Quotable Friday and Weekend Links: Julia Child Edition
Until I saw the movie Julie and Julia, I thought of Julia Child only as the quirky lady with the high-pitched voice on public television. But that movie, and Meryl Streep’s uncanny portrayal of her (she was Julia Child), transformed her – for me – from a charicature to the delightful but compelling person she actually was. (I read the book Julie and Julia too, and liked it a lot, but the book was only half of the movie; it didn’t cover Julia in the way that the Nora Ephron movie did.)
What I appreciate most about Julia is how she kept taking on new challenges throughout her life. She was a World War II intelligence analyst turned (very novice) cooking student turned cookbook author turned television personality. That’s amazing really, especially for her time.
By the way, after she retired to California, Julia donated the kitchen from her Cambridge, MA home to the Smithsonian, where it’s been on display, off and on, at the Museum of American History. Have you happened to catch it?
Here are some other ways people are creating their lives that caught my eye this week:
- How a San Francisco family of five lives (almost) clutter free.
- Sheryl Sandberg’s honest, touching Facebook post about grief.
- See what a registered dietician eats in an average day. (You know you want to know.)
- A Dutch nursing home lets students live there for free and the reason is genius.
- And I had no idea that NBA players got pedicures.
I hope you have a wonderful weekend.
Photo of Julia Child’s kitchen courtesy of ehpien.
How do you spell dietitian? You spell it ‘dietician’, the link spells it ‘dietitian’. Which is preferred?
Good question, gehugh. I didn’t even notice the difference. Looks like they’re both spellings of the same word, although dietitian may be the more preferred spelling.
I remember watching Julia Child periodically growing up; because my parents were basically meat-and-potatoes kind of people everything on her show seemed exotic to me then. The year the movie Julie and Julia came out happened to be the year my family and I visited Washington, DC. While there we saw Julia Child’s re-created kitchen at the Museum of American History, which I just loved! We took our two younger sons, who were 11 and 16 at the time, and while I was standing at there trying to take in all of the details from the kitchen I could hear the boys shuffling around trying to move on to the next exhibit. I overheard my husband whisper, “Give your mom time – she gets into this kind of stuff’. I do so ‘get into’ the history + the legend + the deliciousness of the dishes she prepared. I’m so glad the timing worked out.
Karen, I’m glad the timing worked out for you too. And your husband whispering that to your boys? Precious. He gets you.