10 Reasons I Love Julia Child

I’ve loved Julia Child for as long as I can remember. She’s always been an inspiration, and let’s be honest, a hero to me.

Today I’m very proud to be featured as the official Blogger of the Day on the new Julie & Julia movie website.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the film, which premieres August 7th. Not only for my love of Julia Child, but also because it looks like a fun movie. Plus, Meryl Streep is one of my all-time favorite actresses.

I am also a fan of Julie Powell’s wonderful book,  Julie & Julia. Blogger Julie Powell ambitiously cooked and blogged her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days, and lived to write a book about it. If you haven’t read it, pick up a copy. It’s so much fun living vicariously through Julie’s adventures in learning to cook like Julia — and make aspic.

I will definitely be hiring a babysitter so I can go see this movie as soon as it hits the theaters. Here’s the Julie & Julia trailer, so you can get a sneak peak:

To remember and honor the great chef, Julia Child, one of our national treasures, I’m posting 10 reasons I love her.

10 Reasons I Love Julia Child

1. I love Julia Child because she championed butter and cream. I saw her once on her TV show. She said (paraphrase), “If you’re afraid of using too much butter in this recipe, don’t worry — you can substitute cream.”

2. Nor was she a fan of low-fat diets. She was quoted as saying, “The only time to eat diet food is while you’re waiting for the steak to cook.”

3. She was a proponent of organ meats. I grew up watching that Saturday Night Live sketch in which Dan Ackroyd in drag played Julia Child saying, “Save the liver!” I remember my mother, laughing and quoting that sketch at holidays and dinner parties. Update: my sister sent me this video on Twitter:

4. Julia Child was a feminist. She may not have called herself a feminist but she was. She didn’t marry until she was 34 (an advanced age for a woman wedding in the 1960s), and went on to attend Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris, surrounded by male chefs.

5. She had great passion. Her passion drove her to work very hard. She said, “The measure of achievement is not winning awards. It’s doing something that you appreciate, something you believe is worthwhile. I think of my strawberry souffle. I did that at least twenty-eight times before I finally conquered it.”

6. Another example of her drive to achieve when most people would have given up: the manuscript for her first book, Mastering The Art of French Cooking, was rejected by publisher Houghton Mifflin for being too much like an encyclopedia. When it was finally published by Alfred A. Knopf, the 734-page tome was a bestseller.

7. She didn’t let age stop her. Julia was 49 when she published her first cookbook. She was 51 when she did her first cooking show. Seeing how I’m almost 41, this gives me hope that maybe I still have a chance to make something of myself.

8. She loved oysters. Julia Child often recalled her first French meal in Rouen, consisting of oysters and sole meunière. She described the experience in The New York Times as “an opening up of the soul and spirit for me.” I tend to wax on about oysters on this blog — I guess this is why. Like Julia, I believe they truly are spiritually awakening.

9. She didn’t give a rat’s a** about cholesterol. When asked if she knew her cholesterol level, she said, “Medium.”

10. Above all, she had a fabulous sense of humor. When a sommelier asked her to name her favorite wine, she replied, “Gin.”

Photo credit: Wikipedia & Sony Pictures