Thank you Julia

We spend another afternoon making one of Julia’s recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I will tell more about that in a minute. Before I tell you about our cooking fun, I want to say thank you to Julia. Oh I wish I could have met her and now it is on my bucket list to see the museum where all her stuff is. She was a remarkable, vibrant, strong woman and I admire her greatly.

Learning about Julia, really reading the cookbooks and recipes and following them like Julia intended has taught me something about food. If you want a mediocre dinner that you can rush through and all the flavors are mushed all together, just cook anything. It will be fine and everyone will say it is great. BUT, if you want food that each ingredient is tasted and savored in every bite you take, then use Julia’s recipes.

I have learned so much from reading about her and our attempts to understand what she wanted to convey with her book. It is truly the greatest textbook on French cooking ever. She was a woman of great strength and determination. She persevered in spite of loss, rejection, lack of money..whatever. She has taught me to keep on trying no matter what if I really believe in it and dream of it. She has taught me that life is a sensory experience and should be savored as such. I am a sensory person but Julia only brought that home even more.

So, now I have Mastering the Art of French Cooking and My Life in France.

Cover of My Life in France

The next two books on my dream list are the one  with the letters that Julia and Avis wrote back and forth called AS Always Julia: The letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto and A Covert Affair: Julia Child and Paul Child in the OSS. I am hoping another friend has one of these books stuck on a bookshelf somewhere and sends it to me to read.

    

The more I read about her and her life and her love for Paul, the more intrigued I am. Such joy and determination she had in life in spite of the things she suffered with. She just reinforces my belief in looking for the good and staying focused on the positive and when things are tough…sparkle baby..sparkle.

And now for the cooking. We made basically…a chicken breast recipe with sautéed vegetables and cream wine sauce. Oh my was it beyond the wildest imaginations. We served it over rice.

Son and I have a routine. I am not allowed to chop anything cause my fine motor skills are not the best and son says he is afraid I will chop more than the veggies.  So he chops and cuts, I hand stuff and stir the things in the skillet. I did try tossing the mushrooms…you know that flip that makes them jump forward in the pan, only I am not strong enough to do it. So, anyway…I digress. The most amazing thing to me is what happens when you saute the vegetables. It is like they seal in the flavor so that it does not get all mushed into the dish when you combine every thing. As is normal for us, the cooking was such great time spent together and I know his brother and wife and niece are going to wonder who this French chef is when they come to visit in April.

After the above..basically…we poured beef stock, wine and heavy cream into the vegetables and chicken that was sauteed in the butter and it simmered for about thirty or forty minutes and then put it on rice. Son was eating and he looked up at me and said “OMG, this has to be the best tasting chicken dish I have EVER eaten in my life”.  I laughed and said “yes and YOU cooked it son”

Yes, Julia is teaching us how to cook and even more so, she is teaching us how to feast on life in huge bites. What an amazing woman and to do all the things she did in her lifetime. When I was reading My Life in France, I found myself teary when it came to the part about Paul and when he died. And Julia….in her Julia way was very matter of fact about it. She knows she holds in her heart and head the memories of all those years together and the pain of losing him does not make her wish she had never met him. It seems to solidify why she loved him so. Thank  you Julia….for being you…big, loud and full of life.

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