Reinventing Rita by Nancy Christie

Author:Nancy Christie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: BookBaby
Published: 2023-01-17T18:41:54+00:00

Chapter 26

After Karen left, I piled our dirty dishes onto the clean-up cart and then moved to the culinary area. I loved this bookstore. I used to bring Zack here when he was in the carrycot, and later, for Mommy-and-Me storytimes. But this time, I passed up the juvenile section, skipped the health-and-wellness area (where I used to spend hours reading about childhood diseases and ailments), and went straight to the cookbook department.

There was the familiar red-checked cover of the Better Homes & Gardens cookbook, along with books by well-known culinary professionals and others that focused on specific cuisines or dietary preferences. I pulled a few from the shelf to review and then I saw it: Julia Child’s My Life in France.

I sat down and started flipping through the book, pen and paper at the ready to take notes about possible recipes. But this wasn’t as much a recipe collection as a memoir covering the six years Child had spent in France after World War II while her husband Paul was stationed there with the United States Information Service. His job was to promote French-American relations through the visual arts. Her job, she ultimately decided, was to master cooking, specifically French cooking.

This was a part of Julia’s life I didn’t know. All I was familiar with was The French Chef, when she made everything seem ridiculously easy and mistakes were something to be laughed about, not agonized over.

And, of course, her cookbooks, starting with Mastering the Art of French Cooking. But My Life in France covered the days before Julia was a famous chef and author—when she was just Julia Child, whiling away the days while her husband was busy at the American Embassy in Paris. With no children to occupy her, she signed up for classes at Le Cordon Bleu, chopping and mincing her way through recipes like galantine de volaille, perdreaux en chartreuse and sole meuniêre.

All that—a forty-year career doing what she loved, enough cookbooks to fill a decent-length kitchen shelf, and television shows making her America’s go-to culinary expert—just because she had hours to fill and an interest in food preparation. If she could accomplish all that, what could I achieve?

If the class went really well, maybe they will hire me to teach again, I thought. Or I could take some of the simpler recipes into local schools and teach the kids how to bake, the way I used to teach Zack. Or maybe even write a cookbook. Maybe I could…

“Excuse me, but Books and Brews will be closing in ten minutes.”

The clerk’s words interrupted my daydreaming. I stood up, trying unsuccessfully to keep hold of all the books and my notes, but instead they fell to the floor, Julia’s book right on top.

“Let me help you.” She picked up the volume, preparing to set it back on the shelf where it belonged, but I stopped her.

“No, I want to buy that one.” I took it out of her hand, leaving her to reshelve the other books

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