The University of Chicago Press has a book sale now through June 15, 2025 and a new release of the Odyssey translation out by Daniel Mendelsohn.
University of Chicago Press Sale Information
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Thank you Mercado Libre in Argentina for carrying my book Eating Soup with Chopsticks!
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Visiting Mozart’s Childhood Home in Salzburg, Austria by Ruth Paget
When my husband Laurent and I lived in Stuttgart (Germany), our daughter Florence Paget came to visit us when she was on a semester break from Juilliard for three weeks.
She was studying playwriting, but I thought she really should visit the Mozart House in Salzburg, Austria for school spirit. (Stage mom Ruth was the one who secretly wanted to visit Austria again.) So, we set out for Austria in our car and enjoyed driving through Bavaria east to Salzburg.
Salzburg, which means salt city, is close to the German border. Once we arrived in the Altstadt, old city, where Mozart’s home is located, we went out for a walk. This area has soaring Baroque architecture, which may have inspired Mozart on carriage rides or walks around town as a child.
Mozart’s home is not elaborate which reminds you that music requires a lot of practice to master the basics before you delve into creativity. Mozart was a child prodigy, who no doubt practiced a lot, but he must have been motivated to achieve what he did at such an early age.
I like to think that he was motivated by positive rewards such as performing in beautiful clothes for the emperor and aristocrats on big occasions, but for the everyday motivations I think the pastries of the Austro-Hungarian Empire might have been ample rewards for getting practice done.
The big three desserts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire might have encouraged Mozart’s creativity I think – Sachertortes, Dobostortes, and Linzertortes. I used the Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafes of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague cookbook by Rick Rodgers (496 pages - $2.99 today on Kindle) to look up what is in these pretty pastries in the window:
-Sachertorte – This pastry is the culinary symbol of Vienna, Austria. It is a chocolate glazed cake with horizontally split layers with apricot preserves placed between the layers.
-Dobostorte – This pastry is a Hungarian dish from Budapest. It is made of five thin layers of chocolate cake layers with chocolate buttercream filling and topped off with caramel.
-Linzertorte – This is a pastry from Linz, Austria. It is a fruit preserves pastry like a Danish with a lattice crust.
Positive feedback in the form of pastries might well have been the daily motivation for practice for young Mozart.
All this is speculation, of course, to discuss while enjoying a pastry and coffee with whipped cream during a typical Austrian jause, coffee break, in Salzburg, Austria.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Curried Fried Rice Meal by Ruth Paget
A fast lunch I prepare for myself is curried fried rice. The inspiration for this meal is Chinese. However, the Chinese add more ingredients like peas and ham or shrimp, especially in restaurants.
For everyday lunches, I use the following recipe:
Serves 1
Ingredients:
-2 tablespoons olive oil
-2 teaspoons Madras curry powder or another brand
(Look for turmeric in the curry ingredients. It is a good antioxidant.)
-1 (7.4 ounce) container of cooked Bibigo sticky Korean rice
-2 beaten eggs
-salt and pepper to taste
Steps:
1-Heat olive oil and curry in a sauce pan till steaming.
2-Add the cooked sticky rice. Break up the rice and turn it to coat with the yellow cooking oil.
3-When the rice is steaming, add the beaten eggs and turn for 2 to 3 minutes or until cooked.
4-Remove the rice and eggs from the heat. Season them with salt and pepper and serve.
As a dessert, I eat two or three clementines after the curry rice and drink a small carton of whole milk.
This meal is fast and easy and still relatively inexpensive even with the higher price of eggs.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Pancake Supper Fundraising by Ruth Paget
I learned about pancake supper fundraising as a child when I attended pancake suppers at my family’s Baptist church in Detroit (Hazel Park), Michigan.
The entire congregation came often with friends to eat pancakes and raise money for children’s programs. The cost was around $5 per person plus any voluntary extra donation in the 1960s and 1970s.
The following items came with the pancake supper:
-3 pancakes
-3 packages of maple syrup (This was easily obtainable in Michigan.)
-3 butter packages
-a fruit salad for dessert
-cold, sweetened iced tea
-lemon wedges, if requested
-a silverware and napkin packet
Our church had a cafeteria-style kitchen where we would get a tray and be served our pancakes, fruit salad, and silverware packet.
At lunch tables covered with paper tablecloths, servers would bring us our sweetened iced tea on trays to avoid spills. The fruit salad was low-calorie and pretty nutritious.
The fruit salad was made with the following items:
-canned, no-sugar-added mandarin orange sections with the can juice
-fresh apple cubes
-slices of fresh banana
The fruit contained Vitamin C, and the pancakes made with milk and eggs contained protein and calcium.
Sometimes the teen group would perform a skit from the Christmas play. Little children sang Sunday school songs.
Pancakes cost very little to make, if made from scratch. Pancake fundraisers are profitable and easy fundraisers if organized well. Check if you need catering insurance to do this for your organization.
I always enjoyed going to pancake suppers as a child in Detroit, Michigan and think these events might do well in the 2020s as well.
(Note: Pancakes have their origin in Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome, but the Dutch are credited with creating their modern version.)
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Visiting Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina by Ruth Paget
The first time I visited Asheville, North Carolina was with my mom. She was driving me home from my childhood vacationland – Murrells Inlet, South Carolina (outside Myrtle Beach) – where I had stayed with my sister.
Mom drove her black Thunderbird, which I thought looked like a movie-star Mercedes, back to Detroit (Michigan) up and around the Appalachian Mountains. The ride is thrilling since a lot of the freeway sits on stilts around the mountains with treetops below.
We listened to country music on the radio. The only other choice at the time was gospel. We stopped to visit “an American castle” when Biltmore Estate surged into view.
Biltmore looks like a French Loire Valley château notably the fairy tale Ussé château but on a grander scale like Chambord château further down the Loire River. I was so happy they had room on the guided tour for us despite not reserving ahead of time.
I think I was in the fourth grade at the time and vaguely remember that the guide said the Vanderbilts made their fortune in transportation (railroads and shipping) in the 19th century. I was impressed that the Biltmore Estate had 100 bedrooms each with their own bathroom.
I asked if each room had a telephone when I saw what looked like a manual dial phone by the door of each room. “Some rooms have telephones, but that is an intercom. If a family member or guest needs something, they call the butler on that intercom. The butler decides if what someone requests is a job for him or the head of housekeeping,” the guide explained. Modern hotels still function like this when you make calls to guest services to request something.
My next question was, “Do you have a hotel here?”
My mother intervened at this point, “We have to go home, so I can work Monday.”
I was disappointed, but understood. The tour guide mentioned at the end of the tour that the Vanderbilts had a university nearby, if we wanted to visit that, too.
Back in the black Thuderbird on the way to Detroit, my mom drove around Vanderbilt University to check out the campus. I thought the campus was pretty, but even as a child I liked cities. (Detroit was fun.)
I thought about Biltmore a lot in high school. I had two pairs of favorite jeans by Gloria Vanderbilt with swans on the label next to her name that I wore to be cooler than the Calvin Klein wearers. We had anorexia wars to see who could be thinner in their straight leg jeans.
On some more recent visits to Asheville, my husband Laurent and I toured the University of North Carolina – Asheville campus and bought a 501 German Verbs book at the university bookstore to do some verb conjugating as a souvenir of living in Stuttgart, Germany.
The Biltmore Estate now has become a tourism magnet for Asheville, North Carolina offering an outdoor concert series, garden tours, exhibits for families like the current one on Tutankhamun, biking trails, wine tastings, and a hotel with a spa no doubt.
I like it that this American castle can be maintained by offering services to the public that allow everyone a chance to be a prince or princess for the day.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France
Food history buffs might be interested in today’s Kindle deal - The Food Book by DK Publishing - 1,197 pages about the origins, traditions, and use of everyday foods from “salt to sushi” for $1.99 today.
I absolutely purchased this to learn more about what I eat and be a better consumer.
By Ruth Paget, author Eating Soup with Chopsticks and Marrying France