Reading articles about Julia Child's recent 100th birthday by Jacques Pépin, Julia Moskin and others made me reminisce about why I became interested in cooking. I barely knew who Julia Child was when I was young. Sure, I had heard of her, but had never seen her show nor did we have her cookbooks. Maybe my mother was influenced by her. This was the 70s when family meals were becoming something to be cherished as more and more mothers entered and stayed in the workplace. My mother was one of those. She was a teacher, always working, always devoted to her students. There was rarely a night during the school year when she wasn't grading papers or working on lesson plans. In addition, she sewed our clothes, gardened, taught piano lessons, hauled us to our own lessons - ballet, symphony, cello, violin, and flute. How she ever did all of that and put not only food on the table, but also good food is still an amazing feat to me.
She was and is an adventurous and good cook. She has never seen a recipe she couldn't adapt to what she had on hand. My husband complains that I picked up this habit of not following recipes from her - I frequently disagree with recipes - either the ingredient list or more often their preparation instructions. My husband, being a scientist, thinks recipes are written to be followed exactly and when I first met him, he followed the instructions on the boxed mac & cheese box literally - it said 6 cups of water, he used 6 cups of water. He said they wouldn't have written instructions if they weren't meant to be followed. Sigh, the scientist versus the adventurous cook. While science has a great deal to do with cooking, I didn't think boxed mac & cheese was one of those areas that needed strict rules. However, the most frequent reason I change recipes is that there are certain methods I was taught at the Cordon Bleu that I completely abide by as tried and true methods. While I've never scientifically tested if they make a difference, I will change a recipe's methods to adhere to my training. Sheesh, what a stick in the mud I can be and so hypocritical of my husband wanting to following the mac & cheese box recipe!
I think I get my love of reading recipes and cookbooks from my mother as well. For years I kept all the little free cookbooks a young child could get from mail away coupons, tear-away sections from magazines, or pick up at the grocery store. We didn't buy a lot of real cookbooks when I was young. You just didn't do that. We had Betty Crocker, a smattering of others, and we subscribed to Sunset Magazine - this was all that one really needed and certainly all it took to plant a seed for me.
Another great part about growing up in my family were the cherished visits to the Pike Place Market in downtown Seattle. While we lived a little less than an hour outside of Seattle, my grandparents lived in the city and once in a while when we went to visit them my mother and grandmother would take me and my sister to Pike Place. Back then it was a bit grungy and hippy in a seedy part of town, but to a young kid the wonderful labyrinth of shops and stalls was a fascinating and awe-inspiring view into unknown worlds. I remember a shop on the second floor - or was it the third? I always got lost. It was just down the stairs from the fish stalls that now have hundreds of tourists flocking to see the fish fly. It was an Italian market with dried fruits I had never seen before, pastas in shapes that seemed to mean something (no, not like the crude shapes made into space needles, penises, or what have you today). These were pastas that were meant for particular sauces and that was intriguing. There were also dried beans galore - shapes and colors that someone knew how to cook. I wanted to know how to cook these beans and wanted to know why one pasta was destined for one sauce and another for something else. I loved Pike Place. I still go back when I can on visits to Seattle, but it's changed now that markets are ultra-trendy. I'm grateful that it has survived and still love it, but it's lost a little of its marvel. The hippy, weird shops are mostly gone, replaced by high-end chic shops, but the essential food stalls are still there and some of the restaurant additions and alley shops just outside the market have added wonderful edibles to explore.
So, between family influence and unique opportunities that a time and place provided me, I came to love thinking about food and how to cook it. For whatever influence Julia Child had on that, I am grateful.
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