Reflections on Cooking - 100th Blog Post!

I admit, I did not grow up watching Julia Child.  I knew who she was, and given we only had the local NBC, CBS and PBS affiliates, I'm sure I'd stumbled upon her shows a few times.  But she just didn't resonate with me at an early age.

When I realized my big 100th post was coming up, I was reading Julia Child's From Julia Child's Kitchen.  I had been thinking a lot about how what I want to do in my kitchen, and how I want to cook and feed my family is similar to Julia Child's food philosophies.  She is probably more "French" than I will ever be; not so much in the recipes she enjoyed preparing, but the methods of butter and sauces and cooking things beautifully so they are as pleasing to the eye as they are the palate.  But it seems she found pleasure in simplicity.  While a dish of hers may not have always been "easy" most are beautifully simple.

There is a "revolution" of sorts now to cook "whole" foods, which I admire and strive toward.  But this revolution is not new.  This revolution is the old philosophies of the home cooks who came before us - our mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers - the women who did not have processed foods or microwaves or food processors.  They rolled up their sleeves and made everything by hand.  Menus were not fancy, and not always easy, but they were most often simple.

I've been watching an adorable auto-tuned Julia Child remix created by melodysheep for PBS Digital Studios a lot lately because I have an odd fascination of auto-tuned videos, and because I think it's adorably cute.  (The Fred Rogers remix makes me seriously smile too, if you haven't seen it).  Check out the remix....I'll wait.



I love the bit where Julia says "Cook and cook and keep on cooking.  This is the way to live."  It just makes me want to cry, because when I'm in my kitchen, even on the busy frantic days and I'm putting together something fast and easy, as long as it's real ingredients and real food, I feel like I'm living.

The best way to sum up me, my cooking philosophies, why I started this blog, and where I want it to go is to quote Julia in the preface to her book From Julia Child's Kitchen.

Learn how to cook!  That's my invariable answer when I am asked to give forth with money-saving recipes, economy tips, budget gourmet dinner menus for six people under ten dollars, and the like.  Learn how to cook!  That's the way to save money.  You don't save it buying hamburger helpers, and prepared foods; you save it buying fresh foods in season or in large supply, when they are cheapest and usually best, and you prepare them from scratch at home.  Why pay for some one else's work, when if you know how to do it, you can save all that money for yourself?  ...and when you cook well, you'll be eating far better meals than you could buy from a freezer or at a restaurant.

Keep on cooking! Bon Appetit!