Albert Schweitzer Game - Part 3 - Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Albert Schweitzer Game – Part 3 – Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Rounding out the Alsatian menu with protein, carbohydrates, and fruit has allowed Alsatians to withstand severe winters and wars for centuries. 

Much of their agricultural bounty can be bottled or canned to last over winter.  Alsatians can live off the agricultural products grown in their region, if they have to.  Many of these products are familiar to Americas.

As you read through the agricultural products associated with Alsace, I am giving French Club members 3 tasks to do:

Task 1:

Try to think of recipes you can make in the US with the items that are not Alsatian, but use the same ingredients.

Task 2:

Read Marguerite Spoerlin’s La Cuisine Alsacienne and make the recipes, using substitutions if you have to.  Venison and goose, for example, are difficult to find in US supermarkets.  You might be able to order them at Customer Service counters, but they are not on the shelves.

Task 3:

Think of homemade soups to make and what you can use as thickeners.

Alsatian Vegetables – Main Ones

-White asparagus

The best white asparagus is supposed to come from the Alsatian town of Hoerdt.

-Mushrooms

Various kinds

-Baby carrots

-cabbage

Alsatian Carbohydrates

-egg noodles such as those made by Lustucru

-baguette slices

-kugelhopf

(Germans eat egg noodles, too, in the form of spätzle.)

Alsatian Fruit Orchards:  A Tart Maker’s Paradise

Alsace is famous for its fruit orchards, whose produce is used to make both fruit tarts ad eau-de-vie such as Poire Williams.

Some of the produce that grows in the orchards of Alsace includes:

-plums (quetsches – purple plums)

-apples

-cherries for cherry pie

-apricots for clafoutis – similar to American cobblers from the South

There is a Dole, France like the Dole name for pineapples and presidential candidates.

Learning how to make quiche crust will save you money in the long run, if you figure out how much a homemade crust costs versus store-bought ones.

Task 4:

How much does each store bought crust cost?

How much does it cost to make a homemade crust?

Happy figuring!!!!!!!!!!!!

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

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Albert Schweitzer Game: French Alsatian Food - Part 2 - Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Albert Schweitzer Game:  French Alsatian Food – Part 2 – Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Alsatian Cuisine is seasonal which means that different agricultural products grow or are harvested in summer, fall, winters, and spring.

In winter, the following meats are served with mushroom gravies or sauerkraut with caraway seeds.  Mushrooms grow in the Christmas tree forests of Alsace and are served in gravy form with meat and steamed potatoes as side dishes in the winter.

Typical dishes include that I have eaten at the Relais des Moines in Riquewihr and various locations around Strasbourg’s Cathedral:

-venison with mushroom gravy and baguette slices – pinot noir from Burgundy is the wine of choice. 

Alsace’s best wines are dry, fruity Rieslings.  House wines tend to be from nearby Burgundy.

-freshwater fish with a light cream sauce – Riesling or pinot grigio from Alsace as wines

-wild boat sausage with grape leaves stuffed with rice and avgolemono lemon sauce – pinot grigio from Alsace or Chablis from Burgundy

-roast goose with sausage – Riesling from Alsace as a wine

-roast pork with baked white beans (cannellini) in tomato  sauce – pinot noir from Burgundy

-split and roasted small wild birds with buttered, egg noodles with – pinot grigio from Alsace

In Strasbourg, I ate choucroute garnie (sweet sauerkraut with a variety or pork or goose sausage) and flammekeuche (onion pizza) with Foster’s beer that is brewed in town.

There is a beer route in Alsace when I read the book La Route de la Bière en Alsace by Gabriel Thierry and Elénore Delpierre.

The task:

French club members should try and translate that book for themselves into English.  It has not been translated yet.

Plan an imaginary trip to Alsace.

Try to make those dishes above from an Alsatian cookbook such as La Cuisinière Alsacienne by Marguerite Spoerlin.

Task:  Translate the above cookbook into English for yourself.  It has not been translated.

Part 3 of the Schweitzer Game to come…..

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books

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Albert Schweitzer: The Alsatian Civilization Game (French Region) - Part 1 - Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Albert Schweitzer:  The Alsatian Civilization Game (French Region) Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Background:

This French Alsatian Civilization game is devoted to Albert Schweitzer, a major contributor to the field of public health who worked in Africa.

French club members will learn about the culture and history of Alsace in this game as well as an introduction to the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs as a method to analyze Alsatian civilization and other civilizations around the world.

Alsace is located in central Eastern France and is separated from Germany by the Rhine River.  Germany and France have fought many wars to dominate this region that is rich in food, industrious and well-educated people, and rich in both wine and beer and the dishes that go along with these two items.

Why are Alsace and its Capital at Strasbourg so Important?

1-Strasbourg, France is the headquarters of the elected European Parliament 

(Brussels is the home of the civil servants for the European Union.)

2-Strasbourg is the home of ENA – Ecole Nationale d’Administration

All of France’s presidents have attended ENA after attending the Institut de Science Politique (Popularly called Sciences Po.)

3-Strasbourg is the home of the Mérovingian kings of France and Germany.

Charlemagne was Karl de Grosse.

4-Reliable and nutritious cuisine that can be stored over winter, if preserved correctly

5-Being able to serve 5 winter menus that can be made from the pantry

6-Urban planning that incorporates the best features of France and Germany for town planning

Method Used to Describe Alsatian Culture: Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs

The usual image used to describe Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is useful for showing that humans have the same needs to survive, but achieve them in different ways in different cultures.

I used to describe this to Florence as: “There are many roads that lead to the same mountaintop.  The roads are different civilizations.”

I wrote my book Eating Soup with Chopsticks as a way to explain to her what I meant by that statement for Japan.

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is usually displayed as a triangle with 5 levels.  I think 4 levels is fine.  I would describe the 3 levels as follows:

Level 1 – Economically providing for food, clothing, and shelter for yourself

Level 2 – Economically providing for food, clothing, and shelter for yourself and your family

Level 3 – Work or Volunteer work in the community to help other families and individuals become economically independent to prevent crime and help community members with lifelong learning. 

Level 4 – The top of the pyramid is call “Self-Actualization” where a person economically provides for herself, her family, and next generations.  Providing for next generations usually takes the form of sharing knowledge through creative work such as books, films, dance, and/or blogs that can be passed down through history.

If you have worked most of your life in public service and can provide decades’ worth of evidence, I think you should do knowledge management to help new professionals as you continue to develop professional skills that will promote your profession through developing ways to acquire skills quickly.

In this Schweitzer game, I would ask French Club members to compare Alsace with their communities.  All librarians with master’s degrees have to study reference;  they can help you find this information that will also build your reference skills with online and paper reference books.

The Environment in Alsace:  Compare and Contrast with your Community

Clean and unpolluted water is the foundation of the strong civilization in Alsace.

The stork is the symbol of Alsace.  It is famous for brining babies to families in myth.  Storks have fragile legs.  They would die quickly, if water they stand in and drink is poisoned in any way.

Your tasks:  

What bird would you name as a symbol of your community? 

What was the population of that bird 5 years ago as opposed to today? 

If there are changes in number, what could account for those changes?

Storks in Alsace make nests in unused chimneys in row houses that sit along canals.

Where does your community bird live and lay eggs?

Alsace has a Cigone Land or Stork Land for children that educates about the needs of the stork.

How are young birds similar to young children?

End of Part 1 for today

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

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Manga and Anime Rallyes in Seaside, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Manga and Anime Rallyes in Seaside, California by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

My daughter Florence is part of the generation that saw Pixar animated films explode into the marketplace that used Computer-Assisted Design to create their mobile images.

When the “kids” became teens, they wanted to be animators, voice talent, and animation-studio moguls for CAD films (Computer-Assisted Design).

Japanese manga comics and anime comics were linked to CAD, especially anime, which creates 3-D images on a 2-D surface using the techniques of vanishing-point perspective, alteration of frame lengths, and color and shading.

The library system where I worked had a huge graphic novel collection (graphic novel = new word for comics).  When I was in library school, Art Spiegelman”s graphic novel Mauss was a hit and later Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novel Persepolis about Iran was made into a film.

I loved using the comics medium to introduce historical topics as well as being a leisure medium.  I also supported using the newer graphic novels to teach conversational English skills and vocabulary to English-language learners (ELLs).  There are usually 250 vocabulary words in a graphic novel, which is a nice amount of words to memorize before going onto a next graphic novel in a series.

When my daughter was in high school and received a car for her 16^th birthday (Detroit mom and French MBA dad gift), she was free to go out with her friends and do “Manga and Anime Rallyes.”

I was not allowed to go to the rallyes, but all the restaurants they went to in Seaside knew “Mom” would cover a restaurant bill, if Florence’s “beginner” credit card with a limited amount of money to spend on it did not work.

I did ply Florence with questions playfully to find out that she and about 5 friends went to Harumi Japanese (formerly Fuji) in Seaside and ordered a family-style meal that they all split the tab for and did Manga and Anime Rallyes. 

I thought what they ate sounded great and they left a good tip, because 6 is a rather large number of people to serve.    

-Dragon rolls made with eel sushi and and topped with avocado

-California rolls (cooked fish sushi rolls with mayonnaise)

-Bento lunches to share with shrimp tempura and beef teriyaki

-the bento lunches still come with miso soup made with tofu and seaweed, salads, and rice.

-the kids did not eat sashimi (raw fish), because it is expensive

-the kids drank sodas and Japanese fad sodas as a “cocktail”

The kids all had individual plates and would share out what they wanted depending on food preferences, allergies, and/or religious beliefs.

If Harumi was very busy, the teens would go to another restaurant in Seaside.  There were several very close to Harumi.  Florence had a mobile phone and would tell me, if she was going to a place besides Harumi for lunch and anime rallye.  Almost all of these restaurants are still there (20+ years just counting from the time I have been in California.)

-Nifty Fifties Café

-Baan Thai

-Orient (Vietnamese and Chinese)

-Round Table Pizza

-Stammtisch (German – Bavarian)

-City Diner (Filipino and American)

-Tortuga (Mexican)

-Orient Express (Korean)

-Lucky Bamboo (Chinese)

-Borders Bookstore Café

-Paris Bakery

-Chef Lee’s (Chinese)

-Former Lee's Garden in Marina (Chinese)

-Taquitos (in Salinas)

The reason I could not go on these outings was probably, because the kids met their boyfriends at these Manga and Anime Rallyes.

They played the Japanese game Go and Sushi Go!, read manga and anime, and drew before and after eating depending on the crowd in the restaurant.

However, I was the Youth Services Librarian for Monterey County (California) at the time, so I asked Florence to help me start a “Game” using library books with the ultimate goal of creating Animated Movie Moguls.

I did a handout for staff at all 17-branches of our library system, gave it to homework center coordinators, and did electronic database workshops around the county showing how to use the library’s online resources that you could get from home. 

I made handouts for these workshops.  All the students in Monterey County knew about these services and all library staff learned how to teach how to do these “holds,” which were “reserve-and-pick up” orders on books in the library system.

(I also let the Children’s Council of Monterey County know about these workshops and gave them information.)

The Animated Movie Mogul Game runs like this:

You had to make a list of all animated books in the Monterey County System and read them twice and do all the exercises in them twice to build a portfolio to show a college counselor to get into CAD classes using the leveling up procedure of video games:

-Practice D’Nealian handwriting to strengthen hands for drawing. 

(Also, some people will pay to have invitations, dinner placecards, and menus handwritten in this style.)

-Practice calligraphy styles

(Read about history and usage practices)

-Draw landscapes

-Draw buildings using perspective

-Draw landscapes in perspective

-Draw cars of various makes in perspective

-Draw various animals, including horses, in various poses

(Start with postcard photos of animals)

-Draw garden flowers and bushes using a gardening book and from real life

-Draw wildflowers using a field guide and from real life

-Draw stick figures of the human body in motion

-Draw portraits

-Draw fashion from a history of fashion reference book

(Start with Egypt)

-Read Dummies books about how to do Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Access

Work on setting up a database of your contacts in Access, especially people who can help you get into college and apply for merit scholarships

-Read CAD (Computer-Assisted Design Books)

-Set up shots like Hitchcock did to shoot film scenes

-Meet with a college counselor to discuss your career goals

This Manga and Anime Rallye I have described above can be done at home or in a youth center, too.

Expansion 1:  History of Graphic Novels

Mini Expansion now that the "kids" have graduated from college.  I read all the library books I could on the history and techniques used in comics, graphic novels, manga (Japanese graphic novels), manwha (Korean graphic novels), and anime (Japanese 3-D comics that use the techniques of film).  There are probably many more comic history books in the library, but these  4 books look like updates on some more classical works:

Understanding Comics:  The Invisible Art  by Scott McCloud

This book along with Schodt's work that follows are the classics in the field.  I have read both of these.

Manga! Manga!:  The World of Japanese Comics By Frederick L. Schodt

The Comics:  An Illustrated History of Comic Strip Art by Jerry Robinson

Comic Book Nation:  The Transformation of Youth Culture in America by Bradforth W. Wright


Expansion 2:  French Comics

I like Asterix and the Goths.  Manga readers should learn about Comics Around the World.  There is an Asterix Amusement Park for families outside Paris, France.

This comic series, Asterix and the Goths, is about the ancient French called the Gauls, who had to defend themselves against marauding ancient Romans.

My husband Laurent and I were able to buy a series of Asterix in English over the years at Atlantis Fantasy World in Santa Cruz, California, which specializes in graphic novels.  We usually combined a visit here with a day outing to Beach Boardwalk Amusement Park.

Expansion 3:  Monica from Brazil

I have an entire blog devoted to Monica comics from Brazil on this Savvy Mom Ruth Paget website.

Read her series to be international.

Expansion 3: Mafalda from Argentina

This comic was available in Spanish in book format at the library system where I worked.  Mafalda is a comic from Argentina.  I mentioned this comic to Spanish speakers at work and said American students learning Spanish might like it, too.


(Disclaimer:  I grew up reading Archie comics about suburban, American high schools and Ivanhoe historical comics, because I am related to Sir Walter Scott according to a great-aunt through my Hodgson relatives. The Hodgsons have more children than the Penningtons even.  They all made use of public libraries to keep their children reading and entertained.)

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

Click here for:  Ruth Paget's Amazon Books