Sampling English Village Pub Fare: Garden-to-Table Food at Cricketeers with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Sampling English Village Pub Fare:  Dining on Garden-to-Table Food at Cricketeers outside London with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Laurent and I went out with his work colleagues to a village garden-to-table restaurant called the Cricketeers outside London, where we were staying.

Once we sat down at the table, Laurent and I started our meal with a simple and delicious bowl of potato and leek soup to warm our bodies in the damp countryside.

After that, Laurent ate a sole meunière with lemon that was so fresh that it still tasted of the sea according to Laurent.  I ate a pink-fleshed sea trout stuffed with shrimp and capers.

The capers gave the stuffing a little tang to the fish, which appealed to my love for slightly sour foods.  We drank a crisp German Riesling with this meal.

The vegetables are what impressed everyone.  They were served on platters to pass, and reminded me of the way Chinese restaurants in the US serve dishes “family style.”

The green beans were firm without being soggy.  Sautéed baby corn ears, zucchini, and green and red peppers made up my favorite dish and reminded me of dishes from the Southwestern US.

I liked the potato cubes that came out of the kitchen with hot butter and melted cheese on them, too.  The steamed cauliflower in tomato sauce and the baby snow peas in butter also gave me many ideas for cooking at home.

The entire meal had been so good that we just had to have dessert.  Laurent ate a chocolate terrine.  I ordered a fruit salad that came with a cup-sized pitcher of cream that I poured over the fruit salad.

I knew I would burn off the calories on my 5- to 6-hour walks around London.

By Ruth Paget, Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France


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Exploring Ghent: Visiting the Spiritual Homeland of Flemish Belgium with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exploring Ghent: Visiting the Spiritual Homeland of Flemish Belgium with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The suburbs and most of the countryside around Brussels, Belgium are Flemish while downtown Brussels is French. 

Belgium is a bilingual country:  Flemish is a variant of Dutch spoken in the suburbs and countryside while French is mostly spoken in Brussels and in Wallonia in southern Belgium, a coal mining area.

On one of my trips to Belgium, my buddy Eileen and I went to the spiritual capital of Flemish Belgium in the town of Ghent.

Like Brouges (Belgium), Ghent has many old brick buildings, pretty canals, lace shops, and churches that would be major attractions in smaller towns.

We ate at a restaurant that also served as a bakery and served as a kosher food products store called Bloch on Veldstraat.  The waitress, who spoke English, told us that the restaurant has been there for almost 100 years.

We ordered Shepherd’s Pie.  It was made with a browned crust of mashed potatoes and savory beef and onion filling.

We visited St. Baaf’s Cathedral downtown and admired the Mystic Lamb Altarpiece by Jan van Eyck.  Flanders is Catholic like French Belgium and has much artwork to admire in its churches.

The English guide to the Cathedral is enthusiastically translated as follows:

“Thank the Lord for the profusion of beauty in your life” and I did just that as we headed back to Brussels on the train. 

(In 2018, I still want Google to develop Google Art Project to make museum collections overseas and in the US available to Americans, who may not have the money or physical ability to visit these collections.)

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

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Exploring Bruges: Visiting Belgium's Venice with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Exploring Bruges: Visiting Belgium’s Venice with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I loved being able to take the train to Brussels, Belgium from the Gare du Nord in Paris (France) to visit my Detroit buddy Eileen, who worked for the European Union after finishing her master’s degree at the London School of Economics.

Eileen took a vacation day, so we could visit the picture-perfect town of Bruges.  Bruges is full of canals with swans.  We rolled Florence around in her baby stroller looking for restaurants and just enjoying being outside for the day.

Bruges is a beautiful, distant suburb of Brussels for upper management, who could do consulting work at home.

We eventually decided on a restaurant.  Eileen and I both had a savory, tomato soup and Italian omelets called fritattas.  We were feeling pretty good, because we drank Duvel (Flemish for ‘Devil’) and Geuze wheat beers with our garlic toast and omelets.

We walked around Bruges for another three hours.  The Eglise Nôtre had a beautiful Madonna and Child sculpture in it by Michelangelo that was a surprise find for us.

The swans on the canals enchanted me as did the lace makers on the curving, cobbled streets, who set up shop next to chocolate stores.  I felt like I was walking through a wonderland.

We ate Leonidas chocolates on the way home and counted swans on the canals on the way out of town.

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

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Touring the Nantes Art Museum (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Touring the Nantes Art Museum (France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Nantes Art Museum was a much-anticipated destination for me to visit the next day.  The museum is a gem that has works by important artists of almost every period.  I would not say that all works are important, but they were all created by important artists.

Nantes’ history explains where the funds for the collection of items in the art museum came from.  The city’s wealth was built on the slave and sugar trade during the 16^th to the 18^th centuries.

The “armateurs” or traders called the slave trade “the ebony wood” commerce.  Nantes was an active participant in the Triangle Trade of slaves, rum, and cotton for the fashion industry.  Even Voltaire, the champion of liberty had shares in an ebony wood venture.

Nantes transformed itself in the 18^th century for three major reasons:

-the abolition of slavery during the French Revolution

-the French sugar beet replaced sugar cane from the Caribbean as the main source of sugar during the Napoleonic Empire

-boats able to hold larger cargoes had trouble docking at the quay in Nantes

Contemporary industry in Nantes is centered around steel, cookies, and the port business.  The Donges port houses important oil reserves.

The city’s history is a necessary digression to understand how the city of Nantes and its citizens have the money to endow and maintain their lovely museum.

When you enter the museum, you find yourself in a large hallway with Neo-Classical sculpture all around you.  As you walk straight ahead, you find yourself in front of a small landing.

This landing gives you two directional choices.  You can continue walking into the interior courtyard, which is painted white and has arcades opening up onto the second-floor gallery.

Or, you can climb one of the general staircases in white marble on either side of the landing.  Just one of these staircases would have been impressive.

There are two square galleries surrounding a central courtyard, which maximizes wall spaces.  “Old Masters” are located upstairs and “Modern Masters” are located downstairs.

Of the “Old Masters,” I like the portrait of Madame de Sennones by Jean-Dominique Ingres.  The subject, wearing a red velvet dress, has no less than 5 big, ruby rings on her fingers.

This surprised me, since the French bourgeoisie favors restraint in its accessories. 

I had to leave the Museum before I could visit the modern art downstairs.  The Nantes Art Museum has many paintings by Kandinsky, who is an important artist for the advertising industry.

Kandisnsky’s abstract art uses lines and various angles to draw a viewer’s eyes around a painting and to one or more vanishing points.  Advertisements subtly do this as well, which is why Kandinsky is still relevant today as an artist.

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

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Visiting Pouliguen (France): Sunbathing at Brittany's Family Beach with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Pouliguen (France):  Sunbathing on Brittany’s Family Beach with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Pouliguen is a family-oriented beach in Brittany, which means that there is no topless bathing like there is in the next town along the coast at La Baule.

We went to the crêperie called Au Jardin du Balata in Pouliguen.  Crêpes made with buckwheat flour and served with savory fillings are called galettes.

Laurent’s mother ate a traditional galette with ham and cheese.  I had a more modern take on the dish and ordered a galette with ratatouille and egg.

Ratatouille comes from the South of France, but the stewed eggplant, onions, zucchini, tomatoes, thyme, and bay leaf tasted delicious with the scrambled egg inside the Breton galette I ordered tasted great.

Typically, galettes contain savory items like eggs, ham, butter, mushrooms, onions, and so on.  A crêpe is made with white flour and sugar.  Crêpes are filled with sweet items like chocolate Nutella.

Cider is the preferred beverage that goes along with galettes and crêpes.  The sweet kind is called “doux” and the more astringent one is called “brut.”

I ate a dessert crêpe called a Negresco for dessert.  I daintily ate the Negresco filled with vanilla ice cream, chocolate sauce, and sliced almonds and was very happy with life.

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

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