My Life in France by Famous Cook and Baker Julia Childs
I like to cook and bake and I have liked to do this since I was very young. In fact, some of my earliest cooking and baking lesson came from watching cooking shows on television. On of the chefs that I used to watch was Julia Child because she looked like a good cook and baker and she was entertaining. Because of all the above facts, I wanted to read Julia Child’s new book called My Life in France. This book is interesting because it teaches the reader a little French, many interesting things about cooking, and most importantly it gives insight into just how hard one person worked to get good at something that she really wanted to be good at. This book also delves into her personal life. Although the book is good, it is a bit too wordy.
Knowing Julia Child as a great cook and baker, it surprised me to learn that as a child not only did she not know how to cook but she also had no desire to cook. This is probably because her family hired many cooks and other household help. The only reason that she started to cook was because she was getting married and took a brides to be cooking a baking class. She wanted to impress her husband to be Paul with her cooking skills because he knew much about food from his being in the service and living in France. Julia Child also had to learn to cook because she and Paul had to live on a government salary which wasn’t much money at the time. It was refreshing to learn that good cook and bakers are not usually born, but they are made. It was also interesting to find out how much of a determined woman Julia Child was to learn to be good at something she wasn’t at fist.
My Life in France is good because it teaches the reader a bit of French and much about cooking. Because, Julia and Paul had to move to France, Julia learned much about food from Paul. For example, Paul told Julia that in France cooking was a mixture of national sport and high art. Julia also learned how duck and chicken were cooked. Another interesting tidbit that I learned about was that in French cooking chefs use many different types of butter in their recipes. For example, there is separate butter used on rolls and a separate butter used for making pastries.
I thought it was fascinating to lean that Julia Child got a fine cooking education at the French cooking school Le Cordon Bleu. Her cooking teachers didn’t like her at first, but they had to admit that she was a good cook. Even though she messed up scrambled eggs because she didn’t use enough cream, she did graduate from Le Cordon Bleu. I thought that the portion of the book about her experience while at Le Cordon Bleu was one of the most interesting parts of the book. However, even that section of the book was too long. In that section, I also found out that at first both Julia and Paul got sick on French food because the food was to rich for them. This health condition was called an American stomach in Paris.
Because of Paul’s government job, they moved much. The book talked about the moving back and forth too much. I got this point very early in the book. Going on an on about the Child’s moving back and forth from Europe to the United States slowed the pace of the book down. Most of that information could have been left out. The only interesting item about Paul’s government job was that in the 1950s he was investigated for being a traitor and a possible homosexual by the United States government. He was later cleared of all charges.
The latter portion of the book talks about Julia’s experience with writing a couple of cookbooks and her experience with her television cooking show. I really appreciated that she was determined to get her first cooking book published which was called Mastering the Art of French Cooking. It took four years to get published. However, that part of the book was too long as well. The book is over 300 pages. I think that about 210 pages would have been enough. However, for people who like cooking, the book is worth looking at. If I graded this book, I would give the book a B because My Life in France has much information about Julia Child’s life and her cooking but there is too much information in this book.
