Julia Child

by Laura Shapiro

A short but comprehensive biography of Julia Child. Her background began as a flitty California society girl who floated from job to job, to a WWII clerk in Asia & Europe, to her enrolling in the Cordon Bleu and her realization that cooking should be as enjoyable as eating.

Julia Child enjoyed life, and loved to eat.  So what better way to share this than to collaborate on a French cookbook?  She was not a natural cook, but she was dedicated and imaginative.  Child began to celebrate the time and effort that it took to create a meal, just when Americans were discovering the ease of frozen and canned food.  I doubt many people actually made the food that she cooked on her tv show, but they enjoyed her enthusiasm. "There are two cooks: those who want to impress people, and those who want to feed people."

There are also some revelations in the book.  Although she had dear homosexual friends, she sought the "de-fagification" of American cooking. Yikes.  Hopefully she meant that she wanted cooking to be enjoyable for the masses.  I thought it was funny that she & her husband refused to eat at McDonalds, but when they finally did, she was pleasantly surprised by the french fries and the Quarter Pounder (the Big Mac had too much bread).