Julia Child--In Memoriam

[foodie52]

I got to meet Julia and Paul Child in the early 80's. I was working for PBS in Austin, and she was attending a Public Television benefit in Dallas. She was judging some kind of cooking competition and I took loads of photos. After the judging , we were allowed to meet her. I had brought two cookbooks of hers to be signed: one is Julia Child and Company with her recipe for roasted boneless leg of lamb: this recipe had inspired me to bone out a leg according to her instructions.

When I brought my books to her to be signed, she was wonderfully gracious. Paul, who was several inches shorter than her, also insisted on signing the books because, "After all, I took the photos!". And then when I thrust the photo of her from the cover of Parade magazine to be signed as well, she did that cheerfully. Now I can't believe I asked her to sign all that stuff...

I was privileged to be seated next to Paul Child at dinner afterwards.

Thanks, Julia, for all you did. You had a heck of a ride!

[KatieLoeb]

I caught a small retrospective of Julia clips today on Food TV that ended with a "We'll miss you, Julia." Seemed quite appropriate.

[OnlyTheBest]

i have not been paying attention to the news and it's after midnite here and i just saw on the food network a little trailer ...something like we'll miss you Julia....and i knew something had happened. I just read online about it.....now i'm in tears.

God bless her...she was such an inspiration.

And yes..... it seemed like she would go on forever....it never occured to me she would actually die.

How silly.

A very dear woman indeed.... may she rest in peace.

[cupcake250]

This past weekend I happened to be at a wedding in Montecito. My mom and I, both avid cooks, and Julia fans both heard the news that morning from the newspaper, while staying at the Montecito Inn, miles from her home.

That morning we reminisced about her and how she had influenced our cooking...

however when i really went into my period of mourning was actually at the wedding itself (please don't tell the bride and groom, close family friends).

The wedding was at Rose Story Farm, the beautiful Rose Garden that Julia has asked her ashes be spread over as it was one of her favorite places. (above the South of France? above all of the many beautiful chateaus she had visited amid her travels and living abroad?)

As I stared at the beautiful rose gardens, I got lost in a flurry about her and how she had touched my life.

Be it the countless times I heard that high pitched voice streaming from my mother or grandmother's kitchen televisions...sometimes with Jacques...other times just being her unique self, as evidenced by the countless stories written in her obituary...who can't forget the chicken dropping and her telling the viewers "don't worry, no one is in the kitchen but you..."

I continued to look at the roses, imagining her being there and wondering if she came to Rose Story Farm days before she made her last supper consisting of French onion soup, right before she lay into her final slumber...

then flashback to making the "flowers" under my mom's aspic out of carefully cut carrots, eggs and shallots, or whatever other "materials" my mom had given me to decorate on her pate.

I thought of my grandmother's kitchen, with her several Julia cookbooks, each showing their wear, not only by the ear marks on several pages, the countless notes to self in the margins, but also the various crumbs of flour in the pages, so many of us can relate to from mindlessly touching the pages while engrossed in preparing a lavish dish.

I remember folding the merengue; with its stiff peaks right before it went into her famous lemon merengue pie.....or peeling the pears for her infamous poached pears...

clearly I could go on for hours, and now that I am home my cookbooks will serve as a memory...they are even now the more complete with the few rose petals stuck in the pages that I had put in my purse to remember such a wonderfully unique woman who had such an influence on all of us.

Aurivoir and bon appetit to you, Julia..thank you for being you and touching our lives with your incredible culinary sprit...xo

[Toliver]

Anyone hear from Lucy? I was wondering what the response was in France of the news of her passing.

[tanabutler]

From volume 1 I'm making her master recipe for oven-roast chicken and peach tart.

I thought I'd take a look to see what tributes would be on http://www.juliachild.com.

What a horrible hijacking of a url. 

More information about that....

The owner of this domain:

Domain Name: JULIACHILD.COM

Administrative Contact:

Yong Li Yong@ukr.net

P.O. Box 904

Beijing 100029

China

10-62043326

Technical Contact Zone Contact:

Yong Li Yong@ukr.net

Believe me, I sent a scathing e-mail to this clown.

And on a happier note, last night I had dinner in a sea cave with about ninety people. Towards the end of the meal, I was able to stand and offer a toast to Julia Child...and people cheered wildly. It was very gratifying to say, "Bottoms up, Julia" and get laughter and the sound of clinking glasses...

[alacarte]

Folks - don't be sad for Julia, she would not have wanted this. We need to celebrate Julia's life, not mourn it. Julia was nothing if not about living to the fullest!

I'm just sorry I never got to meet her.

[calimero]

She was 87 when she wrote this.

[tanabutler]

Julia also fancied cats. Her cat was by her side when she passed.

Kitty's name was Minou - does anyone know the meaning?

One of the stories I read said that all French cats are named Minou, Minette, or Mimi (according to a Newsday interview in 1991).

[Mabelline]

calimero, thank you so much, and welcome! That was touching about her choice for dinner(okay, lunch to everyone else). What a paragon. What a virtue she has been. I am convinced there's a BIG BASH goin' on in the next reality. I think Craig Claiborne and she will be very happy to see each other. I would like to think my mama's mother is there as a guest, as well, for she loved Julia from the start, and saw everything by her, bought me her cookbooks, and said, "Here, read this," when I was 10 or 12 and much more interested in horsetraining than cooking.

[balmagowry]

Anyone hear from Lucy? I was wondering what the response was in France of the news of her passing.

I don't think she's back from her trip yet.

[balmagowry]

From volume 1 I'm making her master recipe for oven-roast chicken and peach tart.

I thought I'd take a look to see what tributes would be on http://www.juliachild.com.

What a horrible hijacking of a url. 

More information about that....

The owner of this domain:

Domain Name: JULIACHILD.COM

Administrative Contact:

Yong Li Yong@ukr.net

P.O. Box 904

Beijing 100029

China

10-62043326

Technical Contact Zone Contact:

Yong Li Yong@ukr.net

Believe me, I sent a scathing e-mail to this clown.

There's probably something that can be done about this, if one can figure out who'd have standing to do it. The Authors' Guild has been very active - successfully so, I might add - in suing to recover the rights to the URLs for its members' names. (So if anyone out there is thinking of nabbing lisagrossman.com, save yourself the trouble; now I think of it I haven't bothered to register it myself, but if anyone's beaten me to the punch the full wrath of the Guild will come down on the miscreant's head!) Don't know off-hand whether JC was a member, but I'm sure she belonged to other such advocacy organizations, any of which (IACP? Beard House?) would have sufficient clout. Not that clout is needed, but it does come in handy sometimes. And I bet the legal team at the Authors' Guild would be willing to share strategy in such a cause. IAC, of course it'd be up to her heirs/estate to authorize any action. But maybe a little public outcry wouldn't hurt.

[Fritz Brenner]

I'd been away from any kind of news source until late last night... sad to hear of the world's loss.

Still, we have so much of her to celebrate.

indeed.

[Merlyn31]

She taught me how to cook! I may not cook like that any more, but her 1997 cover from US News & World Report has adorned every kitchen I have worked in since!

That juliachild.com thing stinks!

[Gifted Gourmet]

today from Slate Magazine

How To Read Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Six recipes Julia Child would want you to make.

By Sara Dickerman

Although Child demystified French cooking, she and Beck refused to dumb it down. The book, eventually published by Knopf, has few "easy" recipes. Mushrooms are fluted, lettuce is braised for hours, and chickens are boned out, then filled with pâté and sewn back together. MTAFC also has a rhythm rather different from that of the cookbooks that preceded and followed it. Ingredients are not sequestered at the top of each recipe, but rather printed in the left column at the point in the procedure when they are introduced. Recipes flow into one another as a master recipe is elaborated into multiple variations

Check it out ...... a must read by Dickerman ....

[Mayhaw Man]

New Orleans Chefs talking about Julia Child in today's paper

Lolis Eric Elie, a columnist for the Picayune, foodwriter, and one of the featured participants in this years SFA conference, has written a very nice piece on New Orleans chefs and various meetings that they had with J.C. over the years.

[Mebutter]

My good friend Kathy O'Connell, a columnist at the Meriden Record-Journal, wrote this about Julia. I thought her piece was so good it needed to be read by others. I asked her if she's let me reprint it here. She said yes, and so here it is.....

"Spatulas. Mom never uses them; instead she resorts to "turners," those

nasty, melt-prone things you can pick up for 99 cents. I've had my little gaggle

of spatulas for a decade at least.

They are top-drawer. Like my knives, they will last, if not forever, a

very, very, very long time.

And all because Julia Child made comprehensible what my restaurant pro

father could not get through to our mother: Cheap tools cost you in the long run.

Mrs. Child — I never addressed her any other way — died Friday, two days

shy of her 92nd birthday, six of Daddy's.

Her death after a very rich life made front pages everywhere, as she so

deeply deserved. Much was made of how she demystified classic French cooking

for thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of imagination-starved home cooks.

But that's not quite it.

What was most enthralling about Julia Child was her enthusiasm. It was

learned, but matter of fact; it was slightly elitist while being fiercely

inclusionary.

Not for her the nonsensical stuff about gourmet goodies such as

hand-rubbed wildebeest filets with a coulis of organic sour cherries.

Those are foodies. They give the modest gastronomes Mrs. Child so

thrillingly cultivated a bad name.

Julia Child was not about art or fashion.

She was about food.

We all have to eat it. Why not make it fun on a whole bunch of different

levels?

Despite her training at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris — which, in the '40s at

least — catered to those with money; she knew what "haute cuisine" really meant

— she made the intimidating accessible.

I interviewed her three times in 23 years. She never sighed at boring

questions or those that had been asked too often. In fact, she would turn on the

interviewer with wicked glee to ask if he or she had eaten this or that.

If he or she said no, her inevitable response, in that signature flutey

voice was, "Well! You must, then!"

Food faddists annoyed the Dickens, and perhaps the Thackeray, Wharton

and Brontes out of her. When fat — all fat, any fat — was viewed as horrible a

dozen years ago, she stood her ground. Fat has its merits, as do all other

foods, as long as you don't overdo it. I listened with delight at a public TV

event as she explained to some skinny West Hartford type who seemed to be 35

going on 60 that she needed a little bit of butter, or olive oil, or cream, or all

three, every day, otherwise her skin would dry out and her hair would get

brittle.

Julia knew, and like Jacques Pepin — equally knowledgeable, gracious and

accessible, and whose grief must be formidable, since he admired her so — she

was a phenomenally gifted teacher.

Her approach to cooking was in my mind while I was reading Michael

Ruhlman's deeply enlightening "The Soul of a Chef," about the rigorous process to

become a certified master chef.

Why must they do this? I kept asking. Someone eating, unless he's a

caricature of a gastronome, is not going to care if your julienne of leek is

absolutely uniform.

But Julia knew. If you learn the rules, no matter how ridiculous you

think they are, then you are at measured liberty to break them. That philosophy

made her the perfect hybrid of chef and cook, which is why, I suspect, so many

took her into their homes and hearts with such enthusiasm.

Heck, she was even game enough to take part in a fast-food french-fry

test, and pronounced McDonald's very, very good. She also explained that it's

just as easy to make your own burgers at home instead of schlepping up to a

drive-in window.

It could be said she saw the sharing of food not just as sustenance, but

also as a social sacrament. Since she spent a big chunk of the 1940s in the

foreign service, where she met her husband, Paul, she lived through shortages

and all other sorts of events that make it very hard to turn food into something

to be revered as a class thing. It's about socialization, sharing, agape.

Julia McWilliams Child knew better than to associate good food with

social standing or economic oomph.

It's what in your heart, not just your stomach.

She knew. She knew.

And shared it, without fear or favor."

[Toliver]

That juliachild.com thing stinks!

Relax, kids.

She would have been www.JuliaChild.ORG (my emphasis), not a dot-com since she wasn't into selling or shilling.

And I don't think JuliaChild.org is taken since my IE can't seem to find the website and there is no re-direct on the URL.

Anyone have some spare change to buy & register a web name? Maybe we should take up a collection and then donate the web name to whatever organization arises to honor her memory.

[tanabutler]

That juliachild.com thing stinks!

Relax, kids.

She would have been www.JuliaChild.ORG (my emphasis), not a dot-com since she wasn't into selling or shilling.

And I don't think JuliaChild.org is taken since my IE can't seem to find the website and there is no re-direct on the URL.

Anyone have some spare change to buy & register a web name? Maybe we should take up a collection and then donate the web name to whatever organization arises to honor her memory.

JuliaChild.org is taken (as is JuliaChild.net), as of Sunday, by a group called the HoldingCompany (sic).

Domain ID: D104760557-LROR

Domain Name: JULIACHILD.ORG

Created On: 15-Aug-2004 14: 34: 06 UTC

Last Updated On: 15-Aug-2004 14: 43: 45 UTC

Expiration Date: 15-Aug-2005 14: 34: 06 UTC

Sponsoring Registrar: R91-LROR

Status: TRANSFER PROHIBITED

Registrant ID: GODA-07731919

Registrant Name: the HoldingCompany

Registrant Street1: tridet chambers

Registrant City: road town

Registrant State/Province: Not Applicable

Registrant Postal Code: 88888

Registrant Country: VG

Registrant Phone: 1.8888888888

Registrant Email: info@theholdingcompany.com

However, JuliaChild.info and JuliaChild.biz are available. (If you seek to register, I recommend aPlus.net: they're cheap and reliable and recommended by Cnet.com.)

It is erroneous to think that she wouldn't be "dot.com," and yes, she was selling books by the millions. It's standard practice for a celebrity of any stripe, or any professional, for that matter, to own their own name as a "dot com" entity.

DotOrg is for non-profit organizations, and Julia, grand patroness of the arts and public television that she was, nevertheless made money on her book sales.

You can do a "whois" on any domain at SamSpade.org, though some registrars (such as GoDaddy) allow for registration information to be hidden.

[adegiulio]

Julia Child on Channel 21 right now (in NYC area)

[Curlz]

Julia Child on Channel 21 right now (in NYC area)

Funny, I just watched it (caught it by accident), and HAD to log on to say that I was laughing my a** off!! It was the "I'm a card-carrying carnivore" retrospective, which was made in 2000. Let me just say from the outset that although I remember occasionally seeing JC's shows when I was a kid, I remember the SNL skit a lot more vividly. Now, of course, I'm going to get hooked on her classics--I can tell.

Aside from the general amusement of seeing Emeril in 1993 from one of the Master Chefs shows, I just laughed REALLY HARD at the segment on roasting a chicken on a spit. It started with Julia standing behind a chorus line of chickens (from broiler on up to roaster and then down the other side to hen) all 'sitting' up, which first reminded me of the fact that my brother and I have been making whole chickens 'dance' since we were about 10 and 8 respectively. I haven't matured much--still do it every time I wash a whole bird!

Anyway, Julia goes on to prep the chicken, doing crazy things like cutting off the neck and removing the wishbone, and she trusses it. I can live with that, 'tho I've never trussed, and I've been roasting whole chickens since I was about 9 years old. Then she goes on to say that she's going to cook the bird on a spit, b/c it's an ancient method, and an excellent one. She proceeds to demonstrate the method for attaching the spit, and I start to squirm, b/c I recognize an attachment that I own but have never used; it goes with a Farberware electric grill--something I grew up with! I (mistakenly) bought TWO off of Ebay a couple of years ago, and both came with the rotisserie attachment, which I still haven't tried. What really got me was the post-spit trussing. I swear, it was like watching a kid's attempt at Chicken S&M. Or so I imagine. If one wanted to get in to that sort of thing... Heehee! She trussed that thing within an inch of its life!! There was no escaping for that bird, that's for sure.

I just called my mom to tell her how much I was laughing over this show (growing up, we ate a LOT of chicken--before it was 'fashionable'), and to say that it wasn't until I was watching this tonight that I realized just how much I've taken for granted in terms of cooking knowledge. And obviously, I have Julia to thank for that!!

Edited August 17, 2004 by Curlz (log)

[JFLinLA]

Sad? Not really.

She lived a long full life, and what a life it was.

She lives on through the impact she has had and continues to.

[tanabutler]

Curlz, I just love your whole post. Thanks.

[Wendy DeBord]

I gotta say I'm a bit supprised by how little media coverage there was of her passing. I thought she had a great impact, worthy of media attention. I didn't find out about her death until reading your post here bakerboy.

I'd love to see Food Network do a huge special on her!

[Gifted Gourmet]

I gotta say I'm a bit supprised by how little media coverage there was of her passing. I thought she had a great impact, worthy of media attention. I didn't find out about her death until reading your post here bakerboy.

Little media coverage? It was all over the Net all weekend, huge writeup in the NYT, local paper here in Atlanta had a big spread ... this weekend was pretty much "all Julia" on all cooking websites and even others ... maybe we are reading different things but it was on all of the channels on my television .. PBS Lehrer Newshour did a big piece on her with Jacques Pepin on Friday, the day she died ... I think the coverage was superb!

new article today in the Wall Street Journal ... marvelous!