Florence, the sweetheart, squeezed lemons, so we could make fresh lemonade like I used to do with my great-aunt Winnie.

I made my Catalan salad as a starter with endive halves in a star-pattern topped off with a creamy dressing. 

(My maternal family were English captains in the merchant marine, which became pirate as necessary, especially when silver from the mines at Potosi (Mexico) tried to get past the Spanish Main in Puerto Rico outside San Juan.  All navies were like this, including the Barbary pirates from North Africa, who probably sailed for various kingdoms in Andalusia -southern Spain and Portugal.

My family’s ship, the Naiad, also fought at Trafalgar, so I gently let Florence into the English Navy part of our family history with food.  The Catalans - capitals at Barcelona and Perpignan - form the elite of Cuban society, too.  They used the Spanish navy as a merchant marine for slaves and rum made from sugar cane.)

Back to lunch, which you can use to teach history:

Black olives occupied the center of the starter and anchovy strips ran down the center of the endive halves.  Whether or not this was authentic did not matter; it looked good and tasted great.

I made gambas al ajillo, shrimp with garlic, after that.  I find garlic in olive oil and removed it once the perfume had risen from the hot oil.  I added the peeled shrimp and cooked these until they were no longer translucent.

I turned them once halfway through the cooking and added freshly chopped Italian flat leaf parsley, sea salt, and pepper at the end.

Everyone loved the shrimp, especially the birthday girl, who practiced saying, “gambas al ajillo” until she got it right.

(I believe in fun tasting Spanish lessons.)  The adults drank a dry Riesling with the shrimp that made me think we had never left France.

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

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Visiting Jamestown (Virginia) - The Original Site by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Jamestown (Virginia) – Original Settlement by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

As we were walking around the stone foundations of homes in Jamestown, I thought of how to define “archaeologist” so a five-year-old girl could understand the term.

“An archaeologist is a person who uses her brain and imagination to show people today how people lived in the past,” I said.

Florence let the word go through one ear and out the other as we walked among the remains at Jamestown.

A statue of Pochahontas fascinated Florence.  Florence had dressed up like Pochanontas one year for Halloween in Wisconsin.  She could not believe she was a real person.

“She was much more interesting in real life than in the film,” I said.

“You will learn about her in the sixth grade,” I said.

“That’s too long to wait!” Florence said.

“Okay.  I’ll find a book at the library about Pochahontas to read to you, but not a cartoon book,” I said.  Some of our favorite outings in Wisconsin had been to the State Historical Society.”

Florence liked the miniature scenes of village life – no doubt, because they looked like dolls.

“Archaeologists play with clay and draw.  It’s not a bad job,” I said, hoping to influence Florence’s career choices.

“I want to be a singer,” Florence said to stop my propaganda for a career I would have liked for myself at one time until I read about forensic anthropology.

Inside the name of one of the original gentleman who founded Jamestown struck me – John Pennington.  He died three months after the founding of the town, so I could not claim to be a direct heir, but a cousin perhaps.

However, it was neat to see my family name in a historic place.  My mother told me that there was a Pennington at Roanoke as well, but I cannot confirm this information with online sources.

The English inheritance system of primogeniture, where the eldest son inherited everything, meant that younger sons had to seek careers in the military, the church, or as merchants in the Americas, Africa, or Asia.

Judging by the number of Pennington descendants in the United States, I would say that the Penningtons and allied families in western England sired many children at Muncaster Castle in Cumbria, where the Penningtons have resided since the thirteenth century. 

(The Penningtons, who are of Norman French descent, were in the army of William the Conqueror.  They are listed in the Domesday Book from 1,000 AD and have also sponsored the building of churches.  Rutherford’s novels Sarum and London talk about the Domesday book.)

Doing family geneaological work had given me much respect for the survival of the Penningtons and other families who were given seeds and guns for hunting and protection as ships from the mother country sailed off to collect the crown’s part of the harvest the following year.

My particular branch of the Penningtons settled in western Virginia (Pennington Gap and Robbins’ Chapel), Lexington (Kentucky), and Kingsport (Tennessee). 

Sir Isaac Penington was the founder of our line and created the Society of Friends Church (Quakers) in England before coming to the U.S. with his son-in-law William Penn. 

By my generation, my father told me non-violence does not always mean pacifism.  My parents were evangelical Pentecostals I think.  (They laughed at my failed efforts at attending a Friends’ School on the East Side of Detroit.)

The Penningtons are original settlers of Virginia, Sons of Liberty, and Daughters of the American Revolution.  I am not sure of our Civil War status, but my southern family has historically been fiscally conservative.

I talked about these topics with Florence as we set out for pizza.  I knew we were original settlers of Virginia, but I was somewhat floored that we were at Jamestown myself.

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

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