You won't find any hot dogs or barbecued ribs at Catherine Thorpe's annual summer potluck, and anyone with the gumption to show up with Jell-O salad or funeral potatoes risks being banned from the backyard forever. By now, it's a rare friend of Thorpe's who doesn't know what is required on July 14:

A fresh salad niise, perhaps, or a caramelized onion tart and a lemon souffle. The more adventurous might show up with a steaming pot of bouillabaisse or a platter of cres made with Grand Marnier.

And of course, champagne is always welcome – both alcoholic and non-alcoholic — so that everyone can properly celebrate Bastille Day, the beloved holiday honoring the beginning of the French Revolution.

But Thorpe's annual bash has become much more than an excuse to sample gourmet cuisine made with the three French staples of cheese, cream and butter.

It's a way for French natives and French wannabes to hold on to traditions and savor a little bit of Paris in a pioneer town better known for fry sauce than foie gras.

"It keeps me from getting homesick," says Thorpe, a mother of five from Paris who is 60 but looks years younger, thanks to a lifetime of consuming more coq au vin than cheeseburgers.

"Speaking French and listening to French music is a way to retain my heritage and pass it along to somebody else," she says. "I have friends from France who have lived in the United States 20 years, and they no longer speak the language or carry on the traditions. They've lost their French, and to me, that's terribly sad. I do not want that to happen to me."

There is little danger of that, since for the past 12 years, Thorpe has run Salt Lake City's Vive la France School, where she teaches everything from conversational French to how to cook up the perfect pot of beef bourguignonne.

In her country-French living room filled with snapshots of France taken by her American husband, her students learn French history, listen to Edith Piaf and other French artists on the stereo and are taught correct pronunciations so that native Parisians won't race for the door, covering their ears.

On yearly treks to France, Thorpe expects her students to leave their English at home as she shows them hidden treasures off the beaten path taken by most tourists.

When I joined her for a Free Lunch of roast lamb with baby potatoes and carrots at the Paris Bistro, she had just returned from two weeks in Burgundy, touring wineries and castles and spending a few days with her mother, who lives outside Paris.