rev.JPG)
Julia Childs changed my America.
Growing up in Columbus, Ohio in the 1960s, I lived a peaceful, unexciting and efficient life. For dinner we ate meat and potatoes, heavily cooked vegetables and the all American apple pie. Once, my father cooked a can of El Paso enchiladas, I considered that exotic. When my father served lasagna to his Ohio music camp high school students, he found that they had never eaten this before. If you went to a local coffee shop for breakfast it would consist of over easy eggs, white buttered toast and regular American coffee. Fish was mainly fried; if it was fresh it came from Lake Eire which contained unhealthy levels of mercury. There were a few expensive French restaurants; nobody I knew went to them. The height of spending and elegance was a shrimp cocktail at a nice restaurant.
Growing up in Columbus, Ohio in the 1960s, I lived a peaceful, unexciting and efficient life. For dinner we ate meat and potatoes, heavily cooked vegetables and the all American apple pie. Once, my father cooked a can of El Paso enchiladas, I considered that exotic. When my father served lasagna to his Ohio music camp high school students, he found that they had never eaten this before. If you went to a local coffee shop for breakfast it would consist of over easy eggs, white buttered toast and regular American coffee. Fish was mainly fried; if it was fresh it came from Lake Eire which contained unhealthy levels of mercury. There were a few expensive French restaurants; nobody I knew went to them. The height of spending and elegance was a shrimp cocktail at a nice restaurant.
When I traveled to Europe for the first time at age 19, I had fish and chips in London; as a Midwesterner, this was entirely new to me. I ate onion soup and snails at small cafes in Paris and ate my first quiche. In Florence I ordered the mysterious cappuccino in Italian cafes. I had an exotic tomato and cucumber Greek salad at the Plaka in Athens and paella in Madrid. When I came home I was thrown back into the world of plain, ordinary foods. At the time, these foods were not available in Columbus, unless you made them yourself.
Fast forward to today in America. Cappuccino is found in 7-11’s and there’s a Starbucks on every corner, and even in supermarkets. In the Washington DC area, every national cuisine has its own restaurant: Afghani, Brazilian, Iranian, Lebanese, Ecuadorian, Cuban, Ethiopian, Peruvian, Mongolian, Serbian, and Thai. Even learning to cook is easier than ever with a whole cable channel devoted to cooking, The Foodnetwork channel, and many competitive cooking shows. For quick guides of “how to” you can simply turn your computer on and YouTube has cooking lessons and recipes from around the world available at your fingertips. America has pioneered “fusion” cuisine blending French and Vietnamese and many other world cuisines.
Fast forward to today in America. Cappuccino is found in 7-11’s and there’s a Starbucks on every corner, and even in supermarkets. In the Washington DC area, every national cuisine has its own restaurant: Afghani, Brazilian, Iranian, Lebanese, Ecuadorian, Cuban, Ethiopian, Peruvian, Mongolian, Serbian, and Thai. Even learning to cook is easier than ever with a whole cable channel devoted to cooking, The Foodnetwork channel, and many competitive cooking shows. For quick guides of “how to” you can simply turn your computer on and YouTube has cooking lessons and recipes from around the world available at your fingertips. America has pioneered “fusion” cuisine blending French and Vietnamese and many other world cuisines.
On my more recent trips to Italy, I discovered that you could get a truly awful meal in some Italian hotels. Many restaurants had similar menus with mediocre performances. I yearned to be back in the Washington area where I could get a better meal and for less than half the price because I knew where to go. You can now eat as well or better in America as you can anywhere in the world.
Why this enormous change in a generation?
When lanky, frumpy and nearly nerdy Julia Childs hit the TV screen with her 60s debut on how to cook French food, it changed cooks all over the country. French cooking was thought to be nearly impossible for uncouth Americans, until she came along. If this somewhat silly and sometimes pompous woman could make boeuf bourguignon or onion soup, well I could to. I remembered the delectable food in France and wanted a little taste of France in my own home.
When lanky, frumpy and nearly nerdy Julia Childs hit the TV screen with her 60s debut on how to cook French food, it changed cooks all over the country. French cooking was thought to be nearly impossible for uncouth Americans, until she came along. If this somewhat silly and sometimes pompous woman could make boeuf bourguignon or onion soup, well I could to. I remembered the delectable food in France and wanted a little taste of France in my own home.
Grocery stores started to carry real French bread, something that is so common place now
that we have forgotten that in most parts of the country in the 60s you could not get hard crusted French bread. Now the local supermarket has expanded even further to “Artisan Breads” of great variety, heavy crusts and robust flavors.
that we have forgotten that in most parts of the country in the 60s you could not get hard crusted French bread. Now the local supermarket has expanded even further to “Artisan Breads” of great variety, heavy crusts and robust flavors.We didn’t notice that Julia Childs worked for the OSS, the predecessor of the CIA, for years in the US and abroad. She attended the famous Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris learning and teaching cooking while her diplomat husband worked for the US Information Agency.
Childs was no “info babe” and may not have made it in today’s glamorous world of TV. She did not have a band or an audience and if humorous, it may not have been intentional. She was often 
the subject of parodies. She reinvented herself in her fifties and became a national celebrity over something as frivolous as the taste of food.
She treated good food and wine as an important part of life in a country where we did not want to waste three hours to prepare one dish. She made the mysterious ways of French cooking fun and something that could be mastered by the “average Joe”. She freed the fifty five year old house wife to join the 60s revolution and smell the flowers – or at least the ragout. Since the 60s, this country has had a cultural revolution in fashion, family structure, and more. Thanks in part to Julia Childs, we now have the greatest variety and quality of food experiences in the world.
the subject of parodies. She reinvented herself in her fifties and became a national celebrity over something as frivolous as the taste of food.She treated good food and wine as an important part of life in a country where we did not want to waste three hours to prepare one dish. She made the mysterious ways of French cooking fun and something that could be mastered by the “average Joe”. She freed the fifty five year old house wife to join the 60s revolution and smell the flowers – or at least the ragout. Since the 60s, this country has had a cultural revolution in fashion, family structure, and more. Thanks in part to Julia Childs, we now have the greatest variety and quality of food experiences in the world.
No comments:
Post a Comment