Never Judge a Book (or Cookbook) by Its Cover

In preparing for a family trip to Paris and Lyon, France recently, I started listening to the audiobook of, My Life in France cowritten by Julia Child and her grandnephew, Alex Prud'homme. I was hoping to hear Julia's perspectives as an expatriate living in Paris and Marseilles in the late 1940's and early 1950's to provide an American's impressions of the country we would be visiting.

My only prior exposure and knowledge of Julia Child was during my childhood, growing up in the Merrymount neighborhood of Quincy, Massachusetts (a suburb of Boston) and watching her on the WGBH television cooking show, The French Chef which aired from 1963 to 1973. I had also seen the Dan Akroyd parodies of Julia's television show on Saturday Night Live which embellished her high-pitched voice ("Save the liver!") and sense of fun as Dan's version of Julia comically shows her accidentally cutting herself to a bloody mess while demonstrating boning a chicken. https://youtu.be/eSxv6IGBgFQ

Listening to "My Life in France" was such a revelation. My first and limited impression of Julia from a peripheral lens was simply that she was a fun-loving woman with a great sense of humor. Learning more about her growth and development as a person and into an author of best-selling cookbooks (Mastering the Art of French Cooking is the tome she cowrote with Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle - considered a seminal cookbook of French recipes and culinary technique) revealed so much more.

Through listening to the book, I learned that Julia Child was a graduate of Smith College (BA in History, 1934) and never knew how to cook when she moved to Paris in 1948 with her husband, Paul Child, who was assigned to a U.S. government job there. As a self-proclaimed foodie, myself, and someone who is not an expert but enjoys home cooking and baking, hearing Julia's description of her first sumptuous meal in France (at La Couronne in Rouen, France) and how she discovered a new passion - was so vivid and uplifting - I could literally feel Julia's joy in hearing about her experience and almost taste the food.

As a Physical Therapist who eventually transitioned to hospital operational leadership roles, I also saw some interesting parallels in Julia's career journey to mine - as one which seemed a bit meandering on its face, but in the latter parts of her career revealed pieces of a puzzle falling into place as she accelerated toward her defined higher purpose and vocation. Julia started out her career in New York City writing ad copy for an advertising company. Later on, she took on a role as a typist in a government position with the Office of Strategic Services (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Child), but quickly advanced to a research assistant role working for the Head of OSS. Julia's first formal recipe in this role was creating a shark repellant which would prevent sharks from venturing near underwater explosives and setting them off.

In Julia's nine-year journey to write "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", her writing and typing skills (during a pre-computer/word processor era) were critical to expediting the typing and retyping recipes and other text for the book. Writing and typing skills further came into play since much of the cookbook recipe revisions were managed via surface mail correspondence with her coauthors (who lived in or near Paris) when Julia and Paul Childs were assigned to other locales outside of Paris (Marseilles, France; Oslo, Norway and Bonn, Germany).

Similar to women of her day and even today, Julia was self-deprecating in her description of herself as "not very intelligent". She describes purchasing and reading U.S. and French newspapers in order to stay abreast of current affairs and concerns in order to engage in intelligent conversations. This self-improvement quest buoyed by a solid work ethic extended into her culinary studies at Le Cordon Bleu, where Julia was a real pioneer as the only woman in her class of aspiring male culinary professionals and G.I.s. She intently focused on earning a diploma from the school and persevered in retaking the exam and passing it after failing the examination on her first try.

This self-avowed, simple and "unambitious" woman was, in fact, a deeply committed entrepreneur and disciple of her craft. Once having her eyes opened to the joys of knowing how to prepare exquisite meals from raw ingredients and from one's own hands, Julia wanted to spread the knowledge and skill to others - particularly to Americans who, at the time, seemed to favor TV dinners and cake mixes from boxes.

Julia was not trained as a teacher, but this did not stop her and her colleagues from founding L'ecole des Trois Gourmandes (The School of the Three Happy Eaters). Julia insisted on very detailed preparations for planning menus for the class, obtaining the correct ingredients and also perfecting the explanations of the various techniques to the students. This exacting nature and attention to detail was demonstrated time and again in Julia's obsessive testing, retesting and tweaking of the recipes for her first cookbook. Hearing the testing process she imposed on herself for a seemingly simple mayonnaise recipe was simply exhausting; I was unable to visualize myself taking the same degree of care, and I admired her for not settling for a second-rate recipe. This feat is exponentially more impressive when one considers that Julia used an identical testing process for each and every recipe in the book! Sacre bleu!

Amongst many surprises about Julia Child's life and career journey was the length of time it took her and her co-authors to complete their first cookbook: nine years! There are so many quotes about misperceptions regarding "overnight successes." Each of these quotes corrects the misnomer "overnight success" since these are, in reality, many, many years in the making. Julia's career journey certainly was illustrative of this.

All of the various twists and turns of Julia's pursuit of her passion ended up giving her an even larger audience for her cooking instruction through her television show, "The French Chef" on WGBH. She was scheduled to appear on the television station to speak about her cookbook and Julia surprised the show producers by bringing her own kitchen equipment to show the television audience how to prepare the perfect omelette. Viewers wrote to the station clamoring to see and learn more from that "incredibly funny lady" on the show. Prior to learning about Julia through this book, I would have interpreted the act as a bit of Julia Child whimsy, but knowing more about her today - I am convinced that this was an intentional and brilliant strategy of her own design.

Last, but not least, because I am a hopeless romantic, I was enthralled by the intense friendship and love that Julia and Paul Child shared with one another. They reveled in their travels and making a home for themselves wherever they landed and wherever they both were - together. Julia supported Paul in his various career moves and always packed her bags to join him on his work assignments. As Paul's career in government wound down, he flung himself head-first into supporting Julia's burgeoning career in French gastronomy. As an accomplished artist, photographer, poet and writer - he lent support to Julia in the form of kitchen design, repairs and maintenance, photography and draft illustrations for her cookbooks, staging of food for cookbooks or magazine articles and of course - much love and encouragement throughout the journey, perhaps most notably when several publishing houses had rejected the earlier versions of her cookbook.

This book taught me so much about Julia Child, but also helped me draw some parallels to my own career path which was not mapped out with a discrete end-in-mind, but was similarly meandering and capitalized on opportunities that came along the way. (My mother, Gilda de Vera Gonzales) wisely told me to take a typing class in high school (ArchbishopWilliamsHighSchool) and it enabled me to secure a well-paying job as a clerk-typist for a Pharmacy Director at Massachusetts General Hospital, then for a Nursing Director at our local hospital - Quincy City Hospital. During my high school summers, this initial job facilitated different roles at the hospital: EKG technician, Unit Secretary for the Oncology and Orthopaedic wards and eventually got me excited about pursuing a career in Physical Therapy. Once enrolled in the physical therapy program at the University of Vermont (UVM), my fast typing helped me complete my writing assignments quickly and also earn some pocket money by typing papers for friends.

Julia's persistence and hard work also resonated with me. I am a Filipino-American woman (I was born in Manila, Philippines but my family moved to the U.S. when my brothers and I were small children) and while I don't feel that I directly experienced overt racism at school or in the work environment, I did a feel the need to over perform or over achieve in everything that I did in order to be successful. My work ethic enabled me to complete two masters degrees (MS, PT from Long Island University and an MBA from the Fox EMBA program at Temple University ) while working full time.

Finally, the great partnership that Julia and Paul Child shared parallels the great friendship, partnership, love and marriage I have with my husband, Gregory E. Dean, MD. As a medical device and digital innovation entrepreneur ( https://www.driqhealth.com/ ) and successful Pediatric Urologist (https://www.urologyforchildren.com/ ) , Greg had a long path toward completing his surgical training: 4 years of medical school at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons ; 2 years of surgical residency and 4 years of urology residency at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center and 2 years of pediatric urology fellowship at the Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) . It was not easy living on a resident's salary in the heart of Manhattan's Upper West Side in the early 1990's and it was not easy for either of us to endure long hours of work at the hospital with both of us studying or preparing presentations into the evenings and spilling into our weekends, but we survived it and have supported one another along the way. Perhaps I might have been able to do all that I have done in my career without Greg at my side, but I am glad that we did it together.

I hope that this article encourages you to listen to this audiobook or to read it. It was such a surprising and uplifting story about a woman who I had grossly misjudged as just a fun and kind person who, perhaps, lacked some depth or intellectual curiosity. My first impressions of Julia Child were so off-the-mark, that I have since vowed to suspend judgement on any first impressions that may arise in any future encounter. If Julia's story is reflective of a broader complexity in others, I will be wise to prevent a final assessment of a person until I can truly know them.

I dedicate this post to my husband Greg and borrow the words of Paul Child in a note he eloquently wrote to his beloved wife and life partner, Julia:

You are the butter to my bread, you are the breath to my life. I love you, darling [girl] boy.

Bon Appetit !