Julia Child and France Then and Now

These are various notes I made while reading Julia Child’s My Life in France.Julia Child lived in Paris, France in the late 1940s-early 1950s and later built a "winter" house in Provence. Our experiences with French culture are more than 50 years different, illustrating how much some things have changed.

Restaurant prices are obviously significantly different. Three dollars in 1950 bought a fantastic meal in Paris for two people. I don’t think that would buy the bread in 2010.

Even though Julia didn’t work, it was au naturel for her to have a cleaning lady, one that even lived with them. Her kitchen appears to have been quite roomy, although everything is either on hooks, on open shelves or on the countertop. There do not appear to be any cabinets. My belle mere (mother in law) has a fairly normal sized and looking kitchen and definitely doesn’t have a cleaning lady. Of course, they live in the south, not in Paris. Perhaps people in Paris still have servants? Or more than likely, it was just the way it was in those times.

Julia has plenty of time to cook and experiment. She didn’t work and she didn’t have children. That left her with lots of time to fill. The book mentions how she took up the cooking classes because she needed something to do and she liked food.

Although the French all go on vacance in August, apparently no Americans do. Its unclear if all of the Child’s friends also worked in government and thus didn’t get the same vacation time because they followed American holidays/vacation, or if that’s just the way Americans were used to doing. Already there is resistance in France to “American business principles” of working all day, or all the time. The French want to spend time on other pursuits and enjoy life. They work ‘hard enough’ to make a decent living, but not so hard as to be unable to enjoy their lives. So many Americans these days are forced to work 10-12 hours day (including commuting time) or more such that they don’t have the ability to enjoy what time off they do get.

Julia may be quite familiar with the French language, and even though I know a decent amount, I don’t understand many phrases she used in the book and no doubt most Americans know even less. Some of the phrases and sentences should come with a translation, especially when she’s trying to make us understand how funny they are. We can’t laugh at what we don’t understand. It seems to me that she always translates the easier words/sentences, but not the more complicated ones, and this is frustrating. I can easily understand “une maison sans chat, c’est la vie sans soleil (a house without a cat is like life without sunshine), but I had no idea what “nous, nous de la vraie Mediterranee, nous ne mettons jamais les tomates dans la bouillabaisse, nous, jamais” meant other than it has something to do with tomatoes in the Mediterranean bouillabaisse. Apparently it actually means that “true Mediterranean people don’t use tomatoes in bouillabaisse” (something said by a Marsellais woman which Julia said wasn’t really true).

The photos of Julia in her kitchen and with French women show how much she towered over everyone, and how especially tall she was, particularly during this era. Compare Julia, at 6’2”, with the French women, they appear to be a good 12 inches shorter. Most French women I have met in 2000+ have been what I understand is current average height of around 5’5” or so, so the French have grown taller. Considering that furniture was likely built for these short women, especially in the kitchen, it must have been quite hard on Julia to cook, or at least cause her more back strain. When Julia had homes built/remodeled for her, the kitchens were custom built taller for her size.

I found it interesting her mention of driving across the US in 1946 with Paul before they got married, nothing is said about separate bedrooms in the hotels at which they stayed. You mean in 1946 men and women sometimes slept together before marriage in the “golden family values age” of the US? Quelle horror.

There is a big difference between Julia Child describing her cooking and Julie Powell describing her cooking of Julia Child’s recipes in Julie’s blog/book. Julia Child discusses the taste, textures, flavors of the food. Julie described how hard it was to cook the recipe or find the ingredients.

Julia talks about how, at 40, she is now of “advancing age.” At least today, 40 is the new 30, so I don’t feel quite so “advanced age” at 45.

Julia apparently hates the pressure cooker because it ‘made everything taste nasty’ but it was “popular in U.S. households” so she had to adapt some recipes for its use. Quite a difference in 2010, where the only other person I know of with a pressure cooker is another mixed American-French household, and it was only through my belle mere that I learned to cook with one. If a pressure cooker was popular in the US in the 1950s, it’s definitely not now (most likely due to more frozen veggies that one just boils or cooks in the microwave). I think a pressure cooker is better. It’s so easy and I think it makes the veggies taste better, more natural. At least better than boiling or microwaving the vegetables. I’ll have to review Julia’s cookbook to see how she cooked the veggies, if she thought they tasted worse in a pressure cooker. I’m fairly certain she added butter to everything, so of course that would make them taste better, but I can still do that after using the pressure cooker, if I felt it necessary (which most of the time, I don’t).

Julia mentions the differences between French and American flour. In France, apparently the flour is (or was) more natural, and kept its fat. It would go bad if not used up in a fairly quick amount of time. American flour is more processed (I knew that in general) that takes away more of the fat, but allows it stay fresh a lot longer. Thus Julia had to scale her recipes for Americans to use more butter or other fat in cooking things like pastry crust. I wonder if the difference in flour still exists, and if so, if they sell flour in smaller quantities in France, since it must be used up quicker. I’ll have to ask, since some of the recipes for things I’ve asked from my in-laws use both flour and butter. Maybe I need to add more butter to my béchamel sauce, for example and perhaps that’s why it doesn’t taste as good as my belle souer’s.

When Julia talks about her first cooking lessons as a teacher, she’s charging 7000 francs, which she says is the equivalent of $20 (so about 350 francs to 1 dollar). I was floored. I went to France in 1988, when they still had the franc, and I’m pretty sure the exchange rate was about 7 francs to the dollar. So in 37 years, that’s quite a comeback for the franc. Of course now the French use the Euro, which is worth more than the dollar. So there you go capitalists, a couple of generations of socialism ruins an economy, eh?

Julia talks about how her book was to be the complete primer for French cooking, the preliminaries must be performed correctly and every detail must be observed. Certainly MTAFC is quite detailed and frankly I have problems sometimes trying to follow everything. It’s a lot of work to cook most of these recipes. The results are worth it, however. It’s just hard to find the time to devote to cooking when one has a full time job, plus young kids. Of course, Julia is writing this book at a time when most women aren’t working full time.

Before reading this book, I had no idea that Julia Child actually spent quite so much time living in France after her initial stay and definitely not in Provence. After they returned to the US and Julia began her cooking show, the Childs continued to visit friends in France. Her co-author, Simone Beck and her husband owned property in Provence, inherited from family. The property, five hectares of land (about 12 acres) was situated a bit north of Cannes. When the Childs wanted to find a place of their own, but could not find anything to their liking, the Becks allowed them to build their own home on a portion of their land. These was solely a lease arrangement, the house reverted back to the Beck family after the Childs stopped using it in the early 1990s when Paul Child could no longer physically visit. But with this home, the Childs now spent many months each year living in Provence. It is my hope that someday my family will be able to afford a home in Provence near my husband’s parents, so we too can live several months there when we retire.

I note she talks about by the time they quite visiting Provence it had become quite expensive, crowded and most of the small shops had given way to large supermarkets. While that may be true, it’s still closer to the “country” than in the US, or at least in most US cities. Its definitely harder to find butcher’s fruit/vegetable suppliers, bakers in US cities than in France, at least from what I’ve seen. OTOH, I generally haven’t seen my in-laws shop many places other than the supermarket, although I have seen smaller butchers and fruit/vegetable places. Certainly it is easier to do one’s shopping all at one place, I find it the same here. We do try to use the Amish farmers market more often, even if the prices are equivalent, the food is generally fresher than in the supermarket.

All in all, a very interesting book, certainly more so that Julie Powell's book.

On a Reading Roll

I feel inspired to write more for a time. I was rereading some of my prior posts and saw that I was remiss in following up to my book review from a couple of months ago. So here is my review of some of the books I said I'd talk about, plus a couple others.


Committed by Elizabeth Gilbert - This was the follow up to Eat, Love, Pray (which is now a movie that I've read isn't so good, especially if you haven't read the book). For those that liked ELP, you'll like Committed. If you didn't like ELP, well, why are you still reading her books? Committed follows Elizabeth's relationship with Felipe, they fly back and forth between the US and Felipe's business interests in Bali and elsewhere. After several multi-month long stays in the US, immigration finally says Felipe can't come in any more without a more permanent visa (especially in the post 9/11 US). So the couple has no choice. Either live outside the US or get married. Given that both Felipe and Elizabeth are divorced from prior unsuccessful marriages, neither of them, Liz in particular, is all that keen on getting married, but they want to stay together and be able to spend time in the US. So while waiting forever for Felipe's fiancee visa (I know what that feels like), the couple live in other countries, primarily very low expense southeast asian countries and Liz explores the concept and institution of marriage through other cultures.

What was interesting in this book was realizing that our current US (and western European) culture of "marriage for love" is really a very modern concept. The vast majority of our history shows that marriage has almost always been a 'civil' arrangement, primarily to breed children and/or combine family interests/business/money. In poorer cultures, marriage was just something you did with someone agreeable enough when it was time to have children. In richer cultures, of course, a lot of time it was a business decision by parents to combine money, land, titles, etc. Love rarely, if ever, factored into the decision to get married, but it may have developed over time. Most of the time, it was good enough if you liked the person, or at least could stand to be in the same room together and share a bed now and again. That's why hardly anyone ever got divorced. No one in Liz's travels mentioned this ideal of a "soul mate" or the "one true love" that seems to drive so many Americans to divorce when their marriage lives aren't perfect.

The only real flaw in Elizabeth's work is that the vast majority of her interviews and opinions are garnered from women, very little is contributed to by men, who are really half of the marriage equation. While the book explains why the women never seem interested in being with a man other than one's husband (at least for sex), there isn't a similar query made to the men, many of whom aren't always satisfied with just one woman. There was no research as to what happens if the man does go outside the marriage, did that have any affect at all? There also wasn't any inquiry as to whether homosexual interests ever arose and what affect that could have. So, a bit like EPL, you feel like you're just getting half the story, but its still a good read.


"The Nanny Returns" - Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Krause (follow-up to "The Nanny Diaries"). The protagonist of The Nanny Diaries returns to NYC after about 10 years with her husband (whom she met in TND), who is the son of one of the NYC 'society women' whom Nanny derides. This book contains two stories, Nanny's relationship with Mrs. X and her new job at a private school funded by the X's, with a small subplot of Nanny's friendship with an old friend who appears to be a 'budding Ms. X.' The book continues on the same topic of how people in the X's circle are shallow, only interested in appearances, and don't give a damn about "the little people" who actually work. However, the treatment of the teachers at the school certainly isn't limited to the rich, we see that in middle-class public schools as well, except that there's a little less control over the teacher's jobs. Still an interesting look of how having a lot of money can change one's priorities, especially when children are involved.

"Think Twice" by Lisa Scottoline. Another book where Bennie's twin sister shows up to wreck havoc in Bennie's life. The twin is able to kidnap Bennie and assume her life for several days, while she tries to steal all of Bennie's life savings. Apparently the twin is able to do this because no one really knows Bennie well enough to see all the inconsistencies when the twin assumes Bennie's life and work. Eventually Bennie realizes this and vows to change her life so she will become closer to people. I suppose this was supposed to make people realize that they need others in their lives and not to be so isolated from people you work with and to make real friends. Frankly, I found it a bit inconceivable that Bennie had no close friend who knew her well enough to spot the fake and even those people that saw the differences just assumed Bennie wanted to act differently, even when these people knew Bennie had a con-artist twin sister. Also, lesson learned from Bennie: don't write your computer/bank/email passwords down in a Rollodex on your desk under the card marked "passwords." And this is supposed to be a very smart lawyer?

"Silks" and "Even Money" by Dick Francis and Felix Francis. These are the last two books written by (or with) Dick Francis before his death. His son, Felix, wrote with him. Its a bit unclear as to how much input Dick had in these books, given his age. Almost certainly he's not the one doing the bulk of the research, as his wife used to do it before her death, about 10 years or so ago (which nearly stopped the books completely, it appears, until Felix stepped up to the plate to help). The books are very much written in Dick's style and after reading all of his books (of which I think there are about 30 or so), they definitely have a pattern. The protagonist is nearly always a fairly meek man who gets caught up in circumstances beyond his control and a bit out of his depth, certainly violence wise. Almost always either the protagonist or a close friend ends up having some crucial skill that helps the protagonist defeat the bad guy. Almost always there's a 'thrill' scene where the bad guy threatens the protagonist's female companion. The main interests I've had in the books is how Francis combines horses (nearly always involving racing) with some other topic, such as photography, wine-making, banking, painting, or in the case of these two stories, bookmaking (i.e. gambling) and being an attorney. I'll be curious to see whether Felix Francis continues on writing the books.


"Blood Oath" by Christopher Farnsworth. I really liked this book. Its about a new vampire discovered by shortly after the civil war and "pardoned" by President Andrew Jackson and bound by a voodoo oath to serve only the President of the United States and men directly under his control. The vampire then helps serve and defend the US from other supernatural threats, which in this book are 'frankenstein' monsters put together from corpses of fallen soldiers set loose by radical Islamic terrorists. The book is clearly written as the first in the series, as all the necessary parties survive, and future encounters with involved villains are expected. I thought the book was well written, paced well and the characters well created. Looking forward to the sequel.

On vacation I read "The Alibi Man" by Tami Hoag and "Valhallan Rising" by Clive Cussler. Both were my 'throwaway' vacation books, paperbacks I had bought (at library sales) because they looked somewhat interesting, but knew I didn't want to keep them. So I took them on vacation with the intent of reading them, then leaving them for someone else to pick up and read on their vacation. Less stuff to take home, more room for souvenirs. Both were ok as diversions, but clearly just that. "The Alibi Man" involved a murder-mystery in Florida, which naturally makes you think its one person, but ends up being the completely no-way other person. "Valhallan Rising" was another story involving Cussler's main protagonist, Dirk Pitt, as he solves a mystery that starts hundred or so years before. I've read a couple of these books now and just can't really get into Cussler's world. I'm always a bit suspicious of the 'superman' who seems to be able to do everything and anything.


I'll be doing a separate post on the Julia Child book, as it's fairly extensive. I've also read through several of Wil Wheaton's books that I plan on posting about. Still working my way through Laurell K. Hamilton's latest, "Divine Misdemeanors." Its been taking a bit of a back shelf to other books I'm on a deadline with for the library, and frankly, some of her books are starting to plod a bit as well. Plus its big and hard to port around. I'm also in the middle of "The Passage" by Justin Cronin, another new vampire-type book (and this one clearly needed an editor).

Concert Experiment Fail

I went to see Adam Lambert in concert on Friday night at a Musikfest put on by the city of Bethlehem, PA. Bethlehem is a smallish town north of Philly, a little bit east of Allentown (made famous in a Billy Joel song). Every year it holds this two week Musikfest, which is like a county fair with booths of food, drink, games, shopping and about five or six stages for musical performers. All of the performances are free except for the big main stage at the "RiverPlace," which turns out is simply a island in the middle of the river next to the town where they set up a stage and folding chairs.

While I loved Adam's performance, I was not happy at all with the venue. Had I known he was going to have another date near Philly (which was the night before in Upper Darby, 5 miles from my house, /sob), I would have waited to buy tickets there, as the temporary RiverPlace was a hassle to get to (normally its about an hours drive, but Friday night traffic to the Poconos, plus the concert traffic made the drive 2 hours), the venue is not a real good place to see the stage if your seats were back beyond the first section, not to mention the nightmare of parking (or I should really say, getting back to my car after the concert - that took longer than Adam's concert). But the Musikfest tickets went on sale a month or so before the Tower Theater performance was announced, so I thought it was my only chance to see him (and money is tight enough that I couldn't justify two concerts in two nights). I have to wonder if that was intended, in order to up the attendance at Musikfest, since it was a much larger venue (about 6,500 seats, plus lawn seating, compared to the Tower Theater at about 2,500 seats).

And waiting nearly an hour after opening act Orianthi for his less than a hour performance was annoying as well. I don't know who's fault that was. The stage appeared to have been done in 20 minutes, so why was there a delay? The delay also caused concerns getting back to our car, since we had to park way off site and take the shuttle bus to the festival grounds, which were supposed to stop at 11:30 p.m. (but obviously kept going after midnight to get everyone back to the parking areas). I think Adam had to cut his encore to just one song because of the bus schedule, since I understand at other concerts he did two songs.

My only other quibble was with the whole camera thing. I've been going to concerts for a few decades now, so I know that in general one can't bring in cameras. Obviously some of that had changed to some extent with phones having cameras, I haven't heard of any place that keeps one from bringing your phone into the concert, even if it has a camera in it, but I haven't gone to a whole lot of concerts in the past couple of years (kids will do that).

With Musikfest, I thought seriously about bringing my small camcorder and my sister-in-law did bring her camera, which was a little bit larger than a phone, with a protruding lens (i.e. it doesn't easily slip inside a pocket, but its not a 'professional' type camera either). I tried to find information as to whether such was allowed at the Musikfest concert, since the rest of the festival was free, had a lot of music, games, other entertainment for families, who one would expect would naturally bring their camera. But I couldn't find any info.

In the end, I didn't bring my camcorder, which I guess was a good thing. We're in line to get into the venue when we see the sign that says "no cameras". Its now 6:40 (the website said the concert was to start at 6:45 - although it actually was an hour later) and since we had parked a long ways a way and taken the shuttle bus, we had no easy way back to the car. Neither of us had pockets, so I did a little trick with my purse and got the camera in (lets just say I've had a little bit of experience with that). Of course, inside the venue, we see that 90% of the people have camera phones and most aren't even bothering trying to hide them. So why is there any restriction at all on cameras, if everyone has a camera phone these days? Turns out, we couldn't even get any decent pictures because of our seats.

But despite all that, I loved Adam's show. His voice was absolutely wonderful and he puts on a pretty good show (at least what I could see of it). He was beautiful on Soaked and I liked the acoustic change up for Aftermath. I was sorry to miss out on Whole Lotta Love, but 20th Century Boy was pretty good instead. I'll definitely plan to see him again, but next time in a real theater.

Mexican Vacation

We did a family vacation to Mazatlan last week, which included my French in-laws (mother, father and sister). Overall, it was pretty good.

I was expecting slightly better prices and deals, considering Mexico is still somewhat recovering from last year's swine flu and this years crime reports, but prices weren't too bad. No great deals on food, unless one went for the small taco stands and un-air-conditioned restaurants. Merchandise also wasn't a significant savings, even with bargaining (and some places were clearly not interested in doing that, or at least with 'tourists'), but didn't get ripped off at least.

Mazatlan is apparently quite ripe for developers, or at least trying to be. They were doing a lot of hard sells for these new Private Residence Clubs. A bit similar to the time share bit, except that they want to "lease" you the space, with the hope that you'll eventually want to buy a whole vacation home. The biggest problem we had (besides the large upfront payment) was being tied to just a few areas (the one we went to was offered in about 5-6 places in Mexico, but nowhere else). We like to travel and see new and different things. We're not interested in buying a vacation home in one place.

Weather was good, flight decent enough (Continental was ok, free food that was good, free checked bag back to the US). It was more humid than I expected, we definitely needed to do laundry during the trip. I was also a bit annoyed at the seat assignments, it was a real effort to try and get seats together 2 at a time, so each parent could sit with a child.

My main surprise was the price of sun lotion. $15 a bottle. If I had known that, I would have checked a bag full of it. I didn't bring any because I thought I could buy it for a comparative price and didn't want to pay $25 for a checked bag. I thought I would have had to pay the bag fee for the Philly to Houston flight, but since we went onto Mexico, I may not have anyway (since I didn't get charged to check a bag coming back). But it still would have saved money to pay $25 to check a bag with the 4 bottles of sun lotion we went through at $15 a piece.

We had checked one bag in Mexico all the way to Philly (everyone else had carry-ons). The one bag was selected to carry all the liquids we were taking home (a bottle of tequila, two bottles of vanilla, suntan lotion, after-sun lotion, etc.). My father in law then bought some duty free Tequila at the Mexico Airport, which he carried on the plane.

After going through immigration in Houston (which had its own issues), we had to collect the "checked bag" from baggage claim, take everything through the final customs check, then "recheck" the "checked bag". At that time, we were told that we had to place the duty free tequila bottle in the "checked bag" or we couldn't take it through the security screening we had to go through again to our connecting flight. Fortunately we had room to do that, although I was somewhat concerned with protection for the bottle, especially since we were a bit rushed because immigration took forever.

My question is what could we do if we hadn't previously "checked" a bag so that we had one available to place the duty free bottle inside? There were no areas set up to do a formal "checking" process for a bag after immigration/customs, you had one area to give the already "checked" bag, then you had to go through security.

I'm told we would have just had to throw away the duty free bottle. That makes no sense. Isn't the point of duty free with it being in a special sealed bag supposed to serve the security purpose? I'm glad we had room for the bottle, but what if we had bought more or didn't have an already "checked bag"? I'm told that this is the wonderful TSA v. Duty Free issue and TSA wins. So be warned. If you are flying internationally, make sure you check a bag if you intend to buy duty free liquids and go through customs in a different city than your final destination.

We had another wonderful issue, this time with immigration. I'm just so fed up with the obvious lack of training and/or poor training provided to employees. No one ever seems to know the rules or the correct way to apply them.

My french sister in law has a B2 visa she got a few years ago when she lived with us for five months while providing some child care. The B2 visa is valid for 10 years. Even when she's just visiting a few weeks, now every time she comes to the US, she had to fill out a special form that allows her to remain in the US for 6 months, even though she doesn't stay that long now.

She filled out this form when she entered the US a few days before our Mexico vacation, and kept part of it in her passport as required. When we went to Mexico, no one removed it from her passport, although apparently someone was supposed to do so. When we came back to the US, she had to fill out the form again, even though she still had the part of the form from the prior week. The immigration officer practically accused her fraud and worse because she still had the part form from the prior week because someone else didn't do their job and remove it from her passport. She didn't know that was required, she didn't remember what occurred the last time she visited.

So when she returns to France, she has to be sure someone takes both of these forms back out of her passport. Otherwise, she could be barred from visiting again. I just love our wonderful Homeland Security's failures at training.

We're constantly learning new rules in air flight. I guess I'm becoming an expert on this.