Did anybody ever ask Julia what she thought of the SNL sketch? Every interview I saw of her, she seemed to be a very warm and fun-loving kind of person, so I think that she probably would have pissed herself in hysterics watching it, but I don’t know. Even if she didn’t find it amusing, I’ve no doubt that her response to it was. I’ve got one of her cookbooks around here, but I’ve never gotten around to making anything from it, guess I’ll have to now.
I seem to recall hearing her say that she loved it, but can’t provide a cite.
For those of you who have 20 or so hours to waste, have a look at the Julie/Julia Project
I (and Shoeless) am so proud of you. The only reason I was going to post here was to say “Save the giblets!” because of the Saturday Night Live sketch they did on her (“Oh, I’ve just cut the dickens out of my thumb!”) about a million years ago.
Oh yeah, and she was a gas to watch too.
I read a biography about her. She was a really cool lady.
She thought it was quite hilarious. I saw a program on her sometime within the last year and a half or so, and she talked about it. She said it somewhat kismet (my word) as she for some unknown reason turned her television to watch SNL which she usually didn’t watch. She saw Akroyd’s portrayal and thought it was great fun, just as you might expect. I believe the program I saw was in concert with her biography by Noah Riley Fitch called Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child. I understand it’s a great read and she’s quite a delight.
IIRC, I read something online while Googling her after the show that was quite amusing. Apparently she could be pretty salty. One of the crew from her early cooking show said once she picked up a pot by its still hot handle and dropped it back down quickly, exclaiming “That’s hotter than a stiff cock!”
She will indeed be missed.
The local PBS affiliate showed a sort of retrospective on her career last week, and my wife and I immediately figured she had died. I checked the web only to find she was still hanging in there at 91. So I was pretty surprised just a couple of days later to see she had died.
I can’t say I watched many of her shows, but she struck me as a throwback to a time when upper-class meant something. She had that “broad-a” accent you only hear in movies from 1936 these days. I was interested to find that she was actually born in Pasadena, California, not someplace back East.
I have 20 hours to waste; can you tell me how to read that website you linked? Where’s the meat - the 74 comments, the calendar to the right, the linked articles, or what? Sorry if I’m being dense.
Child’s writing is about as amusing as her television shows. Oddly, I just received my copy of Mastering the Art Volume 2 this very week, and it is a source of constant delight even if I never cook a thing from it. Page 528, from the Kitchen Equipment supplement: “Bashers, Bludgeons, and Blunt Instruments. For whacking up turkey carcasses, chopping bones, and flattening cutlets, here is a choice of weapons…” You never heard Martha Stewart talk that way. I say again, there will never be another Julia.
Never mind, I figured it out. That’s really hysterical; thanks. I’m reminded of Nora Ephron in Heartburn cooking her way through the TV show, thinking it was terribly chic at the time, and only later realizing it was terribly Mamie Eisenhowerish.
I will miss her immensely!
She was the reason I did 3 years holding 2 jobs - full time in a machine shop, and my second one as a full time apprentice in a hotel kitchen learning classical french cuisine. The best and worst experience in my life… Made me realize how much I loved cooking, and detested having to cook a set menu day in, day out 365 days a year…when the best ingredients change from day to day!
Just heard a funny story about her on NPR. It seems that she was over six feet tall, and before she became rich and famous she used to have to fight with drag queens over the last dress in her size on the sale rack. Man, I bet that must have been a sight to see!
Well, tonight we held our own version of a wake at Chez Pug. I got down my copy of Mastering the Art, Vol. I, and I prepared a spinach/minced ham souffle using her recipe. It was served with a dry rose wine from the south of France and followed by ripe peaches and a nice brie. We toasted Julia and recalled stories about her from various sources, including Jacques Pepin’s recent autobiography and this thread.
What’s French for “wake”?
She was from another thyme and had a zest for life that was unequaled. Her sage advice on cooking was not half-baked, even though some found her voice a bit grating.
On her tombstone, she requested:
[sub]In all due respect, as opposed to the above, she was my inspiration. I have her books. I watched her on tv and got excited. Wow! You could actually do that. [/sub]
God rest her sole
I will admit that I have no interest in gourmet cooking and so her show did not influence me.
However, she always reminded me of the kindly elserly neighbor everyone grew up with.
And now she’s gone. Sad.
sorry for the typo
elderly
One of the things I liked about her was her open disdain for fad diets and low fat cooking. She always said that fat was necessary for really good flavor and refused to bow to trends. Right up to the end she was cooking with butter and cream and bacon and she lived into her '90’s.
Julia was the original and quintessential television cook and I think she was responsible for a lot of the “foodie” movement even now. She let people know they could all be gourmet cooks and she helped to demystify French cuisine.
She also seemed to have such a great sense of humor about herself. She never took herself too seriously and was never a snob.
RIP
One of my favorite Julia Child moments was on one of Martha Stewarts’s Christmas specials, maybe ten years ago. She had Julia on and they were making some kind of desert with little balls of something – cake or candy or something – that they were supposed to pile into a tree-shaped pyramid. Martha is doing hers perfectly symmetrically, while Julia is just throwing hers together any old way. You could see the Martha’s fingers twitching with the desire to “fix” Julia’s pyramid…
I’ve got an apple clafouti in the oven right now to take to brunch in her memory. (Recipe in the 40th anniversary edition of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, if not in other places as well.) Hopefully it will come out better than the blueberry one I tried a few months ago - the directions say to use a 9- or 10-inch pan, but don’t mention that the batter is too liquid for a removable-bottom pan, which is a fun thing to find out the hard way as batter bakes onto the floor of the oven.
Anyone have favorite recipes of hers to share, or occasions that were made memorable by them?
I saw that very episode; it was a croquembouche – made of cream puffs – that they were making. And indeed JC’s was thrown together all anyhow, and twitchy Martha’s was a model of geometrical precision, and which one looked more appetizing?
I found it hard to watch any show with JC and a guest chef, especially if the guest was young enough to not properly appreciate her. I got the impression sometimes that these young hotshot twits did not know exactly whose kitchen they were honored to be sharing.