I have always been fascinated by food.  My earliest food memories are of me at the age of 4 0r 5, standing on a folding wooden stool by the kitchen sink, and using mom’s vegetable trimmings to make a “salad” in an recycled plastic storage container.  Sure, it was an odd combination of lettuce cores, carrot trimmings, and the ends and peels of cucumbers, but to me it was “MY SALAD”!  (sidenote:  I just tossed it and played with it but didn’t eat it!).

As I got older, you could find me glued to the tv on Saturday mornings.  Not to watch cartoons though (once I realized that Wyle E. Coyote was ALWAYS going to survive the drop of the anvil it lost my interest.  If you know he’s always going to survive in the end then why continue watching?  You already know how it ends!  ….same for PopEye.).  The Public Broadcasting Station was the focus of my Saturday morning routine.  Back to that small wooden step-stool that mom kept in the kitchen… now I was older and sat on it to watch the cooking shows and take notes.  Somewhere recently, I think I came across some of those notes for Poached Salmon with Cucumber Dill Sauce written in the script of a 12-year old. 

Many people probably don’t even recognize the name Dionne Lucas.  An Englishwoman, she was the first female to graduate from Le Cordon Bleu-Paris, was instrumental in the establishment of Le Cordon Bleu-London, and was the first woman to appear on PBS with a cooking show.  That was back in 1948, even before Julia Child had developed her culinary skills. 

Dionne Lucas

 However the “First Lady” of the TV Cooking Show is undoubtedly, and always will be, Julia Child.  As a kid I once bought a box of cookbooks at a yard sale (all kids look for cookbooks at  yard sales, right?) and in the box was a copy of “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.  Despite thumbing through it many a time I don’t ever, even to this day, recall having actually used any of the recipes.  I think back then it was perhaps mom’s concern that they were overly complicated and if I got into a bind she might not be able to help.  Mom was a great cook but stayed away from things that she thought were “fancy”.  Most certainly items with French names would have been deemed “fancy”.

Julia Child

  Despite the fact that Julia asserted she was not a chef, was in fact responsible for the influence of many!