Happy 100th Birthday, Julia!

Julia Child

Today is the centennial of Julia Child’s birth (she died in 2004), an event that has been marked by many chefs and food writers. In honor of the woman who did more than anyone to coax Americans away from frozen TV dinners and back to real food, and real cooking, I’m linking my 2009 post about her:

https://underthehollywoodsign.wordpress.com/2009/08/10/remembering-julia-child/

Although a French chef in the grand tradition–she trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris–Julia Child was anything but a snob. She loved Chinese food, which she first encountered as an OSS officer in China. (I’m pretty sure she liked Japanese food as well; on one of her shows she mentioned she only liked tuna if it was raw.) And she liked Mexican food: in the final years of her life, after moving to Montecito, she championed La Superica, helping to transform that local taco joint into a road trip destination.

As important as any of her recipes was the can-do attitude she passed on to her readers and viewers. “Never apologize, never explain,” she said about the inevitable failures involved in cooking for others. If only it were as easy as she made it sound.

Happy Birthday, Julia. I wish you were here to celebrate it.

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