Fizz: Fashion and Non-Alcoholic Beverages Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Fizz: Fashion and Non-Alcoholic Beverages Game Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Famous people in show business often endorse products they use such as beverages, designer fashions, cars, make-up, and food to earn extra money from their public persona or “Brand.”  Some celebrities even become CEOs of their own companies making their brand products.

Designer fashion, designer accessories, cars, and beverages seem to be common among all items endorsed, if you look at advertising in magazines.

The name of this game is “Fashion and Beverage Industries CEO.”

The object is to develop business plans according to the Small Business Administration’s Business Plan Template at www.sba.gov. 

Developing business plans helps future CEOs learn how to think in numbers.  This is a good skill that you can practice even in junior high school. 

A good question to always ponder is:

“How can I keep the company afloat for 5 to 7 years in order to have profits and be able to hire people?”

Another good question to ask is: 

“What are the legal implications of even hiring a secretary?”

The tasks in this game are straight forward, but consume time to accomplish, but give you some marketing information to develop business plans.

Task 1:

-Look at the business plan template of the small business administration online at www.sba.gov and complete it.

-Do a SWOT analysis as part of your marketing plan writing.

(SWOT = Strength, Weakness, Opportunity, Threat)

Task 2:

-Draw the fashions in a history of fashion book starting with ancient Egypt and coming up to the present.

Task 3:

-Design fashions that show the wearers are fair leaders, who take care of people, yet are able to judge lawsuits based on scientific and legally obtained evidence.

Task 4:

-Do a business plan for your fashion line for leaders

Task 5:

-Research 10 different international beverages that are currently not bottled such an iced, Vietnamese coffee.

-Look at the ingredients for the 10 different beverages and look up USDA approval regulations for canning and selling beverages in the US.

-Deicide on 1 beverage to brand with and develop a business plan for it.

That’s it, but this is a lot of work.

However, practicing writing business plans helps with math and finance skills takes dreams into a sphere where they can be a profitable reality, if details are worked out in a business plan.

Have fun!!

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


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Albert Schweitzer Game - Part 4 - Urban Planning and 5 Winter Menus - Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Albert Schweitzer Game - Part 4 – Urban Planning and 5 Winter Menus – Created by Savvy Mom Ruth Paget

Urban planners learn about traffic flow and roads in their studies I would imagine, especially for ensuring that waste and garbage leave a city while food comes in, especially food that can be store and eaten in winter.

As an example in Monterey County (California), we have many descendants of Italian-Sicilian fisherman.  There are two winter meals we can almost always eat here that you can buy, store, and/or make:

-New England Clam Chowder

-Chicken Piccata with broccoli

-Pudding-based desserts (3 small bites)

or Cioppino Seafood Stew instead of Chicken piccata

I learned to make all of these items when I moved to Monterey 20+ years ago after eating them in restaurants, so I would know what they were supposed to taste like.

Roads, ports, and electric grids are maintained in good order, so those two meals can be made in Monterey County I think. 

There are other dishes that are made here, but this is what you can find in almost all Italian restaurants here as a tourist.  Check menus on websites before making reservations to be sure.

Alsace combines the best of France and Germany together.  It is very Merovingian in that way.

What I mean by that is that France has great roads organizing market distribution of agricultural products and the Germans make almost indestructible buildings for storing and distributing food. 

Many Germans and Eastern Europeans also like union, trucking jobs that allow them to travel Europe and buy nice things for their families as well.  These are not minor points when provisioning a city and making sure that garbage and waste leave every day in large cities while food comes in.

The cities in France tend to be organized in concentric circles where agricultural markets can exchange goods quickly in a discipline manner.  You can buy fresh seafood platters in Lyons, France for this reason just as you would in Brittany, France.

This theory of concentric circles of agricultural distribution is discussed in Fernand Braudel’s unfinished series of books The Identity of France and Georges Duby in Rural Economy and Country Life in the Medieval West.  Duby was an economist and historian.

Task 1:

Read both of those books to understand France’s sweet markets and rural life.

Task 2:

Read Pagnol’s works to understand the life of “rich peasants.”

5 Winter Meals that Alsatians Make Even if They Might Deny It

-choucroute with various pork sausages or goose sausages

-pork chops with applesauce

-egg noodles with sautéed mushrooms and butter

-roast duck with green olives

(olives are bottled and sold all over France)

-poached fish with light cream sauce and mushrooms

Those meals above can be made in the US with a little planning.

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

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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

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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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