Send your nostalgic picture or video to onceuponawin@gmail.com All our submissions come from you. You can vote on other people's submissions on the Voting page.
« Previous Epic Win: Monkey Bars | Epic Win: The Dot and Line Game Next »
Submitted by Alan T
Not only did Julia Child bring a lot of great French culinary practice into the American living, both through her encyclopedia of a book, to her long-running cooking show, she was also a freakin’ spy! How cool is that?! “Here, try my paté… PS. where do you keep all of your sensitive government documents?”
 | Jenn on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
 | lalala on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
 | boxermom on Epic Win: Big Trouble in Littl… |
 | Patiszon on Epic Win: Pass The Pigs |
 | ThunderWave on Epic Win: Transformers Wa… |
 | Patrick on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
 | Jon on 80s Music Video Thursday: Tota… |
 | Dusty on Extra Special: WTF Thursday … |
 | Cocoa on Epic Win: McDonald’s Tre… |
 | Fleurette on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
 | Chass on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
 | foppagal on Epic Win: Jem and the Hol… |
 | Danielle on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
 | Sassy on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
 | Anonymous on Epic Win: The Parachute G… |
Julia did a lot for American cooking. It’s amazing how boring and simplistic our standard cuisine used to be. I have an old book from the forties that is trying to pioneer the use of herbs and spices as used by the author’s ancestral recipes from Austria.
But Julia may technically have been a spy, because she worked for the Office of Strategic Services during World War II, and eventually became head of the registry, but that was all office work. She wasn’t a field agent. For example, she started as a research assistant for the OSS, which sounds interesting until you find out that it means she typed a bunch of officer’s names on small white cards. I’m not knocking what she did but no part of her duties really included “spying.”
Spies don’t work alone, even they need a secretary! She probably knew tons of juicy stuff too. Plus, I wouldn’t mind being “technically” a spy, even if would mean I was the janitor of the spy HQ!
She may not have been an actual spy, per se, but she did use her culinary arts during the war. She developed a shark repellent for the military. The story of how she got into TV (it’s in one of her books) is excellent. basically they piled a bunch of crap in a car and made it up as they went.
Smith College alum, FTW!
Julia is made of WIN not only for being a fabulous cook and Personality, but for being nearly six feet tall and over the age of forty before she debuted on television. Not exactly TV’s ideal image of domestic womanhood! She supposedly laughed and laughed when she saw SNL’s famous parody of her.
OMG, where she cuts off her hand? That was hysterical!
The moment I saw this one, I was wishing the video clip of SNL’s Dan Aykroyd doing that same sketch would be on the page but, alas, it isn’t.
Save the liver! Don’t throw away the liver!!! You can use it later for a nice patè so, SAVE THE LIVER!!!!!
Who saw her kitchen at the Smithsonian?
I did! That was a very cool exhibit. They photographed every detail of her kitchen at home, then removed every item piece by piece, cataloging as they went, and used that to put it back together. The stuff around the exhibit on her was really interesting.
When America was first beginning it’s sordid affair with convenience, Julia Child told us good food takes time, and somehow made it work. Rest in peace Julia.
She was a fun, flamboyant, larger-than-life personality who still was humble and approachable. She never had her phone number unlisted and would take phone calls from complete strangers asking cooking questions. And she loved a good burger, in spite of all her French cuisine training. She was adventurous and inquisitive, never overly fussy or fancy, and taught that above all we should be enjoying ourselves in the kitchen and at the table. Her books (esp. “The Way To Cook”) taught me how to cook and how to enjoy cooking.
And yes, I saw her kitchen in the Smithsonian!
Julia is the reason I became a chef. Her attitude of anything goes made me, as a woman in the kitchen, become more powerful in the kitchens I worked in. She was truly a revolutionary, and I feel as though her legend will never die, at I hope!! BON APPETIT! Rock on Julia!!
I met Julia and her husband, Paul, when they came to have lunch at a small restaurant in the building where I worked in the 80’s. All she wanted was to sample the outrageous fried chicken and mashed potatoes the restaurant made once a week, but she was very gracious as all us budding foodies kept coming over to say hello. She was as wonderful in person as you imagined she would be when you watched her show.
I also heard somewhere that she LOVED Dan Akroyd’s parody of her (“Oh dear, I’ve cut the dickens out of my finger!”). One of the funniest things I heard from here was on some show where she was doing a Q&A session with students at the Culinary Institute, and one of the students asked her about using margarine. She replied, “That word has never passed my lips, and it shan’t today.” That always tickles me, along with the series she did with Jacque Pepin (yeah, think I mangled the spelling quite completely on that)…he’d say to put in a little wine and she’d pour half the bottle in, or he’d try to reduce the amount of cream and she’d counter by adding an extra pile of butter…
Yah, she did a show with Emirl too… he would be putting a pinch of something in and then she’d be adding more behind his back. The audience was rolling. ^^
This ol’ bird was made of win.
One of the classiest ladies ever, they just don’t make ‘em like her anymore. <3 Julia
this woman ruled! we watched her a lot in my high school cooking class and she has the cutest little grandma voice… i can´t believe she was a spy! you don´t get any cooler than this woman!
One of the best things about the exhibit at the Smithsonian is all the episodes of her show(s) they have running. I managed to catch the one where she was making mashed potatoes and commenting that some people complained about her use of butter. “Well,” she said, “if you don’t want to use so much butter, just use heavy cream!”
If you look back at MTAOFC, you’ll see that she did sometimes allow the use of, say, frozen vegetables. But there’s never been anything wrong with that. At least she got people to eat vegetables!
Spy sapping my French cuisine!
One night I was up late and saw an episode (not the first time I’d seen her) where she was in the middle of cooking and a bell/buzzer rang. Julia looked right into the camera and said, “Ah, that must be the plumber. About time he got here!” I was so addled I thought “Huh, funny.”
I laughed hysterically when years later I read an article about her and she said that someone had mistakenly rang an old delivery bell in the building where they were filming–and remember, this was live back in the day! Gave me a new appreciation for this clever and talented lady.