Aunt Mag's Recipe Book, August 2004

Yes, indeed, we did submit it for the International Culinary Foundation's Jula Child Prize that year!

CAROLYN BOOTH on food, friendship, and writing

Cooking with Julia

I cooked with Julia Child long before I met her.

As a young housewife in the early 1960s, I first expanded my culinary insights beyond my Aunt Mag raising, subscribing to Good Housekeeping and Better Homes & Gardens, harbingers of modern American cookery. Gourmet Magazine came next, opening before me a whole new world of international cuisines.

But it was a bit later, when I discovered Mastering the Art of French Cooking, that I knew I had found a friend that would nourish my love of cooking for the rest of my days. I had seen Julia Child on television, laughed along with her and at her, but it was that first volume of recipes that changed my life.

Soon I was having dinner parties for small groups of friends using Mastering the Art, exploring the use of  ingredients and methods that I had only heard of in the few fine restaurants where we’d dined. Over the next decade I studied under a number of regional chefs, taking introductory courses to further my knowledge of cookery and discovering along the way that I had something in common with my teachers other than the love of food: they were all writers.

Which brings me to how I came to actually know Julia Child. First a little background: I returned to college after my children had left the nest, to pursue a degree in English. Why English? Because I loved the craft of writing and felt that I needed the tools of the trade—I wanted to write, but I also wanted to write well.

After graduating, I took a part-time job with the Cary News, writing their popular cooking column, “Creative Cooking.” The Cary News was only a small-town North Carolina weekly, but I treated my column like I was writing for the New York Times, developing recipes and doing my own photography. Soon I was expanding my culinary writing to periodicals like TasteFull Magazine, a regional publication out of Wilmington. What came next put me in close personal touch with the great Julia Child.

The Professional Food Writers Symposium at the Greenbrier was recommended to me by another friend and food writer, Elizabeth Wiegand. “You’ll get to meet Julia Child and all kinds of famous food writers,” she said. And that I did! Attending the symposium several years in a row, I became friends with this warm giant of a woman who was suffering from osteoarthritis, as was my mother, who was the same age. Often I led Julia to a table or a seat on the sidelines where we both could just sit and chat, something I would have done for my own mother.

At the time, LaVarenne at the Greenbrier, the cooking school run by another great cook and writer, Ann Willan, was in full operation. During the symposium, participants were treated to “Cooking Lessons with Julia and Ann.” Each session was masterful and memorable. My scrapbook is full of photographs and notes taken in the presence of this teacher who, in my opinion, had no equal.

Although I have been “cooking with Julia” for many years, and I counted her a friend, I never actually stirred, sautéed, braised, or even boiled with her.  When she died, I was greatly saddened at the thought of losing her, but comforted by the thought that I can continue to cook with Julia as long as I live, just as I do with Aunt Mag— through her books.

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