A Milan (Italy) Rallye Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

A Milan (Italy) Rallye Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

I wanted Florence to know about Milan, Italy’s fashion, food, and newspaper industry even as a child, because I loved Milan’s Corriere della Sera newspaper. 

I consider Corriere della Sera to be one of the best newspapers in the world for news on the arts and culture coverage.  I absolutely struggled to learn to read Italian to read this newspaper and can do it now.  That is a lifetime goal of mine that I checked off after reading Gelb’s How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci. 

So, when we were in Norfolk, I subscribed to Vogue and Glamour magazines and went through the ads with Florence.  She liked Versace and Armani like I did, too. 

I eventually subscribed to Junior Vogue along with Nickelodeon and People in English for Florence.  She could read at a young age thanks to those magazines.

I wanted to do a Milan lunch and made steamed carrots and puréed them with olive oil, dry garlic, chopped flat-leaf parsley, and red wine vinegar.  This was my Italian version of a Libyan hummus-like spread. 

I made toast and cut them into fourths and then put this carrot purée on toast squares.  These looked lovely stacked up on a plate like a pyramid. 

I served this appetizer with lemonade when Florence was small, but adults might like what some wine enthusiasts describe as hay-flavored Sauvignon Blanc with them.  Chilled Pinot Grigios and Rosés would go well with this appetizer, too.  I might remove the vinegar, though, which clashes with wine. 

I talked with Laurent and Florence as I stirred the basic risotto Milanese I made with butter, chicken stock, and mushrooms.  I made these sides to go with T-bone steaks for everyone. 

I asked Laurent what he thought about risotto.  “It’s soupy rice.  I want sheet, pan-baked potatoes with onions and Italian seasonings,” he said.

“A lot of those cookbooks are just PR,” he commented.

“I know, but I like trying to make foods from other cultures and parts of the country.  It is good for Florence to know about other cultures.  Technology just seems to speed up the process of cultural misunderstandings with language sometimes,” I told Laurent.

I did not use the Internet, but knew just getting a catering order done to satisfy people from different religious, cultural, and dietary, political preference backgrounds could be a grueling process let alone collaborating on engineering projects.

During lunch, Florence recited a poem about fall that she learned at school.  It was a cute, Japanese haiku poem about leaves turning color and falling to the ground in fall.

Laurent and I applauded and yelled “brava” and “encore” as she recited the poem a few times more times to general acclaim.  We asked her questions like “Why do tree leaves change color in fall?” and “Which leaf color do you prefer and why?” after each poem recitation.

We turned on some samba (street music) and bassa nova (fancy apartment music) from Brazil after lunch.  We all got up and danced for an hour.  (Italians definitely dance at home dance parties, so we did our Franco-Italian rallye at home.)

After dancing, I read Florence the book The Furry News: How to Make a Newspaper that described articles, ads, and circulation.

Florence took an old Virginia-Pilot and pasted some drawings in it. 

“Do you have anything to advertise?” she asked me.

“Can I advertise mom’s taxi service for 50 cents?” I asked.

She agreed to these terms and made me give her fifty cents.  She, then, called grandma and asked her to subscribe to her newspaper called – The Norfolk News for a quarter. 

I laughed at Florence’s business flair and asked her, “How many months can grandma get for 25 cents?”

“A long time,” she said.

We took dad to the ship for work.  On the way home, Florence said, “I like risotto and prosciutto.”

We stopped at the commissary and bought some chicken stock and other goodies, including a small bag of Arborio rice.  The rice was expensive, but they had it.

I improvised a risotto with chicken stock, grated Parmesan, pieces of chopped up prosciutto, sautéed mushrooms, and butter.

We listened to Laurent’s Ennio Morricone music and went out for ice cream cones dunked in chocolate sauce after lunch for dessert.

The ice cream place was across the street from our little apartment.

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

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Visiting the 17th Century Adam Thoroughgood House in Virginia Beach by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the 17^th Century Adam Thoroughgood House by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

One of my family’s favorite places to visit in Virginia Beach (Virginia) was the 17^th century Adam Thoroughgood House, a colonial tobacco farm.  (Virginia is still a tobacco state, but they are trying to diversify out of the industry.)

Captain Adam Thoroughgood came to Virginia in 1621 as an indentured servant (usually 7 years of labor with room and board paid in return for freedom).  After he fulfilled his work obligations, he was granted more than 5,000 acres of land.

One of Thoroughgood’s descendants built the brick house with the steep roof in 1680 that you can see today.  The steep roof helps rain water drain off.

The Garden Club of Virginia asked landscape architect Alden Hopkins to restore the gardens in 1958.  There was no documentation of what the garden looked like in Thoroughgood’s time, so Hokpins chose to do the garden in what our tour guide called the Tudor Style.

The Garden Club is most proud of the espaliered fruit trees that are spread out like grapes on the vine.  There are also arched arbors in this garden.

The tour guide told us that “beasties” – little statuettes of an owl and squirrel, mounted on the poles were supposed to frighten away critters from the garden like Peter Rabbit.

Inside the house, the tour guide told us that the property’s location on the Lynnhaven River, which flows into the Chesapeake Bay, makes it an ideal location for shipping the farm’s tobacco.

The first room in the Thoroughgood House that we visited was the kitchen with an open fireplace that was so large that you could walk into it.

The kitchen also served as the family room.  This has not changed over the years since colonial times.  Our guide showed us reeds and said that colonists soaked these reeds in oil and burned them for light.

Maybe this is the origin of the phrase “to burn the midnight oil.”  The reeds lasted about 20 minutes and were a fire hazard.

The living room had a fireplace as well.  The wood beams on the ceiling and molding around the top of the walls made this a more stylish room.  The most interesting thing in this room was the framed sample of quilling work.

Quilling sculpture is made of twisted paper.  The mahogany furniture from the 17^th century looked ok for business, but not for relaxing.

Upstairs we learned that colonial children slept on pallets that they rolled up in the morning.  This practice reminds me of the Japanese with their futons.  The master bedroom had a string bed holding up the mattress on top of it.

The expression “sleep tight” comes from having to tighten the string on one’s bed, so the mattress would not sag.

I was interested in the rail, thin ruffle iron and the box in which the ruffles were kept.

I ironed every week and was happy that ruffles like those were no longer in fashion.

Florence behaved so well during this visit that we went to the store and bought her some watermelon and bubble gum and let her smack it as loud as she wanted to.

At home, we made brownies.  I taught Florence different volume sizes with measuring cups and asked her, “Which cup holds more?”

While the brownies baked, I wrote about visiting the Thoroughgood House to the family elders and finished reading Waverly Root’s The Food of Italy.

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

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Creative Kids' Activities by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Creative Children's Activities by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Florence and I clapped and yelled, “We can sleep in!  We can sleep in!” when Laurent was nearing the end of mess crank shift with its 4 a.m. wake-up times.

At home, Florence joined me in the kitchen.  She put on her kid-sized apron and peeled a carrot, which I let her slice under close supervision.

Next, she washed mushrooms and cut those into slices.  She put the carrots and mushrooms together to make a starter salad.  She liked those vegetables with lots of ranch or blue cheese dressing, depending on what was available at the commissary.

I made Laurent his favorite meal – a T-bone steak; mashed potatoes with grated Parmesan cheese; chopped Italian parsley, and butter added to them; and sliced Parisian (white) mushrooms sautéed in butter to eat with the steak on the side.  We drank an inexpensive Médoc with this, but I also liked wines from Spain’s Rioja region with the steak.

My part-time work allowed me to take time off when Florence had free days at school.  On one of Florence’s free days, we went to the zoo.  We visited the farm section and laughed at the pigs lolling in the mud and at hens pecking at each other.

We said, “gross,” when we saw snakes in the reptile house and looked for animals in the nocturnal animal house, but they hid when we went up to glass windows.  That was still a great place to visit, because the dark lighting gave it a creepy air.

Curve-snouted tapirs that looked like pigs begged us for food.  Florence admired the fur on the tigers and asked if they could cross the moat separating us from them.

“I hope not,” I honestly replied.

One of the ostriches ran beside Florence and easily won the race.  The hot, muggy day wore us out.  Florence and I both became cranky.  It was time to leave and go home for dinner in an air-conditioned house.

“Why don’t you take a bath?” I suggested to Florence at home.  She liked the idea and put on her swimsuit and snorkeling gear.  I let her stay in the cold-water tub for two hours.  (Even when the sun is not out, it is humid in the South, which makes it feel hot.)

When she came out, she came and gave me a kiss, leaving a trail of water behind her.

When dad got home from his cruise, we went to Azteca for Guadalajaran chocolate-pepper, mole sauce chicken.

“I hope my favorite waiter is there,” Florence said.

“Oh, and who would that be?” mommy asked.

“The one who said I was pretty,” Florence answered.

“We’ll make sure to sit in his section and talk with him,” I said.

We got his section and talked about food.  I told him we usually went to Pizza Hut, but Azteca was going to be Florence’s fancy restaurant for learning how to eat nicely. 

We had a German etiquette consultant at work, who was also a Washington, D.C. tour guide for private schools.  She took classes to visit consulates for lunches and trade and cultural discussions. 

She told me to find Florence a fun restaurant (Pizza Hut) and a more formal one (Azteca) to practice manners she learned at home. 

We took out books by Diana Kennedy and learned what we could about Mexico as well and would question the waiter a bit after ordering. 

(No feet-on-chairs is not nonsense by the way.  At one time, ebola was thought to be a parasite that could be brought into homes on soles of shoes.  I think ringworm might be transmitted this way.)

I practiced saying a few words in Spanish and let the people at the restaurant know that St. Pius had a Spanish section in its church newsletter that I used to practice reading in Spanish.

I had fun in Norfolk-Virginia, but still feel it is a vacation destination and military town.

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

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Driving in Washington, D.C. and More Mommy Time by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Driving in Washington, D.C. and more Mommy Time by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget 

My lazy days of summer reading by myself in the air-conditioned apartment were coming to an end.  Florence was coming back from her summer vacation in France.

She stayed with her grandparents in the Nantes area at the mouth of the Loire River that opens out into the Atlantic Ocean.  Naoned is the Breton name for Nantes.  Nantes is the ancient capital of Brittany, Celtic France. 

Chrétien de Troyes wrote the first version of the King Arthur and Knights of the Round Table story here.  I told Florence she might see Sir Lancelot, King Arthur, and Queen Guenivere walking around and to be on the lookout for them when she visited her grandparents.

This region is still considered by many to be allied with the Celtic British Isles with Celts in Cornwall, Wales, parts of Scotland (the Picts), and Ireland.  Galicia in Spain is also Celtic.

The Celts all play bagpipes, write poetry, sing, dance, and eat haggis and other offal type foods to save money.  They tend to drink bad wine like vinho verde (northern Portugal is considered to be Celtic as well.) 

One of the great modern musicians from Brittany is Alain Stivell.  He is a Pied Piper when he plays a harp. 

One of my great life experiences was driving around Brittany with Laurent after we visited Carnac with Stivell’s music playing and a CD by the French navy band just being awestruck tourists. 

Florence was now coming home from her vacation in King Arthur Land and Laurent was out on a cruise, which meant I would have to pick her at Dulles National Airport in Wasington, D.C. all by myself in the blue Nova.

I have driven in Chicago from Madison (Wisconsin) after ice storms and could do it, so I knew I just had to pay attention to exits.  This was harder said than done in pre-Internet days. 

Not everyone had websites, but our ship ombudsman obtained the exit I needed to take on the Beltline around DC and the three exits in front of it.  

I needed to know the three exits, so I could move into position to take the Dulles exit and not have to go around DC to get back to the exit again, if I missed it.

When Florence was due home, I made it to the airport with lots of time to spare.  I parked in the expensive parking lot, so I would not have too far to walk with a purse, child, and suitcase.  This parking lot is well lit, had video surveillance, and human attendants at the pay station.  (Safety first with children is my motto.)

I finished reading The Art and Architecture of Japan by Robert Treat and Alexander Soper while waiting.  (The Japanese have messes, too, but put them all behind sliding doors until they can organize things.  Everything looks neat and orderly on the outside.)

Florence ran out to see me from her Air France flight when she got off the plane.  I picked up her bag, carried it to the parking lot, put it in the trunk, and played Speed Racer a bit to deal with Beltline until I could get on the slower highway down to Hampton Roads.

It started to pour rain.  I had blankets and snacks for Florence to eat.  She fell asleep, so I could fret about buying new windshield wipers all the way home in the rain.  We did make it home and tree branches were everywhere from the wind.

Florence tumbled into her bed and slept until the next day.  I checked for nor’easter warnings – fall or winter hurricanes. 

If one were coming, we were going through the Great Dismal Swamp to Georgia to my sister’s or Up North from there to Wisconsin and grandma.  I think my family had property where Hurricane Hazel hit and learned as a small child to just leave and not look back when hurricanes rolled in.

When we woke up the next day, I made croissants (Pillsbury Dough Boys after the drive to DC) for breakfast and hot chocolate.

Florence did theatre skits for me about things she did in France for summer vacation.  We played theatre for an hour until the swimming pool opened.

Florence ran to the pool in the 90 degree heat at 9 am in the morning.  She dove right in and stayed in for 2 hours. 

When the lifeguards announce, “Adult Swim,” the kids scowl and say they don’t want necking in the pool to give them cooties.

I was hungry and did not want to stay at the pool for 6 hours after a DC drive.  We went to Pizza Hut where I ordered my usual order: a medium meat pizza, a medium vegetarian pizza, the salad bar (it was unlimited, but I usually only went twice for coleslaw and potato or macaroni salad), and diet soda.  We took home leftovers for dinner.

After our pizza outing, we went home, so I could unpack Florence’s suitcase and wash and dry her clothes.

While the clothes were washing, we went to the library and took out books about gardens.  Her grandparents had vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens as well as topiary bushes and “the lawn” for croquet and badminton games.  We hid Florence’s Easter eggs in the bushes around the lawn and gave her basket to go looking for them.

We stayed home during the next few rainy days.  We went and got daddy and went to Applebee’s for steak and shrimp for completing a mission.  I told Florence that steak and shrimp is called “surf and turf” in English or “mar et montaña” in Spanish.  (Many Mexican restaurants also serve this dish when you do not have a chain around.)

Laurent and Florence watched Mission Impossible and James Bond, so Florence would know what dad was up to at work. 

I preferred Stephen Segall for his East Asian philosophical pronouncements in corrupt police situations, Jackie Chan for humor, Jean-Claude Van Damme for his lithe moves despite girth, and Miami Vice for the music, pastel-colored clothes, and sunglasses.

If I needed pop culture explications of these pop culture shows, I would go to the Boathouse and eat crab legs and dunk hushpuppies in melted butter.  I was starting to realize that you can make a lot of money in pop culture.

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

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