Food, Love

Two Christmas' ago, just before we moved to the Harbor, Russell got me lots of books. Maybe he was filling his own love, or maybe he thought I would read more since I wouldn't be spending my days outside as much, or maybe he hoped I would start cooking again (which I did), but maybe he somehow knew I would need the kind of friend you find sometimes only in a book. Or only in the kitchen for that matter.

And I did. I found that in Julia. 

So much that I then read, The Tenth Muse by Judith Jones. She was THE publisher who was really the only one in the cookbook world to believe in such a possibility that American Housewives would actually attempt cooking something French. 

The same rainy morning that I finished the Judith Jones book, un-showered I drove to the book store and purchased my very first, very own 49th edition of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". 

I have heard many times that this book has changed lives and at first I thought, why because you learn to cook French? For some, it may be that. I have a love for food and I have a love for French cuisine--it is simple and not complicated. The food tastes like the food that it is. It reminds me how to live. It is beautiful and does what my memories of food are, gives that gift--a memory. I think Julia gave us the gift of putting memories back into our kitchens at a time in America when we needed that. I read her books when I needed that.

Today, my little Sous Chef Holland and I went to the movie "Julie and Julia". I cried. I cried a lot, in a lot of little places that I really don't know why I was crying. To watch her and Paul, Her Butter to Her Bread, and their life--Paul coming home asking, So what's for dinner? Living in France for his love and Julia finding hers. A life together that somehow picked up the line like an energy pole when the other line swooped down. Changes, Disappointments, Time, Patience, Adventures, Laughter.

Food and a kindred friend, in all their simplicity, have saved my life. Both have far greater meaning to me than sustenance. 

To Russell for twelve, 

so, what's for dinner? 

food, love.