Visiting Bruges (Belgium) to View the Memling Museum by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting Bruges (Belgium) to View the Memling Museum by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

I went on a solo trip to Brussels (Belgium) to visit my Detroit buddy Eileen, who had recently graduated from the London School of Economics (LSE) and was working as a consultant for the European Union.

I knew Mick Jagger also attended the LSE and asked her if she was going to promote “European music for mega money in the EU and abroad.”

“More like cheese and wine,” she said probably wondering when Peter Pan Ruth was going to grow up.

As ever, the first order of business when doing business in a country that is French or has some sort of French heritage is to eat.  We walked from the train station to her apartment and picked up a few items at Delhaize Supermarket on the way home.

We ate a light dinner of prosciutto, smoke salmon, lettuce with blue cheese dressing, and fruit salad with slices of baguette and Kerrygold butter. 

We drank a Sauvignon de Touraine with our little meal and went to sleep to early, so we could get up bright and early for a trip to Brouges the next day.

I love taking the train to Bruges.  The fields around Bruges are green, the canals are clean and shimmer, and swans glide along the canals on the way into town.

We went to the Central Train Station to go to Bruges.  The train originated in Cologne, Germany, so we had to stand all the way to our destination, but we did not care.  We were having fun, laughing about the books we were reading and wondering where we could eat waterzooi, a Flemish fish stew in Belgium.

When we arrived, we went to the Memling Museum in Bruges.  The Museum holds two rooms of art that is very important to the Flemish people.

The most stunning piece was a casket for the relics of Saint Ursula.  According to the legend that Memling painted, the devout Ursula refused to marry the pagan English prince Etheric until he converted.

Ursula was a demanding woman and also insisted on having three years to make a pilgrimage to Rome with 11,000 virgins.

Ursula was martyred en route for refusing the advances of the King of the Huns.  The tale was quite popular in the Middle Ages.

It was noon, so we went to eat.  Eileen and I walked around and checked out menus before choosing a restaurant with good food at reasonable prices.

We ordered in English not French.  Even I knew that the Flemish regions around French-speaking Brussels were rather snooty about speaking Germanic languages, which include Flemish, Dutch, and English.

Eileen and I were twins and ordered the same thing.  We started our meal with puréed carrot soup.  Our next course was grilled salmon with a light, cream of tomato sauce with a side of sheet pan baked potatoes.

I can make puréed carrot soup, sheet pan baked potatoes, and grilled salmon with a light, cream of tomato sauce now and save a lot of money.

Dessert was a scoop of highly perfumed vanilla ice cream with a slice of musk melon.

After lunch, we spent a lot of time touring town on foot looking at homes, flowers, swans, and the canals with clean water that reflected everything in the sunlight.

We visited a cookware store and a bookstore.  Surprisingly, there were many English-language books in the store.  It reminded me of the FNAC International Bookstore in Paris with the exception that the FNAC had magazines, newspapers, and books in many languages, especially those of the European Union.

We made our way back to the train station and were happy to find seats after all the walking we had done.

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

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Eating Winter Seafood Meals in the Sables d'Olonne (Vendee, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Eating Winter Seafood Meals in the Sables d’Olonne (Vendée, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On another cold weekend in Paris (France), my husband Laurent and I bundled up toddler Florence and drove out to the Vendée region to visit Laurent’s grandmother, who lived in the Sables d’Olonne on the Atlantic oceanfront.

When we arrived, I walked to the indoor Arago Market  with Laurent’s grandmother to buy lunch which included:

-raw oysters

-pre-cleaned clams for steaming

-lamb fillets for grilling

Then, we took Florence for a walk down the Remblai.  It was pretty windy on the oceanfront.  Just a few streets inland, the temperature was warmer, because there was no wind.

We drank a Jurançon Doux as our cocktail.  This wine comes form Southwestern France and was pretty reasonably priced at the time.

Then, we ate raw oysters  - one dozen each.  I like to eat mine with fresh lemon juice.

Our main dish was grilled lamb fillets with green beans and small, French lima beans from Puy.  We drank a Bordeaux from the Médoc with the grilled lamb.  A selection of cheese followed this course and a nice dessert.

Laurent ate a chocolate éclair while ate a Polonaise, a fat cake soaked in rum that is supposed to resemble an old Polish lady.

We returned to Paris well fed.  Florence’s time by the Atlantic Ocean gave her pink cheeks and a happy smile.

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

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Visiting the Towns of St. Leonard de Noblat and St. Junien (Limousin, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Towns of St. Léonard de Noblat and St. Junien (Limousin, France) with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

After visiting the Adrien Dubouché Porcelain Museum in downtown Limoges (France), my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I drove to Aixe-sur-Vienne to buy porcelain at a store that specialized in white porcelain at the time on the Vienne River.

It was fun to visit the Maison de la Porcelan with Florence.  She liked all the dishes I showed her and described them as “C’est beau.”

We bought several pieces of white porcelain and went to the town of St. Léonard de Noblat.  The town is named after the hermit Léonard, who lived in the forest nearby.

The church in Saint Léonard de Noblat has many sculpted beasts on its sculpture outside meant to inspire awe and respect for God.

The Church was not empty.  I sat and let Florence practice pulling down the kneestand and pray a few times.

We went back to the great-aunt’s house for more vegetable appetizers and a charcuterie selection of Serrano ham from Spain, Italian prosciutto, and French rillettes with baguettes and bread.

I fell asleep as I went to bed that night.

The next morning, we went to the market in St. Junien.  The market sold cute bunnies.  Florence and I played with the soft bunnies while the vendor gave me rabbit recipes.

The town of St. Junien came to life when the hermit St. Junien began to heal the sick with water in the 6^th century.  Most people drank wine, because it was cleaner than well water due to it production methods.  He may have taught people to boil water to kill bacteria.

St. Junien like St. Léonard de Noblat searched for his soul in the woods much like Jesus and holy hermits did in the Middle East when they went to the desert.  There was a large monastery in St. Junien dedicated to the Saint.

I imagined how festive the town must look during its “ostentations,” which take place every seven years.  The “ostentations” are a series of processions of saints’ relics that are held in Limoges and its neighboring towns.

During the “ostentations” in St. Junien, people wear costumes and parade down the main street covered with leaves to look like the forest.  I read this information to Laurent as we walked through the market from the Michelin touring guide.

We bought strawberries and chocolate cake to bring to Laurent’s cousin’s house, who had invited us for lunch.

Our host told us that he spoke a “patois” or dialect during lunch.  This patois could be either the langue d’oc of the South of France or the langue d’oeil of the North of France.  The Limousin is the linguistic dividing line in France between those two dialects.

The name of both languages signifies “yes” in those languages and might make reference to swearing fealty to a medieval seigneur.

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

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Visiting the French Limousin Region and the Limoges Porcelain Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the French Limousin Region and the Limoges Porcelain Museum with Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

On a long holiday weekend for the Catholic holiday of Ascension, my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I set out for the French Limousin region in the South of France.

The French Limousin is full of forests and has soil that is rich in kaolin, used to make porcelain dishes such as those from Bernardaud and Haviland.

We passed by oversized, reddish brown Limousin cows lounging by the Vienne River.  These cows are called Limousin cows.  I wondered if Limousin cows were at the origin for the name “Limousine.” 

Golden Limousin oak trees lined our way.  The wood from these trees is used to make barrels for aging cognac.

The houses in the Limousin had rose- to clay-colored stone topped off with the orange, half-moon tiles you see on the Mediterranean Seaboard.

At a small village along a country highway, we turned in to a cluster of houses where several members of Laurent’s extended family lived.

We ate lunch at Laurent’s great-aunt’s home, who brought out champagne and flutes before we ate a lunch of several vegetable appetizers, a salad with smoked salmon and eggs, and a selection of cheese served with butter and baguettes.

After lunch, we set out along the Vienne River again and went to St. Junien where we would be staying at a local hotel called Le Boeuf Rouge, the Red Cow.

The name must have inspired us to go to McDonalds for dinner.  There was a crowd at McDonalds, pronounced “McDough” in French slang.  In Detroit, we called McDonalds “MickyD’s.”

Next morning, we went to the Leclerc grocery store to buy our breakfast.  French grocery stores bake a lot of their own croissants and baguettes, so this is not really a second-class dining option.

The aroma of baked bread made the supermarket smell wonderful.  We bought cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and baguettes and made hot chocolate in our hotel room.

I gussied Florence up for lunch at the great-aunt’s.  We had the same lunch as the day before minus the champagne.  It was a delicious menu the second day as well.

After lunch, Laurent, toddler Florence, and I went to the Adrien Dubouché Museum.

This Museum holds large porcelain, faience, and earthenware collections.  The basic differences between these kinds of tableware follow:

-porcelain – ceramic made by heating clay with kaolin at high temperatures

-faience – tin-glazed earthenware pottery like Faenza ware from Northern Italy

-earthenware – pottery made of fired clay and glazed, making it waterproof

The discovery of kaolin in 1768 in France made it possible to make hard porcelain like that found in the Far East.

Originally, Sèvres outside Paris was the main location for making porcelain, but after the First Empire, Limoges was chosen as the principal manufacturing site, because it had kaolin as well as wood for furnaces.

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

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Reuil-Malmaison Chateau outside Paris (France) - 1 : Napoleon and Josephine's Country Estate by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Visiting the Reuil-Malmaison Château outside Paris (France): Napoleon and Josephine’s Country Estate by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

The Reuil-Malmaison Château belonged to Josephine Beauharnais, the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte and Empress of France.

Napoleon liked going to Reuil-Malmaison, because Josephine had more relaxed etiquette at this château than in the Parisian salons.

Josephine was from the West Indies in the Caribbean, which is much hotter than France.  The fashion in this region tended to be lighter – in fabric and in color to deal with the heat.  Light colors reflect the sun rather than absorb it like black clothing. 

Light black garments might have been worn over clothing to do marketing and protect clothing, but generally clothes were not as constricting and hair was kept off the shoulders and neck to keep perspiration down in the West Indies (Caribbean).

Before visiting the Château, my husband Laurent, toddler Florence, and I visited the Parc de Bois-Préau nearby to just see what was in the park.  There was an aristocratic event going on:  a fox hunting dog show.

Five musicians in red waistcoats wandered around and played their circular hunting horns among the crowd.  Florence enjoyed running around the lawns.

We eventually made our way back to the Château and took a guided tour.  Josephine’s home was decorated in First Empire Style – lots of Egyptian motifs bathed in gold.

Florence squirmed during the visit, but I held her hand and stayed in back of the group in case Florence started chattering.  She liked looking at the gold Egyptian busts of the Sphinx on the chairs.

My favorite room was Napoleon’s recreation room, because it looks like the inside of a tent albeit an imperial one with lots of gold tassels.

Josephine’s red velvet bedroom had an octagonal mirror above the bed.  The general color scheme at Reuil-Malmaison is gold and black.  (The color scheme at Versailles is silver and white as a point of contrast.)

After visiting Reuil-Malmaison, we went to Versailles and let Florence splash her hands in the Neptune Fountain.

Then, we walked a kilometer to see Marie-Antoinette’s hamlet where she pretended to be a peasant with her ladies-in-waiting.

Marie-Antoinette’s hamlet is made up of a village of thatched roof farmhouses that gave us many cute photo opportunities for Florence.  Florence especially liked petting the sheep in the children’s zoo.

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

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