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VIDEOIt's the end of an era. The last Howard Johnson's restaurant has just closed. Among the amazing things I found out while researching the subject of Howard Johnson's is that famous French chef Jaques Pépin was hired by the company to improve their menu. Pépin was slated to become a chef at the JFK White House but chose to work on the Howard Johnson's menu instead. Later Pépin co-hosted cooking shows on PBS with Julia Child. This video also reveals how Pépin rendered a CBS reporter speechless.

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Friday was inducted in the annual National Women’s Hall of Fame. She was nominated in 2009 by President Barack Obama and made history when she was confirmed as the Court's first Hispanic justice. Sotomayor has consistently sided with the Court's liberal decisions, The Hill reported.Other 2019 National Women's Hall of Fame inductees included:• Actress Jane Fonda• Civil rights activist Angela Davis• Native American lawyer Sarah Deer• Retired Air Force fighter pilot Nicole Malachowski• The late suffragist and cartoonist Rose O’Neill• New York Congresswoman Louise Slaughter (D), who died last year• Composer Laurie Spiegel• AIDS researcher...

Soon after the United States entered World War II, Julia felt the need to serve her country. Too tall to join the military (she was 6’2”), Julia volunteered her services to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was the forerunner of today’s Central Intelligence Agency. She was one of 4,500 women who served in the OSS. She started out at OSS Headquarters in Washington, working directly for General William J. Donovan, the leader of OSS. Working as a research assistant in the Secret Intelligence division, Julia typed up thousands of names on little white note cards, a system that...

Judith Jones may not have been a household name, but without her, some of the world's most famous books may never have made it to many library and kitchen shelves. The editor died Wednesday at her home in Vermont, according to a statement from the publisher Knopf. She was 93. Her stepdaughter said the cause was complications from Alzheimer's disease. Jones worked at Knopf for more than five decades. She retired in 2011 as senior editor and vice president. It was 1950 when Jones at age 27 was working in Paris as an editorial assistant at Doubleday Publishing. She stumbled...

Julia Child’s publisher, Knopf, has generously made her legendary Boeuf à la Bourguignonne recipe available online (view it below). As you know, the dish was featured prominently in Julie & Julia. After it opened, The New York Times ran a piece about the reaction in France to the movie, Child, and her cuisine. One prominent French cookbook author and television personality, Julie Andrieu, called Child’s cuisine a “cliché,” “academic and bourgeois.” But she does admit that Americans write better cookbooks than the French. “The French think that they are natural-born cooks; they prepare a dish off the top of their...

Part of Julia Child’s charm is that she nonchalantly became her own authority. One of my favorite quotes is her description of her “brand-new, super-duper” Chocolate Mousse Dessert Cake: “And here it is: Le Gâteau Victoire au Chocolat, Mousseline! One of the great chocolate cakes of all time, according to me.” Not, “in my opinion,” but “according to me.” Who says that? A master citing herself, that’s who. She restates this notion of self-authority in the same television segment, a guide to an intimate tableside cooking of Steak Diane: “So, as I said at the beginning before we started cooking,...

WASHINGTON — Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.

WASHINGTON - Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world. They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt. The full secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the...

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...

When Julia McWilliams left Newport News, Va., by troop train to travel to California before her assignment in Southeast Asia, she was instructed to tell people she was a file clerk. She had been sworn to secrecy and forbidden to keep a diary. It was February 1944. After seven days' travel by train and seven days of orientation in California, Julia and several other women were issued gas masks, fatigues, bedrolls, canteens, and pith helmets. In Long Beach, as these female civilians boarded the ss Mariposa, a cruise ship converted to a troop ship, they were greeted by the loud...

Julia Child, who mastered the art of French cooking well enough to turn it into prime-time entertainment and who by introducing cassoulet to a casserole culture elevated both American food and television, died today at her home in Santa Barbara, Calif. She would have been 92 on Sunday. She had been suffering from kidney failure, said a niece, Philadelphia Cousins. As a cookbook author first and public television star second, Mrs. Child was a towering figure on the culinary front for more than 40 years. Most Americans knew her as the unflappable "French Chef," a tall and twinkly character who...

Julia Child, probably one of the most well known chefs, has passed away at age 91. Just broke on Fox.