Venice Film Festival at Gino's in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget

Venice Film Festival at Gino’s in Salinas, California by Ruth Paget 

I decided to celebrate the Biennale of Venice Film Festival 2022 (Mostra Internationale d’Arte Cinematografica) with a family outing to Gino’s Restaurant in Salinas, California. 

I wore my Murano beads from Venice, Italy to dinner. Murano beads are made by hand and have gold in them. You can order Murano necklaces from Amazon at a reasonable price. Murano beads look festive on plain colored shirts like the yellow one I had on. 

Gino’s makes homemade pasta dishes, which is why I like it. 

My daughter Florence Paget ordered pasta a la carbonara, a Roman dish worthy of Rome’s cinecittà studios. Gino’s carbonara is made with chopped pancetta, egg, and Parmesan cheese sauce. My husband Laurent ordered linguine with shrimp. 

Producer dad got a heaping bowlful of plump, briny shrimp. He smiled as he ate that great dish. 

I ordered cannoli with minced veal and spinach covered in rich Parmesan cream sauce. Wow! Was that good! 

Venice has several Biennales including those for art and music. I think it would be fun to do something like Beaujolais Nouveau for these events in Italian restaurants around the world.  (The Biennale for art runs through November.  Plan a gallery visit and wear an onyx bead bracelet or necklace to go with your black pumps with dinner afterwards to do a local celebration of the Biennale for art.)

For example, before a pasta of your choice, you could order Aperol Spritz or Campari Spritz cocktails. Young people could drink limonatta (lemonade) or aranciatta (orangeade) from San Pellegrino. 

For a more upscale celebration, you could invest in Venetian Murano beads, scarves, or ties. I like the Murano beads from Raffinato. 

In Monterey County, Gino’s in Salinas is where I will be next year to celebrate the Venice Film Festival, thinking of Sophia Loren, who said, “I owe everything to pasta.” 

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

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T-Shirt Economics by Ruth Paget

T-Shirt Economics by Ruth Paget 

Detroit Tale 

Motown Detroit is also known as Detroit Rock City due to major funds generated by white rock bands selling merchandise, especially T-shirts. 

Every white Detroiter buys a T-shirt at a rock concert and has a collection of 15 – 20 of them in use at one time. Bars also sell T-shirts in this working class town. 

My big sister K. taught me at a young age the following math equation: 

10 T-shirts x $20 = $200 

T-shirts sell for $30 now, so the new equation is : 10 shirts x $30 = $300 

With these new tap credit cards, you can get 10 taps in 15 minutes for $300. 

In an hour using tap credit cards, one person can generate $1,200 in sales. 

If you have 10 people tapping credit cards in an hour, you could generate $12,000 in sales. 

- 40 T-shirts can generate $1,200 in sales. 

- 400 T-shirts can generate $12,000 in sales 

Stadium shows can generate a lot of money, if you have skilled retail workers running credit card machines. 

T-shirts also publicize as rock bands know, so they keep prices relatively low. 

I think T-shirts should be marketed more extensively, because they also do not cost too much to buy the basic shirt. 

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

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Omelets All Day $ Money Hack by Ruth Paget

Omelets All Day $ Money Hack by Ruth Paget 

Going to French-Canadian Cafés in Windsor (Ontario, Canada) when I was in high school in Detroit (Michigan) taught me that you could eat omelets any time of day as a meal. 

I loved omelets with melted gruyère cheese and mushroom ragout that I could eat there topped off with a sprinkling of sweet paprika from Szeged, Hungary. The omelets usually came with a side of salad in tangy vinaigrette and two slices of crusty, country bread. 

Sometimes I would even make those omelets on Friday nights after skating at Hartt Plaza on the riverfront. We had a Larousse Gastronomique cookbook at home that gave me a recipe for slow-cooked mushroom ragout made with melted butter and an addition of freshly chopped parsley at the end. 

I did a presentation to my high school French club about omelettes aux champignons et fromage (mushroom-cheese omelets). I duly noted that eggs bring protein for muscle building to this dish and that cheese brings calcium for bones. I also noted that mushrooms have fiber for unclogging arteries. My cost-conscious French classmates noted that this dish was inexpensive for a lot of health benefits. 

I still make omelets for my husband Laurent and me. I use three large, organic eggs per person from Costco as well as the cheese from Allgäu Alps in Germany and mushrooms from Oregon and Canada that I buy there. 

Now that I live in California, I eat Western omelets when I go to Denny’s or other Route 66-type diners made with sautéed green peppers, onions, mushrooms, strips of ham, and melted low-fat Monterey Jack cheese. 

And, best of all, omelets are still pretty low-cost to make. 

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

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DuMochelle Auction House in Detroit, Michigan by Ruth Paget

DuMochelle’s Auction House in Detroit, Michigan by Ruth Paget 

While my friends attended classical music concerts at the Detroit Institute of the Arts on Saturday mornings, my mother and I would walk down Washington Boulevard from our apartment building to DuMochelle Auctioneers on the riverfront. 

We had the DuMochelle auction bid sheet and item descriptions mailed to us to look over before the auction. 

DuMochelle’s slogan was, “We have sold everything in Grosse Pointe four or five times.” 

Grosse Point was an exclusive Detroit suburb full of wealthy European aristocrats, descendants of people who had come to the United States before World War II started. They had furnishings sent after them and bought while in the US. Inheritance taxes made heirs send items to DuMochelle’s for auction. 

Detroiters and Canadians felt no compunction buying antique items at DuMochelle’s. When I would preview auction items on Friday after school, I would say to myself, “So, like where did you get this?” as I viewed floral silk screens from Versailles that went in front of unlit fireplaces. 

I would joke with my mom and say, “Do you think we could mix and match this Biedermeier desk with the Chinese Chippendale furniture we have at home? They are all nice pieces.” 

My mom would say, “I’m here for silver, crystal, jewelry, and Oriental carpets.” She really was and waited long enough to get deals on all of them. I loved learning about art. 

Detroit’s Dutch population keeps a steady flow of Renaissance still life paintings on sale at DuMochelle’s. A salesman told me, “The still lifes of food remind you to keep food and meals in the house to fend off death.” 

I remembered that as I ate the mustardy turkey and provolone sandwiches offered by DuMochelle’s to auction goers. I also added cream to the free coffee they offered with lunch. The auction crew had fun and free lunch. 

I viewed DuMochelle’s as a potential employer one day. I had a science and arts curriculum at Cass Technical High School in Detroit. I studied industrial art as a minor with classes in the following areas as part of my high school degree:  

-one year of art history for painting 

-one year of art history for sculpture 

-one semester pen and ink drawing 

-one semester figure drawing 

-four years of French language study 

I did not work at DuMochelle’s, but I did work in France, so these studies were not wasted. 

I also passed on my knowledge of art history to my daughter Florence Paget by having her study art and design and art history in high school as well and encouraging her to go through the educator pages for the Asian Art Museum website in San Francisco. 

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

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Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany by Ruth Paget

Porsche Museum in Stuttgart, Germany by Ruth Paget 

Stuttgart is Germany’s richest city. Mercedes-Benz and Porsche cars are manufactured here. The city is surrounded by Riesling vineyards. The city’s cash flow is also assured as the home of reasonably priced Ritter-Sport chocolate. 

One of Stuttgart’s star attractions is the Porsche Museum. My husband Laurent and I decided to visit it and contribute to the local economy when we lived in Stuttgart for five years. 

I felt like Laurent was getting to do something he liked as one of our cultural outings. We usually visit lots of castle kitchens and monasteries with pre-Columbian vegetable gardens. I like studying medieval household management, but do recognize that cars make modern life nice, especially in the Western United States. 

We drove our GM product to the Porsche Museum, and had fun walking around the red, white, and yellow race cars in the gleaming white museum. 

Germans make great merchandise, so we headed to the gift shop to make some purchases. We bought USB ports for our computers that had model Porsche cars on their ends and looked through T-shirts, caps cups, and decks of cards with Porsche models as jacks, queens, and kings. 

I thought the T-shirts were informal surveys to see which Porsche models might sell well. 

At home, I made shrimp kebabs with shrimp I had marinated in lemon juice and crushed garlic overnight. 

We ate chic Weihenstephan yogurt as dessert. Weihenstephan is better known for its beer. The monastery brewery was founded in 1040 and has a limited number of other food products for sale in Germany. 

To finish off our meal, we drank smooth Dallmayr coffee from the department store of the same name in Munich. 

I thought the lunch was something a trim and well-off German might like. 

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

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Dance Party Fundraising by Ruth Paget

Dance Party Fundraising by Ruth Paget 

One of the quickest ways the Inner-City Youth Tour to China raised money was with dance parties in 1978 – 1979. 

The way this worked was that you paid $5 if you brought something to eat or drink for the party. If you just showed up, you paid $10. Wrists were marked with “paid” stamps like they are at small club shows as a receipt. Homes in Detroit are large. 

You can easily fit 100 people in a living room with a full dining room off the side. We could raise between $500 - $750 in an evening with a dance party – an absolute win-win fundraiser. 

People are not finicky eaters in Detroit. I think the standard party dish is onion dip with Lay’s potato chips and soda. If you make onion dip yourself, it is super cheap. 

Detroit has a huge Eastern European population that came to the city to build cars, which means that sour cream is plentiful and inexpensive in the Motor City. 

The hillbilly contingent to the workforce (including my dad) mixes dry French onion soup mix with sour cream to make onion dip. This is great with plain potato chips or the ones with chives and sour cream. I taught the Puerto Ricans on the tour how to make this. 

Dance parties were a huge hit, because this was the Disco Era when we were raising money to go to China. We danced and sang into the night to Donna Summer, Lionel Richie, Gloria Gaynor, Sister Sledge, Chaka Khan, Santana, and Earth, Wind, and Fire. 

The Inner-City Youth Tour to China did go to China, and the dance alumni of our fundraising efforts went on to make beach parties at Daytona Beach, Florida a huge success, too, I think. 

One of the co-leaders of the youth tour went on to found and edit People en Español as a lasting cultural impact of our fundraising efforts. 

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

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Cold Brew and Iced Coffee $ Money Hacks by Ruth Paget

Cold Brew and Iced Coffee $ Hack by Ruth Paget 

Both iced coffee and cold brew are mega money savers, if you make them at home. I let a lot of coffee go cold in Detroit (Michigan) as I watched the news in French that was broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Channel (CBC) in Windsor (Canada) just across the Detroit River when I was in high school. (Free French oral comprehension lessons to go with high school French classes.) 

I was teaching myself to like bitter coffee, so I could pass as French in Canada. I thought coffee was bilge, though, compared to tea, especially cold. 

However, I did not want to waste money and throw out the coffee in the pre-microwave era I lived in. (All this money management economics destined my college to be the Austrian School of Economics at the University of Chicago I sometimes think.) 

I knew the Greeks made iced coffee, so I poured the cold coffee over ice and added milk and sugar. That was good and refreshing. I made it summer and winter and still do despite loving Starbucks. 

So, that is how to make inexpensive iced coffee. Cold brew is even simpler. 

I have learned to love coffee now that I am middle-aged. Coffee is even supposed to be good for you now due to its antioxidants. 

Cold brew coffee is now the rage and so easy to make at home. Place 1 or 2 tablespoons of ground coffee in the bottom of a French Press Coffee Pot. Pour in water and let the water stand on the coffee grounds for twelve hours. 

Press down on the grounds with the French Press lid and serve the cold brew over ice. 

I use a Starbucks insulated 3-cup container for this. These recipes are easy and can fit all budgets depending on the coffee you use. Amazon sells Starbucks, Lavazza, and Dallmayr coffee, if you cannot find these items in your area. 

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

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