the things Julia Child won't tell you

A co-worker today was telling the story of making Julia Childs' roast chicken for Sunday dinner. She and her husband have taken it up as a challenge to cook each and every Sunday from the classic cookbook. They take turns being chef and sous chef...they have stocked up on butter. It all sounds so cozy. She talked about playful banter about who was in charge that week. She described the melting butter, cooking a sauce without garlic, and rotating her bird. No, really, she made it sound like they were having the time of their lives.

While I am a decent cook, I do not eat nor do I cook meat. I have two children. They do not eat tofu, eggplant, portabella mushrooms, and several other vegetarian kitchen staples. There are limited things you can do with beans, brown rice, cheese, and pasta. Of course, they enjoy the standard vegetables - peas, carrots, broccoli, green beans, zucchini. It's the more exotic flair they resist. So, Julia has little appeal for our household.

I think sometimes that I will write my own book - all the things that Julia Child won't tell you. It would be sort of a cookbook for moms, or those of us who live in the non-gourmet world. I'd include all my wisdom...it would be a short book.

• You can spend half an hour chopping your mise en place, cook the perfect pasta primavera sauce, and your kids will ask at the last minute if they can have "just noodles with butter."
• You can whip up the perfect lemon creme brulee and be told that it is "almost as good as the jell-o pudding cups."
• No one in the real world actually eats capers.
• Ditto for anchovies.
• Houston humidity and the leavening agent in yeast do not play well together. One might even say they fight it out. The humidity wins, every time. Much like when it tangles with my hair. Darn humidity.
  
• Those who can actually flip an omlette or turn a perfect crepe are freaks of nature. They are to be viewed with awe and fear. Mostly fear. For they could take over the world if they chose to do so. But, fear not, for most of them are too busy admiring their perfect crepes t0o worry about world domination.
• The best vegetables in the world are the ones you pick out of your own garden. Sometimes the peas don't even make it into our house - I just find a trail of pea-pods, leading from the garden to the garage and a bowl with three full pods for the table.
  
• Okra, however, does not improve with age or size. It becomes stronger and fiercer, and well...wood-like. We picked some overripe okra last year - I could have built an ark with it. None-the-less, Houston weather grows some champion sized okra.
• A ten year old can set ANYTHING on fire given a toaster oven and enough time.
• You can hide anything in a muffin. Anything...seriously.

Enough of the good French wine...well, you won't care what you cook.

Bon Appetite!