Julia Child. I merely
say her name and visions of food, food, food appear. And there’s more—fun,
laughter, good company and learning—especially about food and fixing it.
Yesterday marked Julia Child’s centennial.
Let’s raise
a glass. Here’s to Julia! Here’s to happy hours in the kitchen!
And here’s
to cookbooks!
I’ve just
had the pleasure of reviewing Bob Spitz’s outstanding biography of the
intriguing Ms. Child—Dearie for Story Circle Book Reviews. (You can
check the review out at http://t.co/fQ0pR3R0)
While Julia turns out to be a dear, the title refers to how she addressed
others—they were always “Dearie.” Everyone, it seems, was dear to Julie. Okay,
almost everyone.
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| The sticky notes assure you--I'll be reading this one again--and, probably again. |
I’ve
blogged about Julia (feel like I know her) before. I read the excellent
collection of her correspondence with Avis DeVoto, As Always, Julia, and
immediately wanted to share. (You can find it at http://bit.ly/PZmZCz
.)
Now it’s
happened again. Like just about any good book about food and/or cooking, Dearie
sent me off in two directions: to the kitchen to cook and to my cookbooks.
Fortunately for me the cookbooks live in the kitchen bookcase so I could go in
both at the same time.
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| Two old favorites--my newlywed favorite and my mom's. |
At the
bookcase I grabbed a couple of books that have been with me a long, long time
and are as full of memories as they are recipes. I wish I could remember who
gave me Betty Crocker’s Dinner of Two as a wedding gift. No one could
have needed it more. I barely knew where the kitchen in my folk’s home was— my
writer mother encouraged me to write and read, but not to cook. So there I was
a bride who could boil water for a cup of tea and prepare a mean batch of
refrigerated biscuits. That was it. I needed, sorely needed, this book. It
lived on the kitchen counter. The pages are still crinkled and brown from the
spills and drips. But, not surprisingly, soon enough my family numbered five
and Dinner for Two went off the counter and onto a shelf. Never once did
I think of giving it away.
Now as I
through it, I remember that at-sea bride making the wonderful discovery that
she loved to cook. Still does. Oh yes,
the romantic Meringue Heart, or the exotic—to me—raspberry-current sauce for
ice cream. Did we only eat desserts? No,
there were the meatloafs during the week
and pot roasts on Sunday. Even liver and onions that the groom loved and the
cook found not bad, once she learned it didn’t have to be cooked for over an
hour as Mother did. (About 10 minutes does the trick.)
And my favorite recipe of all time
that I’ve never made—yet. The instructions for “Pheasant Baked in Cream”
begins, “Have the hunter . . .pluck, draw, clean and cut up the pheasant.” Good
idea, that’s not the cook’s job. As soon as Hunter Bob brings me a plucked,
drawn, cleaned and cut-up pheasant, I still may give it a try. Fact is I may
try several of these now that the household is down to two again!
After I reveled for a while in the
memories and promised myself broiled lamb chops with green peas and mint for
dinner tomorrow. I turned to another even older volume—a wedding gift to my
mother. Balanced Recipes put out by Pillsbury and copy written in 1933,
two years before my folks married. The treasures here are not the printed
recipes but the ones added in the back. I see Mother’s handwriting, and then my
Grandmother Beeman’s and then my Grandmother Nordyke’s. Suddenly I’m blinking
tears and decide to wait to explore this, and so—to be continued.
Meanwhile do you have some cookbook
memories? When and where did you learn to love cooking?
