Happy Birthday, Julia Child!

Tomorrow would have been Julia Child's 97th birthday. (Yesterday is the 5th anniversary of her death.) I, for one, am so thrilled at this upsurge of interest in all things Julia! A few years ago, I read her memoir, My Life In France, and fell back in love with Julia. After I read that, I had to go out and buy Mastering The Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. Fell in love with that. Then went and watched every episode of the French Chef I could. Fell in love all over again!

In My Life In France, Julia's zest for life comes out on each page of the book. And talk about inspiring: I was 37 when I read it, the same age that she was when she enrolled in Le Courdon Bleu, and began what was to become her life's work. It made me realize that it's a perfectly fine age to be looking to the future and weighing what is it I want to be doing!

And then there's the cookbook. Mastering the Art of French Cooking is no mere cookbook. It is an entire lesson in cooking. (And priced at $40, it's a great bargain!) Julia walks you through, with her good humor and folksy charm, some very daunting recipes. With her help, I can no longer go out for eggs benedict. The hollandaise she taught me to make is the best I've ever had!

And of course, most of this Juliamania is due to Julie & Julia, Julie Powell's blog-turned-book about cooking each and every recipe from Julia's seminal cookbook. It's a fun read, and honestly, even more fun with all three books by your side. I found myself flipping from Julie Powell's book back to Mastering the Art to re-read Julia's own words. And making a few things along the way.

My bookclub is meeting to discuss My Life In France this weekend, and I'm hoping we all bring a dish from the book. (Of course, I haven't mentioned it. I'm just hoping we all do it.) I know that I'm going to make baked cucumbers (Concombres au Beurre, page 499). It's a dish I hadn't even looked at until I read Julie Powell's description of the dish: "Verdict: baked cucumbers? ... They don't melt away, and they actually taste like cucumbers. Only better, because I don't like cucumbers." Now I love cucumbers, but it sounds to me that these are going to be even better than cucumbers the way I have always eaten them: raw. And I'm willing to give that a shot.

I'll let you know how the cucumbers turn out, and I'd love to hear from you about your own adventures with Julia!

And for even more things about Julia, click here to read Michael Pollan's great New York Times article about Julia Child and the state of cooking in America.

--Joe