Learning to Eat

My mother was a terrible cook, so we ate dinner out at least three times a week. The fare was pedestrian: hamburgers and shakes at Shore's; Chinese food at Aloha Towers; lasagna at Garbarino's; and for a special treat, lobster tails at King's Castle. When I was in college, in 1969, I fell in love with Christopher, an actor in the National Shakespeare Festival where I was a dancer, and he was a vegetarian, so I became one, too. Although Christopher drifted out of my life, I still abstained from eating meat for many years.

At one point I even became macrobiotic until I became deathly anemic.

Law school was where I finally began to learn how to eat. David Liederman was testing the recipes for Cooking the Nouvelle Cuisines in America, the latest version of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and since we went to graduate school together, I ended up at his apartment tutoring him in what he was missing in class while he was picking the best onions at Balducci's and refining pecan breaded chicken cutlets in a dijon mustard sauce to die for.

Cooking for me was a feminist issue. I didn't like to cook for men, although I must admit that I make excellent breakfasts, and always have. You can figure out why.

After my thirtieth birthday, I decided to really teach myself to cook, and it was through cooking that I met my husband of twenty-one years. We both love to cook, we love to eat, and we love to entertain.

So seeing Julie & Julia tonight with our twenty year old daughter, who adores cooking and eating, too, was a joy, a treasured moment of laughing heartily together. Nora Ephron's script gave Meryl Streep a lot to work with, and her timing as an actress is impeccable. Stanley Tucci plays the most perfect husband, except for my own, and together I recalled every moment of laughing hysterically while Julia Child, the real one, tried to teach American women who didn't have servants how to cook like the French. That they included a Dan Aykroyd Julia impersonation skit from SNL was even more perfect.

Some critics were disappointed with the Julie segments of the film, with Amy Adams, but I wasn't. Spanning generations, these two women tried to find themselves and give meaning to their existence through cooking, and that is what held the film together. Treat yourselves, and afterwards, we treated ourselves to homemade Herrell's ice cream, which was delicious!!!