My Dinner With Julia Child

About 20 years ago, Michael Vaughn hosted a dinner for Julia Child at his home. Michael's guests were restauranteur Franco Prevedello, newspaperman John Honderich, Star food reporter Marion Kane, food writer and cooking teacher Bonnie Stern, author, Margaret Visser and co-owner of Inniskillin Wines, Donald Ziraldo, and me. 

At the table, I was delighted to be seated next to Julia. At that time, she was 81 years old, I was in my 40's and to give everyone some perspective, to people in their 40's or younger, someone in their 80's was OLD and one expects the stereotype that many "old" people are close to losing it!

We all gathered before dinner to enjoy drink's in Michael's living room. During that time, I was introduced to Julia and we struck up quite a lengthy and lively conversation. She was something!

Later, during dinner, Julia and I were at it again, chatting merrily away, when she slowly put down her fork, and then her knife, rested her hands on the table, looked me straight in the eye and said, "now Josh, that is not what you said before" (referring to our earlier discussion during the reception). I said, I know, you changed my mind! I developed a new respect for older people and particularly for Julia's bear trap mind. 

I can still hear her voice saying those words, even today, and if you saw Julie and Julia and listened to Merryl Streep, I can tell you, she did a great job being Julia. She had her inflections and voice down pat. 

A memorable evening.

BOOK REVIEW: Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child by Bob Spitz

Pity the writer of a biography of a person with whom most North Americans feel they are on a first name basis. One criticizes a cultural icon at one’s own peril.  On the other hand, the writer cannot wear his or her heart too boldly on the shirtsleeve.  Where other biographies have gone before, there is always the temptation to quote what has already been said. These were all challenges faced by Bob Spitz, author of the new biography of Julia Child.

Earlier books on Julia Child have placed primary emphasis on her role as a writer, with her television career following as a consequence.  In this biography, published to coincide with the August 15, 2012 centenary of her birth, the author moves quickly to establish her importance as a television phenomenon. The book’s end papers feature boeuf bourguignon—but not the recipe as printed in Mastering the Art of French Cooking—it is the script for the boeuf bourguignon episode on The French Chef.  In the dedication, Spitz refers to his mother as one of the earliest French Chef groupies. 

The prologue chronicles Julia Child’s first encounter with the Boston public television station, WGBH-TV where she first appeared as a guest, demonstrating omelet making on one Professor Duhamel’s program. Initially, the strangely trilling voice, the long, off-balance body, the demand for a hot plate did not scream “Television star!” to the powers that were at the station.  The audience saw something else: themselves—or at least an elongated version of same, someone who was funny, someone who made mistakes but carried on.  Thus was an icon born.

The long fight to publish what became Mastering the Art of French Cooking is well documented in Julia’s own memories and words collected in My Life in France and in As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto. Anyone who has read these books will not find a lot new here but those who have not will get a full picture not only of the problems with prospective publishers but with the drawn out process of testing recipes and the tensions amongst the authors.

Where this book really shines is in putting flesh on the bones of Julia Child’s life.  Although earlier works have touched on her life before France, Dearie certainly gives a much more detailed portrait of her parents, John and Caro Weston McWilliams and of her as a youth. The portrait of the young Julia in some ways is not always flattering.  Growing up in a wealthy Pasadena family, she was jolly but aimless, sort of the original Valley Girl.  The educational opportunities offered up at Smith College were pretty much wasted on the gangly and vivacious girl. After graduation, she headed back to California after an abortive attempt at a career on the east coast.  War brought rescue from an increasingly unsatisfying life.

It is well known that Julia spent part of World War II in Asia with the Central Intelligence Agency forerunner, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Previously, it was thought that her roll was quite insignificant. Spitz points to a rather different interpretation.  But in the general scheme of her life, it was not the work that had real impact on her life; it was the after hours slow-burn relationship with Paul Child that began here, that was of lasting importance. For Julia, this relationship provided not just the true love of her life, it also provided her true education.

Spitz shows the other Julia fought early on for her fair share of royalties and certainly controlled the use of her name very carefully. Her liberal sympathies are well known. Her attitude to homosexuality was somewhat confounding. She simply refused to believe that any of her many gay friends were anything but the manliest of straight men.

Spitz provides a better rounded view of Paul Child than any previous work.  Personally, this reader still finds Stanley Tucci a more appealing version of Paul Child than the actual man who by all reports was extremely difficult on all fronts.  A twin, Paul Child was both bound by love and jealousy to his brother Charlie.  Like Paul, Charlie was an artist.  Unlike Paul, he was the twin who received a college education followed by commercial success and a fulfilling family life.  An auto didact, Paul found early love and world travel with an older mistress.  Alas, she died.

Yet that man, whose own needs were so often thwarted also gave all the education, support, encouragement, and love that Julia McWilliams Child needed to become an icon. That is the true miracle of Julia Child’s life story.

This review by Jennifer Grange
Dearie: The Remarkable Life of Julia Child
by Bob Spitz
Autographed copies avaiable

Julie & Julia Review #3 - A Wonderful Movie For Food Lovers

Posted by Josh
************
Check out the first two of our reviews of the film here and here.
************
I never liked watching Meryl Streep. Don’t ask me why, but I have felt this way since I first saw her - its like what someone experiences when seeing something that bothers them but do not know why. And then I saw Julie and Julia. I had very briefly shared several visits with Julia Child when she would come to The Cookbook Store. And through this association, I was invited to dinner with Julia and 9 others.

We shared a chat and a cocktail before dinner, and surprisingly I was seated with Julia beside her at the head of the table. Julia was even more in life then she was on television. During dinner, at one point, she stopped, put her fork down and looked at me with her very own pregnant pause…… "Josh! That is not what you said during cocktails!" And then, resumed eating and chatting…such a bear trap memory at 85! I was impressed.

People would line up around the block when Julia child came to town. When entering The Cookbook Store to meet her, buy a book and get her signature, they would often have tears in their eyes.

So now watching Julie and Julia, I was laughing and crying, watching Meryl Streep who so brilliantly captured the manners, the body language, the vocal mannerisms and the tone of Julia - an exceptionally insightful impression of the essence of a truly extraordinary and marvelous woman who captivated the soul, imagination and appetites of so many.

This film is such a delight for anyone who loves to eat and who loved the Julia that Meryl Streep so epitomizes. I was also captivated by the interaction between the two husbands and wives, how the husbands fell in love with their wives passion for cooking and the husbands love of eating their wives cooking. Everyone’s passion for eating and cooking came through to me, a passionate food lover, who delights in food well conceived and cooked. How I loved watching these characters live their lives, live my life.

See the movie, food lovers. I recommend it to anyone who loves food and who loved Julia.

Julie & Julia Movie Review #2

Posted by Jennifer

In my twenties, I was a gormless girl. A journalism school dropout, I read the female practitioners of the new journalism rather than writing myself. My much older boyfriend had previously been involved with the owner of a small French restaurant, the best in the city in which I then lived. In a move that is now cringe-making, I started to cook my way through the two volumes of Julia Childs Mastering the Art of French Cooking in the belief that if the old girlfriend was a good cook I had to be a better cook.

In the end, the relationship with the man did not last. However, I learned to cook well enough to work for the old girlfriend in her restaurant. My published writing has mainly been about food. And, I got to meet Julia Child four times.

The newly released movie Julie & Julia resonates for me on several levels. Nora Ephron was one of the female writers I was reading at the same time I was cooking through Mastering. Following in the steps of her screenwriter parents, Ephron has become a celebrated director and screenwriter. Here she is screenwriter, director and producer.

I also recognize the Julie of Julie & Julia. She, too, is a writer, one disguised as a clerk. Published in 2005, the book is based on the blog which Julie Powell wrote as she cooked her way through the 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. In the pre-blogosphere world in which I grew up, I could never have imagined that anyone outside my immediate acquaintances would have been interested in my cooking adventures. I know even they were rolling their eyes after I used the phrase, But Julia wouldnt do it that way, once too often. Julie Powells chronicle quickly became a blog success story, winning the attention of the New York Times and ultimately a book contract. To Julies great dismay, Julia Child, then late in her life, was not amused.

By itself, Julies story - almost 30, post-9/11 clerk, married and living in Queens with her husband and with a bevy of nasty friends would not have made much of a movie. However, by weaving together Julie & Julia and Julia Child’s own memoir, My Life in France written with her great nephew, Alex Prudhomme, at the end of her life and published posthumously, Nora Ephron has created something memorable.

Though probably best characterized as a romantic comedy, both strands of the story are set in periods of upheaval. Julias took place as the world recovered from World War II and the United States grappled with McCarthyism. Julies story unfolds in a New York reeling from the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre.

At worst, some people have labeled Meryl Streep’s performance as Julia a parody or a caricature. To me it seemed as though she simply became Julia - often close to the line but never over it, capturing not just her distinctive voice and mannerisms but also the less tangible qualities, the openness to new experiences, the endless curiosity which made her the perfect person to translate French cuisine for the North American masses. She knew what questions they needed answered because she had asked them herself.

The union between Julia and Paul Child is at the forefront of the movie as it was in the memoir and in an earlier biography. Theirs was a both a very sensual and supportive union and the portrayal of its steadfastness moved me to tears. Streeps sensitivity to Julias character is best realized when she displays simultaneous joy and sorrow when Julias sister announces her pregnancy. One wonders whether Julia Child would have accomplished what she did had she had children, but it was a disappointment in her life. While the spotlight has mainly been on Meryl Streeps role as Julia, Stanley Tuccis portrait of Paul Child is equally engaging. By contrast, the relationship between Julie and her husband Eric, seems much more in flux(the relationship has survived the blog; they are still together).
Though she suffers by comparison to Meryl Streep, Amy Adams makes Julie Powell more likeable and less self-absorbed than the book made her seem.

Even the smaller parts are well cast. Simone Beck, Louisette Bertholle, Julias sister and parents, and Avis De Voto are all as imagined. The Vogue fashionista, Joan Juliet Buck, plays Julias Cordon Bleu nemesis, Mme Brassart, to icy perfection. But when all is said and done, what can top Paris playing itself or sole meuniere gilded to perfection?

Five years after her death, the movie is a timely reminder of the force of nature that was Julia Child, and brings a last century icon to a 21st century audience.

See our first review here.

JULIA CHILD CEBLEBRATION!

Posted by Alison

SATURDAY AUGUST 15th, noon- 2pm
at The Cookbook Store

We couldn't let the opening of the new Julie & Julia movie go by without us throwing some sort of party, after all August 15th would have been Julia's 97th Birthday! Over the years Julia visited The Cookbook Store four times for book signings. We cherish every moment and will share the highlights with you.
So come to the store between noon and 2pm and share your favourite Julia moments, memories and inspirations. Hopefully you will have seen the movie which opens August 7th and we can discuss.
We will have food inspired by Julia and, if you would like to make something special that reminds you of Julia please bring it along, although not necessary, a sort of Julia pot luck if you will.

Julie & Julia - Movie Review

Posted by Gina

Many customers at the store have been excited to see our book display in preparation for the upcoming movie Julie & Julia. I was lucky enough to catch an advance screening of the film and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the experience.

Screenwriter and director Nora Ephron (Sleepless in Seatle, When Harry Met Sally) skillfully combines blogger Julie Powells’s first book with Julia Child’s memoir, My Life in France. The book Julie & Julia is about Ms. Powell’s experience cooking her way through Mrs. Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1, while My Life in France documents the years in which Julia Child initially learned to cook, developed her insatiable passion for French food, and laboured to complete and publish the same book on which Powell focuses.

The story seamlessly bounces back and forth between New York circa 2003 and late 1940s Paris, documenting both Julie’s and Julia’s challenges, triumphs, sorrows and joys. As is usual for most book-to-screen adapatations, noticeable liberties are taken with both stories, but the spirit of each book is truly given justice. In fact, after having enjoyed each of these women’s memoirs, I would venture to say that the interlacing and juxtaposition of the two lives makes for an even more enjoyable experience than the two separately.

Amy Adams’ Julie Powell wins you over as a regular gal fighting her way through the challenges of French cookery (and is much less annoying than the trailer makes her appear). Meryl Streep is her usual phenomenal, chameleon-like self, portraying the excitable, unmistakable Julia Child, with a dead-on rendition of that marvelous warbling, sing song voice proclaiming to all, “Bon appetit!”

For a more in depth version of this review visit here.

Watch the trailer here.
Opens Friday, August 7th.

To Look Forward To:

Join us at the store on August 15 to celebrate what would have been Julia Child's 97th birthday. More details to follow.

also,

Julie Powell's second book, Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession about becoming a butcher is due out this November.