Just saw Julie & Julia and Meryl Streep nailed it. My favorite line from the movie is when Meryl burns herself while tossing tubular pasta and exclaims to her amused husband that they were like "hot cocks". Apparently, Julia really did say this in private company. I was the only one laughing out loud in the movie theater. Amy Adams as the copycat blogger was a little whiny and sickly looking.
I watched Julia Child on PBS when I was seven and was fascinated by her. I didn't really think she knew what she was doing, but she made it so much fun that it didn't matter.
Whenever I'm trying to remember a recipe or favorite dinner, I will invariably call Mammma and ask her. It doesn't matter what I'll ask her, she'll say, "Did you look it up in my Encyclopedic Cookbook?" It's still sold on Amazon for about $17 which is a good deal if it's as big as my Mom's. (1,000 pages paperback!)
After 20 years of cooking for a family of six on a tight budget without the help of Rachel Ray or her own mother showing her cooking techniques,4-colored pictures, or the Food Network stars, it amazes me how she pulled it off. No one showed her how, she just read about it and did it. When she was first married, she learned how to make her own pie crusts and saved the scraps for a special treat. She will only use Crisco for her crusts as this flakes the best. I don't think she ever watched Julia because she was too busy cleaning, cooking and raising a family. She also never used a food processor, microwave, dishwasher or clothes dryer. She didn't have money for alot of cookbooks either. (Unlike me who collects them like dolls).
Anytime I look at theeee Encyclopedic Cookbook, I laugh aloud at the black & white pictures of women in plaid housedresses butchering meat, stuffing peeled tomotoes with goose liver in jelly, and crimping home-made pie crusts. There's also listings for measurement conversions, calories and vitamins for foods, ingredients and their uses, all-inclusive cooking techniques and purchasing guides. The index is massive. There are recipes for Crown Roast of Pork, Pig's Knuckles & Sauerkraut, Stuffed Lamb Shanks, Reindeer Stew, Braised Moose, Rennet Custards, Baked Alaska, Black-Butter Eggs. This is a heavy meat, cream,eggs, fruit pies, cakes, and sandwiches cookbook with puny, overcooked vegtable side dishes swimming in cream sauces, appetizers, mold salads, relishes, and homemade jams. There are also Luncheon menus which include Welsh Rarebit on Toast, Braised Celery, and Individual Ham and Egg Souffles. The decriptions below the pictures are priceless:
A party could not possibly fail with this linzer torte.
A star in its own right is this luscious party cake.
This lordly plum pudding bears a diadem of hard sauce pinwheels.
Candied fruit and nuts give a gay touch to the simplest pudding.
A beautiful plate of individual aspic, apricot halves with cream cheese, a petal-cut plum, chicory and sandwiches.
Breads and braids we often eat, but egg braid with sugar is quite a treat.
A meat ring with an array of sauces makes us soon forget our losses.
Luckily, Mom, with her love of fresh vegtables and fruits, picked the best recipes. Most I can't find, and I think Mom wants to see me suffer. I recently organized her yellowed, 1970's newsclippings into a home-made cookbook. Most she didn't even make because it wasn't in her budget. She mainly stuck to a repertoire of 10-15 solid recipes. She loves watching me use the food processor for everything. She thinks it's the most amazing invention.
Some of my favorites of hers are the applesauce cookies, pound cake, blueberry and pumpkin pies, and the annual bannana chocolate birthday cake. She used sifters and a hand held mixer. She also used an egg timer for Dad's poached eggs. Her dinners were salisbury steak (never a real steak), split-pea soup, liver,beef stew,baked beans that were soaked overnight, mashed potatoes, pork chops, fried peppers and onions with eggs, spagetti & meatballs, chicken-ala-king, salmon loaf, meatloaf, beef stroganaff, stuffed peppers, ravioli & perogi's rolled out by hand, lasgana, eggplant parmesan, and vegtables from the garden. Every Sunday it was a pot roast with carrots, onions & potatoes. Deviled eggs were reserved for holidays. We never had dessert unless we had some fresh fruit or it was someone's birthday or it was a holiday. She also never bought sodas or fruit juices. We drank tea or water. One time I went to a neighbor's house for the most awful Spagetti'o's poured out of a can. I looked at the single mother with wide eyes of disbelief. Mom never poured anything out of a can.
I also babysat for young mothers in the late '70's who thought Manwich's were a home cooked meal. They actually instructed me to make it for the kid's lunch's. In my teens, my very scientific father took over the newly remodeled kitchen he built. He measured everything out carefully with the back of a knife, and turned everything into a major chore. He made coconut cream pies, blueberry & strawberry jams, tomato juice, potato leek soup, fried fish, and pizza. (Just watched Alton Brown on food network make a cake with hardware tools he bought-that would be Dad, the chemist.) Mom would quietly cook the dinner with no fanfare....it was like Voila....Magic, "What's the big deal about Cooking?" She never measured anything. Most of her recipes came from the local newspaper or her favorite cookbook published in the 1950's called "The Culinary Arts Institute Encyclopedic Cookbook" with several editors listed on the cover..
After watching Julie and Julia, it's amazing that Julia was brave enough to take on the snobbish French culinary schools and turn it upside down. We love her for it, but my Mom was way ahead of her for sheer survival's sake.
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