As Satisfying as a Hand Made Bowl of Julia's Potage Veloute au Champignons

books:


	• My Life in France Julia Child, Alex Prud'Homme Anchor, 2007 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 111 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Memoir

"My Life in France" by Julia Child w/ Alex Prudhomme, ©2006

I love how this book reminds me of Julia, from seeing her on television. You can just hear her expressing herself, in person, about something, just that way.
She had a love of life and her husband. Of course she was a bit privileged and her husband earned a good salary with the fringe benefit of living in foreign countries, like France and Norway. But the privilege and life she led seems to be less important than her attitude: she truly was having fun.
This book is not limited to her life in France. She describes her childhood, how she met her husband, her parents, where they lived in Washington, her politics, etc. It is more her memoir. A more fun memoir can not be imagined. It is wonderful she and her great-nephew got this done.

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A happy book

A delightful book for foodies and Francophiles. At last a story of a happy marriage of two successful people.

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Wonderful!

I love this woman, and this book! Viva Julia! It made me want to cook again.

Hats off to the First Lady of Cooking

This was a wonderful memoir about Julia Child. I especially found it interesting that she fell into cooking at the age of forty. Her passion to learn about cooking and gastronomy, as well as, her love for good food and wine were contagious. It made me want to get in the kitchen and whip something up. I think what Julia said at the end of the book, sums up what I learned by reading My Life in France, "Learn how to cook-try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!".

While I was reading My Life in France, I watched the video "Julia Child! America's Favorite Chef". I found it to be a good compliment to the book. It was like a visual summary of everything I had read.

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As Satisfying as a Hand Made Bowl of Julia's Potage Veloute au Champignons

It all began with a new bride wanting to learn to cook and progressed to owning a share in a cooking school, writing classic cookbooks that will be in print for many years, and becoming a television celebrity.

During her last years, Julia Child and her husband's grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme, met frequently to record her memories. The heart of the narrative is her first years in France, where she arrived in 1948 as a newly wed whose cooking repertoire was comprised of a bad job of boiling water. The serious home cook, who has dabbled in a variety of cuisines (and most certainly French), may reap the most enjoyment, yet her story is intensely interesting, on a personal and public level, and very well written. There were moments when I wished I had a French dictionary at my side, but those moments weren't frequent enough to spoil a good read.

Considering her age at the time of the writing, Prud'homme most certainly would have been responsible for the organization and undoubtedly did the bulk of the writing. But his contribution and his great aunt's voice are seamlessly interwoven. As I read, I could hear her warbling, high-pitched voice and was reminded of her wit from her television cooking shows.

I read the last page with a smile, shut the book, and felt as satisfied as if I had just finished making her recipe for Cream of Mushroom Soup and found it to be perfect in every respect. I get the feeling that Julia looked back on her life with that same sense of satisfaction. She doesn't apologize for her privileged background, and she doesn't complain about being a somewhat homely, well-educated, quite bright, six-foot-two-inch woman who didn't marry until she was well into her thirties and never had the children she and her husband wished for. She mentions her sadness at not being able to share a close relationship, or even a viewpoint, with her father, but she doesn't wallow in it. She incorporates names, but never drops them. She is unpretentious, natural, and disarmingly honest.

So many people look back with harrowing tales of disappointment and unhappiness; Julia gave us her joys and successes to share. I liked her before I knew anything about her life; now I like her a lot more.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

Julia Child singlehandedly created a new approach to American cuisine with her cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking and her television show The French Chef, but as she reveals in this bestselling memoir, she was not always a master chef.

Indeed, when she first arrived in France in 1948 with her husband, Paul, who was to work for the USIS, she spoke no French and knew nothing about the country itself. But as she dove into French culture, buying food at local markets and taking classes at the Cordon Bleu, her life changed forever with her newfound passion for cooking and teaching. Julia?s unforgettable story ? struggles with the head of the Cordon Bleu, rejections from publishers to whom she sent her now-famous cookbook, a wonderful, nearly fifty-year long marriage that took them across the globe ? unfolds with the spirit so key to her success as a chef and a writer, brilliantly capturing one of the most endearing American personalities of the last fifty years.

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