Julia Child died today. She�s been a fixture of my life for such a long time and for so many absurd reasons that I�m finding myself very saddened by the news. My mother, like so many other mothers, taught herself to cook by watching her French Cooking show. I inherited my mother�s battered paperback copy of it, full of splotches of unknown cooking experiments past. I made my first Coq au vin by following the book�s instructions for a French Club potluck dinner. And her stuffed mushrooms are a party staple.

Child catered the meals for orientation week my first year of college, which coincided with the investure of a new college president. It was a rather misleading way to begin one�s college life. It got distinctly less gourmet after classes began. But it definitely leant a classy air to the affair. When rs536 and I were attending our five-year reunion, we ran into her, also reuning, quite by accident as we were waiting for a friend in the lobby of one of the dorms. Even with her octagenarian stoop, Child towered over us. We stared at her drinking tea for a moment, wondering if it really could be she. When she saluted us with her teacup and cheerfully said �Hello!� we were simultaneously shamed by our poor manners and reassured that our identification of her was correct. As many times as I�ve heard her pronounce, �Bon Appetit!� on television, it is the time she said hello in that distinctive voice of hers that sticks in my ear.

When I first began dating my husband, one of the things that united us was the similarity of some of our individual Saturday routines. We both had made a habit of timing our weekly housecleaning to the Saturday Metropolitan Opera broadcasts, although he usually accompanied it with the White Sox game tuned in on the television. And both of us had our Saturday lunch while watching Julia and Jacques Pepin on PBS. Watching the two of them hovering over a stove, bickering amicably, may go a long way to explain what happens when he and I attempt to work in the kitchen simultaneously.

One of my first introductions to the wonderful world of blogs was theJulie/Julia Project, where an office-worker named Julie Powell taught herself to cook by working through the entire Mastering the Art of French Cooking and chronicled the results (good and bad food, weight gain, etc) in her blog. She has written a much more insightful tribute to Child today.

As I have been writing this entry, I can�t help but notice that Yahoo has changed the main headline for the notice of Child�s death. Previously it was �Julia Child dead at 91.� Now it reads, �Late Cooking Diva Loved Red Meat, Gin.� I can�t help but think she might have liked the change.

Bon appetit.

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