Au Revoir, Julia

[livius drusus]

Julia Child died today. (http://abcnews.go.com/sections/Entertainment/US/julia_child_obit_040813-1.html) :bigtear: She was 91, a great chef and a really cool lady.

I loved her recent work with Jaques Pepin, particularly the parts when she got indignant about people obsession over the fat content of heavy cream and the like.

[Dingfod]

Well, dammit, it killed her, don't you know? That heavy cream and fat filled diet killed Julia Child. If she had eaten healthy she might not have died until she was 80 or so, well above the average. :gnoshing:


/me likes the stuff too

[freemonkey]

I grew up in a home where Julia Child was revered. I only wish I had appreciated her more when I was younger.

[lisarea]

Dammit. She was my hero. For real. There are a lot of people whose work I respect and stuff, but not many that I genuinely admire.

I just loved everything about her. Before she got into professional cooking, she did copywriting and some kind of foreign service work, IIRC, which was really pretty impressive for a woman at the time (I'm thinking this was in the 30s and 40s). She discovered French cooking after she was married and her husband was transferred to France. I like to think that she just couldn't tolerate being idle, so she accidentally built an empire.

I loved the way she improvised and futzed around in the kitchen and made those joyous, warbly little 'toodle-loo' sounds almost as though she was just so happy she couldn't even keep it in. She almost sang when she talked. (Off-key, I'll grant, but that made it all the more charming, IMO.) I loved that, when she got too unsteady with her hands to really do the chopping and such, she got Jacques Pepin to do it for her. (Although I kept wishing she'd yell at him more often for doing that thing where he chops things up in his hand. That's scary.)

Mostly, though, she just made me happy every single time I saw her.

[freemonkey]

..... some kind of foreign service work, IIRC, which was really pretty impressive for a woman at the time (I'm thinking this was in the 30s and 40s).

I just heard this on the radio: she worked for the OSS, and was on a team that developed a shark repellent.

[livius drusus]

I just heard this on the radio: she worked for the OSS, and was on a team that developed a shark repellent.

That's just intensely cool.

[RevDahlia]

She was a fascinating woman who was loads of fun to watch and cook with. She took such joy in food, and was so unpretentious about it, that it was impossible not to enthuse along with her. And she was six feet tall, too. I already miss you, Julia. :(

[livius drusus]

There's a wonderful biographical article about her in Salon's archives: Julia Child: Still cookin' after all these years (http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/08/20/child/index.html). Okay, well, the title is lame, but the story is as captivating as Julia was.

[viscousmemories]

There's a wonderful biographical article about her in Salon's archives: Julia Child: Still cookin' after all these years (http://www.salon.com/people/feature/1999/08/20/child/index.html). Okay, well, the title is lame, but the story is as captivating as Julia was.
Thanks for that link, liv. I confess I wasn't at all familiar with Julia beyond recognizing the name when this thread came up and the face and voice when I saw a brief blurb on the news about her death. That article painted a very interesting picture of her for me. Hopefully I'll get to see her cooking shows in re-runs.

[Beth]

This is really sad. I watched her all of my life. I learned how to cook without ever touching a pan by watching her.

[livius drusus]

Hopefully I'll get to see her cooking shows in re-runs.

I caught her cooking with master chefs several times on PBS this weekend. I wish they'd rerun her original Boston shows, though. I never got to see those. :(