just desserts

I have come across a plethora of cooking blogs lately, especially posted by people in their twenties. I love this excitement about cooking. Maybe it is partially due to the success of the movie Julie and Julia. I also think Food Network has shows like Top Chef that have captured our interest in what happens in the kitchen, often "backstage" in a restaurant. Chefs are becoming celebrities in their own right. Julia Child really started something.

My parents had friends who had gotten to know Paul and Julia Child when they were (all four) foreign correspondents living in Paris during the war. When Al and Margory Ravenholt visited my parents in Brookline, they were invited to the Childs' for dinner in Cambridge. I was in high school at the time and was most interested in having use of the family car. That meant driving Mom and Dad to their dinner date across the river in Cambridge and then I was on my own. So I drove them over to Kirkland Street, letting the car idle while they got out. As Mom walked down the red brick path toward the white clapboard house she called,
"Are you sure you don't want to come in and just meet her? "
"No," I answered, anxious to get on with my evening. I mean she was just a chef on a cooking show. What was the big deal?

Julia Child's Cambridge kitchen is now reassembled and on display at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, DC. including the peg board with the outlines for all her copper pots and utensils. I could have saved myself a trip by simply going in that night.

Oh well. I hope I had a good time, where ever I went those many years ago. My parents reported the next day that they had had a lovely time. I wonder how they got home.