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.
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