Julia Child

[AdamSmith]

Nice work, Adam ...

 

Then no need to mention living around the corner from Ben Affleck and Jennifer, and frequently passing them out & about, perambulating their brat.

[AdamSmith]

then you twist it!

Course these delights were not without compensating horrors. E.g., at the clothing-optional Moshup Beach on Martha's Vineyard, catching an eyeball-searing sight of Alan Dershowitz au naturel.

 

http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/dershowitz2.jpg

[Lookin]

Of course who was tickling the ivories for us but one Tom Lehrer. . . . Although he was happy to talk, one on one, about his songs, how he felt things had gotten almost too dire for satire any longer, and the historical and current state of satirical songs and performers.)

 

Famously quipping, "People are always suggesting hilarious subject matter," he says. "Things like the Vietnam War, or the gradual destruction of the environment, or our recent Presidents. But things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava."

[Lookin]

Of course who was tickling the ivories for us but one Tom Lehrer. . . . Although he was happy to talk, one on one, about his songs, how he felt things had gotten almost too dire for satire any longer, and the historical and current state of satirical songs and performers.)

 

Famously quipping, "People are always suggesting hilarious subject matter," he says. "Things like the Vietnam War, or the gradual destruction of the environment, or our recent Presidents. But things I once thought were funny are scary now. I often feel like a resident of Pompeii who has been asked for some humorous comments on lava."

[AdamSmith]

Talking about other satirists, I've never forgotten Lehrer remarking to me that Mark Russell's songs always sound like first drafts. That's absolutely what was always wrong with Russell's stuff.

[AdamSmith]

Talking about other satirists, I've never forgotten Lehrer remarking to me that Mark Russell's songs always sound like first drafts. That's absolutely what was always wrong with Russell's stuff.

[+ friendofsheila]

Maybe the one time I watched a whole show back in the 70's was the one time she whipped out a blowtorch.

 

No lie.

[+ friendofsheila]

Maybe the one time I watched a whole show back in the 70's was the one time she whipped out a blowtorch.

 

No lie.

[bigvalboy]

For Adam Smith, and anyone else who finds this sort of thing fascinating...

 

 

 

Julia Child’s Sweet French Kitchen (and Its Small Cottage) Listed at Less Than $1 Million

Michelle Huffman

November 19, 2015

Julia Child’s French country cottage is for sale on the open market for the first time, with the only true “Julia Child kitchen” extant in a private home.

 

Dubbed La Pitchoune, “The Little One,” the 1,600-square-foot getaway is exactly what you’d hope of the world’s first celebrity chef, who brought French cooking into the everyday American kitchen. But it’s perhaps not what you’d expect, if when you hear “chef” and “French” you imagine men in giant toques and tiny mustaches sniffing haughtily at glasses of wine.

 

The Provencal kitchen is bright and cheerful, homey and stuffed with cookware, some of them her original pieces. She hung her cookware and gadgetry on a pegboard, and her beloved husband, Paul, outlined each item’s location – just as things were in her main kitchen in Cambridge, Massachusetts, now forever preserved at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. (Pictures of the Smithsonian kitchen are at the bottom of this post.)

 

La Pitchoune’s kitchen has scarcely changed over the decades. Here it is now:

 

And from nearly the same angle in 1978, with Julia Child herself:

 

 

“I like things to hang up,” Julia Child told the Smithsonian Magazine as the Massachusetts kitchen was being packed up to head to Washington, “so Paul made a diagram of where everything goes. It’s nice to have them back where they belong.”

 

Paul Child had designed the kitchen in France as well as the one in Massachusetts, in part to save money but also to accommodate his wife’s particular preferences – as well as his wife’s height. At 6-foot-2, she loomed over most of their small European kitchens, a vision he captured often with his camera. So the countertops he designed for her are higher than usual.

 

[bigvalboy]

The two were inseparable, and Paul Child was prone to writing letters and poems of adoration over his wife and her cooking.

 

“If we could just have the kitchen and the bedroom, that would be all we need,” she told the Smithsonian.

 

[Related: Rachael Ray Says Guests Are ‘Shocked at How Tiny My Kitchen Is’]

 

The vacation cottage was built in 1963 on property owned by her best friend, Simone Beck, who co-authored “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” with Child. They had a “handshake deal” agreeing that the Childs would give the house back to Beck and her family when they were done using it.

 

Here it is in context, with the cottage at upper right:

 

La Pitchoune is about half an hour’s drive from Cannes and the Cote d’Azur, on a hillside in a small village called Plascassier:

 

Child, her husband, and their friends often referred to it by a pet name, “La Peetch.” The Childs visited the house every year, traveling from any of Paul Child’s diplomatic European posts and later from their home in Massachusetts, and entertained other culinary giants there, including James Beard and M.F.K. Fisher.

 

The house has never been on the open market before. The Childs used it from the time it was built until around 1991, when Paul Child’s health began to fade and Beck died, and then it returned to Beck’s family. In 1993, an American named Kathie Alex, who knew and studied with Child and Beck, turned La Peetch into a culinary school called Cooking With Friends in France.

 

Alex closed the school this year because of health reasons. Although Sotheby’s International Realty does not disclose the price in its listing, the Los Angeles times reports that she’s asking about $860,000.

 

The half-acre property includes the cottage, with three bedrooms that the listing describes as “cozy,” each with its own bath; as well as a separate one-bedroom studio structure with a living room, kitchenette and bathroom. [/url]

 

(Living room.)

 

(Living room.)

 

(“Cozy” bedroom with en suite bathroom.)

 

(Al fresco dining, anyone?)

 

(The half-acre property includes a pool, as well as a separate studio building with another living room, a bedroom, a kitchenette and a bathroom.)

 

(Child in 1981.)

 

Child died at age 91 in 2004. Meryl Streep recently played her – to much acclaim, of course – in the film “Julie & Julia.”

 

Visitors can see her former Massachusetts home kitchen – which bears similarities to the French kitchen in La Pitchoune – at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington (photos by Getty Images):

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Moondance]

Great Love, Great Friends, Great Food ... and a getaway cottage in France. If Julia Child is not the epitome of A LIFE WELL LIVED, I don't know who is.

[AdamSmith]

We could all Peetch in and buy it as a Forum timeshare.

[bigvalboy]

We could all Peetch in and buy it as a Forum timeshare.

 

...That's not what I had in mind when I posted.

[bigvalboy]

“If we could just have the kitchen and the bedroom, that would be all we need,” she told the Smithsonian.

 

Ain't that the truth...

 

From the article:

By the time I met Julia Child, her husband, Paul, was little more than a ghost of a man, so diminished by old age and its attendant diseases that it was impossible to discern the remarkable artist, photographer and poet he once had been. It broke my heart, because the more I knew Julia, the more I wished I had known Paul. “He’s responsible for everything I did,” she once told me. When I look at Julia’s kitchen, it is Paul who comes to mind.

[MrMiniver]

Julia Child rules. Period. There has never been anyone like her and there never will be. They should build monuments to her.

[AdamSmith]

They should build monuments to her.

Her kitchen being in the Smithsonian is a pretty good start.

[AdamSmith]

“If we could just have the kitchen and the bedroom, that would be all we need,” she told the Smithsonian.

 

Ain't that the truth...

 

From the article:

By the time I met Julia Child, her husband, Paul, was little more than a ghost of a man, so diminished by old age and its attendant diseases that it was impossible to discern the remarkable artist, photographer and poet he once had been. It broke my heart, because the more I knew Julia, the more I wished I had known Paul. “He’s responsible for everything I did,” she once told me. When I look at Julia’s kitchen, it is Paul who comes to mind.

The bios depict him immensely involved in her television productions right from the beginning, hugely supportive both emotionally and pragmatically.

 

Another thing the recent books bring out is that she was not just winging it on camera, despite her free & easy stage manner. Before taping each show she spent many hours at home in the kitchen and then in her study at the typewriter, working out the steps she would go through in front of the camera, getting the timing down to the minute, etc.

[AdamSmith]

She remarked in I think My Life... how James Beard preceded her on television, but his normally ebullient self froze up as a TV performer. Like, when showing how to joint a chicken, he would position the knife and say, "Then cut here." But with no explanation of what "here" was, why here, anything about knife technique, etc. She said she learned a lot about what a really informative TV cooking show should be by watching him muff it.

[gallahadesquire]

Maybe the one time I watched a whole show back in the 70's was the one time she whipped out a blowtorch.

 

No lie.

 

OF COURSE she did! How else do you get your

Crème brûlée to carmelize (unless you have a salamander) ? It can work on cheesecakes, too.

(Apologies for the cut-and-past, I don't know where the accents are)

[MrMiniver]

OF COURSE she did! How else do you get your

Crème brûlée to carmelize (unless you have a salamander) ? It can work on cheesecakes, too.

(Apologies for the cut-and-past, I don't know where the accents are)

 

You can put it under the broiler but the blowtorch method is so much more FUN

[MrMiniver]

I was at an event (a very long time ago) at the old Marshall Fields in Chicago when Julia was doing a private cooking demonstration and was seated at a table next to Paul Child. Believe me, he was NOTHING like he was portrayed by Stanley Tucci in Julie and Julia. He was tall, elegant, soft spoken. Like what you picture an old school diplomat being like. It was a very interesting conversation.

 

Without Julia Child, we might still be eating TV dinners and recipes from Good Housekeeping and TV Guide. Kraft Mac 'n Cheese and other assorted crap. She was a genius and I've always argued she was not only one of the most important women of the 20th century but one of the most important Americans. She changed America.

[Moondance]

... she was not just winging it on camera, despite her free & easy stage manner. Before taping each show she spent many hours at home in the kitchen and then in her study at the typewriter, working out the steps she would go through in front of the camera, getting the timing down to the minute, etc.

 

And she had helpers (in addition to Paul) ... I love this image of What The Viewer Didn't See...

 

http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/sites/radcliffe.harvard.edu/files/styles/collection_exhibit_item/public/field_item_image/collection_exhibit_item/JuliaFilming_0.jpg?itok=E3b3VXQh

[AdamSmith]

And she had helpers (in addition to Paul) ... I love this image of What The Viewer Didn't See...

 

http://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/sites/radcliffe.harvard.edu/files/styles/collection_exhibit_item/public/field_item_image/collection_exhibit_item/JuliaFilming_0.jpg?itok=E3b3VXQh

On her show one time as she was sweeping some food scraps over the back side of the counter, she remarked, "I do have a garbage can back here, you know."

 

But then I think on one of her Letterman appearances, she did the same thing but cracked, "That's one of the best things about cooking on television -- you can just throw your garbage on the floor."

[Lookin]

A casual friend was invited to one of her Cambridge dinners and brought along a boyfriend who was far from an adventurous eater. She was serving sweetbreads en croute that evening.

 

 

The boyfriend made it through the pastry alright, then asked what was inside. When my friend explained what it was, the boyfriend widened his eyes and set his fork aside.

 

La Child was gracious as could be and made sure he had plenty of less exotic fare to enjoy. When he was happily munching away on the side dishes, she leaned over to my friend and whispered, ‘I’m sure you’re not averse to organ meats!'

[MrMiniver]

A casual friend was invited to one of her Cambridge dinners and brought along a boyfriend who was far from an adventurous eater. She was serving sweetbreads en croute that evening.

 

 

The boyfriend made it through the pastry alright, then asked what was inside. When my friend explained what it was, the boyfriend widened his eyes and set his fork aside.

 

La Child was gracious as could be and made sure he had plenty of less exotic fare to enjoy. When he was happily munching away on the side dishes, she leaned over to my friend and whispered, ‘I’m sure you’re not averse to organ meats!

 

One needs to be more adventurous than that. I would never have asked her what it was until AFTER I had eaten it. Often, if you don't know what it is you will find you like it. If she cooked sweetbreads I bet it was done right and would have been delicious.