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Julia Child's Lessons in Living: She combined a Puritan work ethic with a love of life.
Opinion Journal ^ | August 17, 2004 | Amy Finnerty

Posted on 08/18/2004 8:26:41 AM PDT by billorites

If someone with a fake French accent, or $400 haircut, told us that genes, not butter, would kill us, we might not believe her. But when Julia Child said it, we were ready to place our lives in her hands--and pass the leg of lamb.

Call her our Lewis & Clark of the kitchen. Ms. Child took wary Americans by the hand some 50 years ago and led them through an unexplored landscape of edible French words. Dressed in the style of a third-grade teacher, a glass of red sometimes tilting dangerously in her hand, she made calves brains appetizing and kitchen mishaps forgivable on her PBS program, "The French Chef."

Technically, Ms. Child, who died last week at age 92, is classified more often as a "cook" than as a "chef." She was an amateur, who entered marriage as a culinary virgin. Raised in a wealthy Pasadena, Calif., household in which the mistress experimented at the stove only on the cook's day off, Ms. Child had thought that she might become an actress or a "lady novelist"--or even, briefly, a spy. But she learned to cook as a bride, to please her worldly gourmand of a husband, an American diplomat 10 years her senior.

Ms. Child used a puritan's industry--classes to improve on her Smith College French, intensive cooking lessons, a decade of punctilious research for her magnum opus, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking"--to an end that was anything but puritanical. The aim was the satisfaction of lust--for red meat, sugar, eggs, good wine and butter. Ms. Child's was not an unbridled lust, though.

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TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: juliachild

Read more about Julia's unbridled lust Here.

1 posted on 08/18/2004 8:26:47 AM PDT by billorites
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To: billorites

Her show was the only non-cartoon I liked as a kid. She was fun to watch. Such vigor. And if she lived to 92, then it couldn't have been the butter.


2 posted on 08/18/2004 8:31:59 AM PDT by formercalifornian (Democrat platform: Hate, hate, hate, hate, tolerance, hate, hate, hate, hate)
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To: formercalifornian

My wife and I started cooking together after we were married in 1974,using her first two cookbooks. We still have those original books and use them on a regular basis. The spines are broken and the pages are stained with sauce Provencal and Persillade. We made Sole Piperade in her memory last night. She was a true inspiration for our family.


3 posted on 08/18/2004 8:40:53 AM PDT by tom paine 2
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To: formercalifornian

I think we're now required to call her 'The Freedom Chef'...


4 posted on 08/18/2004 8:42:53 AM PDT by blowfish
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To: blowfish

Yes we are. The Freedom Chef! LOL


5 posted on 08/18/2004 8:49:39 AM PDT by formercalifornian (Democrat platform: Hate, hate, hate, hate, tolerance, hate, hate, hate, hate)
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To: billorites

My fiance has been reading and getting a lot out of Julia's books. I am a little heavier, a lot happier, and very thankful for Julia.


6 posted on 08/18/2004 9:22:54 AM PDT by blanknoone (Everything is impossible to those who refuse to try.)
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