My Life in France

Thanks to spring break, I have had some time to read books of my own choosing.  Now, people commonly make the mistake of thinking, "oh, you are a professor, you must read intelligent, informative literature."  Not so.  My first choice is fluff that will allow me to escape - the kind of thing ladies read in the bath with bonbons, etc.  I also love travel and food writing, so on a recent visit to the Cambridge Public Library I finally checked out Julia Child's "My Life in France."  Knowing I would love it, my friend Anne has been pestering me to read this book for years.  She will be pleased to know that I finally read it - rather, I became obsessed, could not put it down, and finished it in a day and a half. 

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This book is truly about local eating and utter devotion to food, science, and writing.  Julia and her husband Paul Child lived in France for many years, starting with Paul's foreign service work after World War II.  They continued to spend significant time in France by building a small house in Provence until they grew too old to visit.  Julia had a remarkable life: she met the most famous French chefs, traveled the world, and found fame through her "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" and television.  While this was fascinating, my favorite portions of the book were her descriptions of her food routine, not the fame and glamor.  She describes how she set up the kitchens in her many homes (from Cambridge, MA to Oslo, Norway), how she found the local markets and made them her second home, the vendors she befriended, and why the food she loved was so memorable.  This is much more than thinking about our food as "local," it is an anthropological perspective of cuisine that changed Julia Child's life course.  Her book could be a travel guide, though I am certain that many of the places she treasured are gone or changed forever. 

The first thing I did after reading this was to flip through my own copy of "Mastering the Art" and realize that this book was meant for someone exactly like me.  I love French food more than any other cuisine, I love to cook, and she will guide me through the recipes I want to make.  As she would say, it's "fool proof!"