On Julia, Julie, and “foodies”
JohnL reminded me that yesterday was Julia Child’s birthday–her 95th, if she were still alive. The timing was apt, as Alison and I had been listening to the audiobook of Julie Powell’s Julie & Julia, the book which emerged from The Julie/Julia Project, on our way to and from our weekend events.
The audiobook is with Alison, so I haven’t finished it yet, but I have gone back and done some reading in the archives of The Julie/Julia Project, and I have now been struck twice–once in the book, and once again on the blog, where they come up earlier–by Powell’s thoughts about Child’s place in modern American cooking.
“…I have had enough. Enough of the $40 olive oils and imported semolina flour and ‘please, Turkish oregano only.’ If I read one more dining guru gushing about ‘honest ingredients, treated with respect,’ I shall vomit, sir. And ‘Market Menus’? Don’t get me started. The well-meant ‘food revolution’ Alice Waters instigated some thirty years ago has metastasized horribly. The Victorians served Strawberries Romanoff in December; now we demonstrate our superiority by serving our organic, dewy heirloom strawberries only during the two-week period when they can be picked ripe off the vine at the boutique farm down the road from our Hamptons bungalow. People speak of gleaning the green markets for the freshest this, the thinnest that, the greenest or firmest or softest whatever, as if what they’re doing is a selfless act of consummate care and good taste, rather than the privileged activity of someone who doesn’t have to work for a living.”
Powell goes on to say,
“Julia Child isn’t about that.
“Julia Child wants you–that’s right, you, the one living in the tract house in sprawling suburbia with a dead-end secretarial job and nothing but a Stop-n-Shop for miles around–to master the art of french cooking. (No caps, please.) She wants you to know how to make good pastry, and also how to make those canned green beans taste alright. She wants you to remember that you are human, and as such are entitled to that most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life.”
(You can read all of Powell’s pseudo-manifesto here.)
Now, I just came out of two years of graduate student living, and the dietary difference between graduate students and undergrads is that graduate students recognize that pizza is not the only food group–not that they can do much about it. I don’t have deep-seated notions about food, and I don’t have a manifesto to deliver about how I feel about food. (Generally, I’m in favor.) I get intimidated when people start throwing around the phrase, “foodie.” But if I was looking for a flag to rally around, I would probably head for Powell’s (and Child’s) a lot faster than many of the others being waved nowadays.
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