I just finished reading “A Warming Planet Struggles to Feed Itself” written by Justin Gillis and published in the New York Times on June 4, 2011. The title pretty much gives you the gist of this long but very worthwhile piece. Gillis notes how weather disasters are responsible for failed harvests all across the planet. For example: Floods in the United States, drought in Australia, and extreme heat waves in Europe and Russia. Farmers all over the world, from Mexico to India, are seeing their crops damaged by “emerging pests and diseases and by blasts of heat beyond anything they remember.” Most scientists believe that climate change is, by and large, responsible for this and that climate change is “helping” to destabilize Earth’s food system.
As a result, consumption of wheat, rice, corn, and soybeans—the foods that pretty much feed the world—has outstripped production for most of the past decade. Stockpiles are going down. Prices are going up, pinching those of us in rich countries and bringing hunger to millions of people in poor countries.
According to agricultural experts, in the upcoming decades farmers “will need to withstand whatever climate shocks come their way while roughly doubling the amount of food they produce to meet rising demand.” (The population is projected to reach 10 billion by the end of the century.) At the same time, farmers also need to reduce the environmental damage that can come with farming. To produce more food while causing less environmental damage is a tall order indeed.
While Gillis expresses the hope that we can develop crops to meet the challenges brought by climate change—there is a type of rice that can withstand floods by waiting until the water recedes before germinating—there is no denying that this is a sobering article. Who knows what the eventual outcome will be? None of us can see into the future. Maybe ingenuity, creativity, and innovation will help us get through the approaching era of climate chaos and an ever-increasing population. I sure hope so.
I just wish that the leaders of the world would take this problem more seriously, that they would start addressing the problem right now, this minute, and not delay the way they usually do.
On Saturday, I went to my friend Esther’s house for lunch. She wouldn’t tell me what she was serving. “It’s a surprise,” she wrote by email early last week.
A surprise! All week long I wondered what the surprise would be. The fish dish for which she is so famous? (Pieces of fried haddock smothered with a cheese sauce.) Sounded very good to me, and I was all set for the fish dish. My only concern was that I would go overboard, the way I so often do, and eat too much. Alas, the pitfalls of being a good eater.
But Esther didn’t serve me her fish dish. Instead, she had prepared lobster salad, a huge glorious bowl full, and the lobster was mixed with a little bit of celery and just enough mayonnaise to hold it together. In other words, exactly the way lobster salad should be made. Now, I love all kinds of fish and seafood, but I must admit that lobster is right at the top. Maybe at the very top.
“It’s a little chilly for lobster salad,” Esther said somewhat apologetically when I arrived, and indeed it was a cool June day, albeit a sunny, clear one.
“It is never too chilly for lobster salad,” I said firmly. “It could be a frigid January day, and lobster salad would be just right.”
Besides, Esther’s cozy kitchen was sunny and warm—the way it always is—and with its large wood table and old chairs, her kitchen is one of the places I love best. All around are pictures of her children and grandchildren, and Esther has decorated with lots of miniature kitchen things—little teapots, little cups, a little sifter. “I love small things,” she said.
We started out with cheese, crackers, wine, and some Mediterranean nibbles. Then came the lobster salad, a huge scoop on a salad of mixed greens, tomatoes, and cucumbers. I don’t think I have ever had so much lobster salad at one time.
“Do you want dressing for the salad?” Esther asked.
“No, thank you,” I replied, not wanting anything to interfere with the taste of the lobster. Simply put, I don’t have lobster enough to be complacent about it.
“Did you buy the lobster meat?” I asked dreamily as I ate.
“No, no,” Esther answered. “I got the lobsters and shelled them myself.
That’s the best way of doing it, but also the messiest. Still, the results are worth it—you get more meat for your bucks.
We had our usual good chat, and I caught up on all things Vassalboro, the town where I grew up and where Esther lives. After lunch, we walked around Esther’s yard so that I could admire her flowers. Admire them I did, as well as take a few pictures. I am as crazy about flowers as I am about food.
For our grand finale, we went to Fashions, a consignment shop in Waterville. I get many of my clothes at Fashions, gently used clothes at prices that can’t be beat. Plus, as I tell myself, when I buy clothes from Fashions, I am doing my bit to recycle and save these clothes from going into the landfill. (As I’ve noted before, how we love to justify.) As usual, I found clothes that I wanted, and I bought a top and some slacks for the princely sum of $15.
I have a culinary problem that causes me much anguish. I have alluded to it in past posts, and the time has come to address it directly. So here it is: My digestive system will not tolerate onions unless they have been cooked to smithereens. And I mean smithereens. In stews or a chili where the onions have been simmered for hours and hours, I seldom have a problem. If the onion is chopped very fine and cooked fairly well and there is not too much of it, I’ll only have slight indigestion. (In such dishes—like the fish chowder at the Congo Church—I will indulge from time to time, knowing I’ll have to hit the baking soda and water as soon as I get home.) But if I eat something that has big chunks of not very well cooked onions, then I know I am headed for trouble—multiple doses of baking soda and water followed by Tagamet. And raw onions? Forget about it.
To say this puts a damper on my cooking and eating is an understatement. Onions provide a flavor and depth that when missing can make a dish seem blah and boring. In addition, it is often difficult when going out to eat to find items on the menu that don’t have onions, and dining at friends’ houses can be downright problematic. I was brought up to eat what was in front of me and to say thank you very much. So what do I do? Confess that I have an onion disability? Stay silent, pray that none of the dishes are laden with raw or lightly-cooked onions, and eat what is served? I have done both, and neither approach seems satisfactory. The first approach seems rude—what I have, after all, is an intolerance not a full-blown allergy—and the second approach can lead to misery, even though my affliction is only an intolerance. I long for a third way, which would be to eat the darned things and to suffer no ill effects. However, at my age, I know this is unlikely and that I have to stiver through as best I can.
This brings me to my own cooking, and, in a round-about way, to a recipe for chickpea burgers. First, and I thank the gods for this on a regular basis, I am able to eat garlic. (Raw garlic can be as problematic as onions, but as long as it is lightly cooked, I am fine.) Second, and this is probably why I love Italian food so much, many dishes, especially pasta, can be made using garlic rather than onion. According to Mark Bittman, there is even a notion among some Italian cooks that no dish should include both onion and garlic. (He does not subscribe to this notion.) Finally, I have come to realize that as long as a dish is flavorful, the lack of onion will not be such a problem.
Obviously, then, garlic is one of my prime substitutions for onion, but there are also other flavorings that will jazz up a meal—fresh herbs and a bit of cheese can really make a difference, and I use both in the following recipe for chickpea burgers. This recipe has been adapted from one of Mark Bittman’s in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian. His recipe called for onion, for which I substituted one clove of garlic. Then, following some of his suggestions for flavoring bean burgers, I added fresh basil and some grated sharp cheddar. The results were all that I could have hoped for—a veggie burger that was full of flavor, so good, in fact, that these burgers will be a regular part of our diet. The garlic, the chickpeas, the basil, and the cheese all come together to produce a terrific Mediterranean taste. Thus far, we have only pan fried the burgers, but we are looking forward to grilling them, too. Another nice feature is that a single recipe makes four patties that can all be cooked at the same time. The leftovers reheat beautifully in the same way they are originally cooked—in a frying pan with a bit of oil.
Before giving this recipe, I want to note that although fresh basil can be expensive, there is no substitute for it. Dried basil just isn’t worth it. At many grocery stores, large packs of fresh basil are available at a fairly reasonable price. The big pack I picked up at Trader Joe’s was about $2.50, and I have seen similar prices at our local Hannaford. And for those who can’t find big packs of basil at a good price, take heart. Summer and farmers’ markets are coming, and for cooks who have a bit of sunny space in their yards, basil can planted in pots as well as in the garden.
Chickpea Burgers
Makes 4 large patties
2 cups of cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup of whole basil leaves
1 clove of garlic
1/2 teaspoon of salt
Pepper to taste
1/2 cup of rolled oats
1 egg
1/2 cup of sharp cheddar, grated
Olive oil for frying
In my above preamble, I forgot to mention how easy it is to make these burgers. You do need a food processor, which, in my opinion, is an indispensable piece of equipment in a home cook’s kitchen. Food processors don’t even have to be expensive to work well. Ours was cheap, and we have gotten many years of use out of it. (And it’s still going strong.)
Put all ingredients, except for the oil, in a food processor. You don’t have to chop the basil or the garlic. The food processor will take care of that for you. (You do, of course, have to grate the cheese before adding it to the food processor.) Pulse this mixture until it is fairly well chopped and combined but not totally smooth. There should be rough chunks in the mixture. If the mixture seems too dry, add a bit of water. (I haven’t had to do this.)
Form the mixture into four patties, and chill for an hour in the refrigerator if you have time. Even after chilling, they will be a little crumbly, but they will hold together in the pan. Heat the oil in the frying pan, and when it is hot, add the patties, cooking on one side for five minutes. Flip carefully, and cook on the other side until brown and crispy, about five minutes, maybe a little less if the pan is hot.
Serve on a bun, and any of the toppings you would use on a meat burger would be good on this one as well. Lettuce, tomato, ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, and, yes, even a slice of onion if you don’t have a touchy digestive system.
I took these pictures about a week or so ago. In gardening time, a week is equivalent to a year. Flowers come and go with such speed that it makes this gardener wonder if maybe those small purple irises were, in fact, a figment of her imagination. But no, here’s the photo to prove that they did have their time of glory.
Those Irises!
Now I am waiting for the tall irises to bloom. These lovelies must be supported. They are fine until the inevitable June thunderstorm comes and knocks them this way and that. So support them I did, with help from my husband, Clif.
At our little house in the big woods, it is not easy to grow vegetables. (Thus our decision to join Farmer Kev’s CSA program.) Simply put, we have too much shade and not enough sun. Our backyard gets the most, but even then only about six hours a day. I have found a tomato—Juliet—that does well with my part sun/part shade backyard.
The fair Juliet
Also, for some reason, cucumbers really thrive. I have one little raised bed, where I have planted cucumbers and Juliet tomatoes.
The little raised bed with tomatoes and cucumbers
Herbs also do quite well, and soon I will be planting, in pots, parsley, basil, rosemary, and sage. I have a thyme oregano that wintered over as well as a mint.
This is as good a time as any to make a confession. Notice that I started this post with flowers rather than with vegetables. This is because somewhat ironically—even though I am certainly a good eater, one might even say an obsessed eater—I am also obsessed with flowers. While I am normally a quite frugal person, my willpower is practically nonexistent when I go to our local nurseries, where I pile annuals and perennials in my cart in a way I would never, say, pile clothes or shoes or pocketbooks. I gulp, a little, when the nice man or woman at the cash register announces the total, but I justify the expense by reflecting on how lovely our yard is and how much we enjoy the flowers. Then, if the bill is really high, I remind myself that the flowers are not just for Clif and me. No, indeed. They are also for passersby, who can take in the beauty. Therefore, I am providing a public service, of sorts, by supplying beauty in a world that is often unbeautiful. (Oh, how we justify!)
So in my backyard, in the long, rectangular bed that could conceivably grow vegetables, I have planted flowers. Once in a while, the thought flickers through my mind that I could replace the flowers with vegetables, but then I recoil in horror from the idea. No small purple irises to begin the gardening season? No tall ones, with their sweet but not cloying sent, to soon follow? No red lilies? No sweet William? No humming birds whirring in and out of the flowers? And what about the phlox?
Clearly, the flowers must stay. I have Farmer Kev and the many other farmers who sell their vegetables at the Farmers’ Market in town.
The Project: To bake and give away at least one loaf of bread each week in 2011.
The Reason: A personal protest against the rampant selfishness of our society.
The Bonus: It’s good spiritual practice.
In May, I gave away five and a half loaves of bread. A funny number, I know. I gave one loaf each to Alice and Joel Johnson; Richard Fortin, the director of our library; my daughter Shannon; Jim and Dawna Leavitt; and Mary and Tom Sturtevant. I gave a half loaf to Bob and Kate Johnson, and if ever a couple deserved a whole loaf of bread, it would be Bob and Kate. However, we had all gathered for a meal at Shannon and her husband, Mike’s, new place in South Portland. (I’ve written about this in a previous post.) I brought two loaves of bread, and we ate half of one. One loaf went to Shannon, and rather than take a half loaf home, I asked Kate if she would like it, and she said, yes. Very soon a whole loaf will be heading her way.
Now that summer is upon us, I’ve had to rethink my giving strategy. All last winter and into spring, I really didn’t have to plan ahead about giving bread. I could decide last minute, and give the recipients a quick call. Always, they were home. But with the advent of summer come plans, and people go away either for the day or longer. Mary and Tom nearly didn’t get theirs because they had gone for the day, but they were so keen to get homemade bread that they called as soon as they returned—I had left a message on their machine—and they got their loaf of bread.
Somehow, though, I have been reluctant to call before I see how the bread comes out. I would say that 98 percent of the time, the bread comes out well enough so that I feel comfortable giving it away. But occasionally the bread doesn’t rise as it should, or it falls a little. Naturally, this bread is perfectly good enough for my husband, Clif, and I to eat. (Bread has to be very bad indeed for us to toss it.) But if it doesn’t have a full, rounded pretty look, then I really don’t like to give it away.
In fact, on the week of May 18th, that’s exactly what happened. I made bread to give away, but the loaves looked kind of anemic—who knows why?—and I decided the bread should stay with us. I still reached my goal for the month, which was four loaves of bread. As it turned out, I surpassed it, but it worries me to offer bread before I see what it looks like.
Still, now that it is summer, that is probably what I will have to do. And if the bread is not quite as pretty as I would like, then so be it. Chances are, it will taste better than most of what can be bought at the store, especially in Winthrop.
Total for May: As previously stated, 5 1/2 loaves
Total for the year: 29 1/2 loaves
The year isn’t half over, but I’m well past my half-way goal of 26 loaves.
After a long wet, rainy May, we had the warmest, sunniest, most-perfect Memorial Day that I can remember. The weather was hot but not stifling, and there was nary a dark cloud to dampen our day. For the most part, the dratted black flies were gone (and good riddance!), and the mosquitoes didn’t come out until dusk. This meant my husband, Clif, and I could spend the whole glorious afternoon on our patio, and we were joined by our daughter Shannon and her husband, Mike, for the first barbecue of the season.
At our house, barbecues follow a certain ritual. First comes the appetizer. We try not to go overboard on this, knowing that more food, lots more food, will follow. Yesterday we kept it simple with chips and salsa and a pitcher of margaritas to toast not only the beginning of summer but also those who have passed away and are very much missed.
Next comes grilled bread, which has become one of our specialties. So much so that guests actually request grilled bread when we invite them for a barbecue. Clif has become a master at stretching the dough, rolling it, flipping it, and making sure it doesn’t burn. A little olive oil for dipping, and you have yourself a pretty good treat. We take the easy way out—buying pizza dough from our local Hannaford—but ambitious cooks could certainly make their own. Perhaps one day I will. Regardless of whether the dough is made from scratch or purchased at a grocery, grilled bread wows most guests at pennies per serving. Now, how often does that happen?
After the bread has been dipped and eaten, we move on to the main meal. For this Memorial Day, we went traditional—grilled chicken, steamed corn, and the best-ever potato salad. (Yes, a recipe will follow.) There are three elements that make this potato salad especially good—bacon, sour cream, and, most important, the hot potatoes are marinated with a vinaigrette. The resulting potato salad is so flavorful that it really doesn’t need onions, although they certainly could be added. As raw onions do not agree with me, this is a real plus in my books.
It is our habit to linger over the main meal until the citronella torches must be lit, dampness settles over the backyard, and, finally, the mosquitoes come out. Then in we go for tea and dessert. Shannon made chocolate thumb-print cookies, which she filled with a cream-cheese mixture and topped with chopped strawberries. A delectable ending to a splendid Memorial Day.
Best-Ever Potato Salad
Adapted from a recipe given to me by my friend Dawna Leavitt
7 medium potatoes
1/3 cup of vinaigrette or Italian dressing
4 or 5 hard boiled eggs, chopped
1/2 pound of bacon, cooked and crumbled
3/4 cup of sour cream, or to taste
1 tablespoon of mayonnaise, or to taste
Salt and pepper to taste
Peel and cut potatoes in quarters. In a large stock pan, boil the potatoes until tender. As soon as the potatoes are done, chop them into bite-sized pieces, put them in a mixing bowl, and pour the vinaigrette or Italian dressing over the still-hot potatoes. Put the bowl in the refrigerator and let marinate a few hours, at least until the potatoes are cold.
When the potatoes are nice and chilled, add the chopped eggs, the crumbled bacon, the sour cream, the mayonnaise, and the salt and pepper. Mix well, put in a pretty serving dish, and ideally chill a bit more so that the flavors will mix. However, if you are pressed for time, the potato salad could be served immediately.
Full disclosure: I do not measure the sour cream or the mayonnaise. I add a bit of sour cream and then mayonnaise until I get a consistency that I like.
Also, 3/4 cup of chopped celery could be added, and for those who love onions, 1/3 cup or so of chopped onions. Parsley might be nice, too, but I never do. I just stick with the basics, and even onion lovers have requested this recipe.
I love looking at other people’s gardens, at their flowers, vegetables, shrubs, trees, and garden ornaments. Every garden has a distinct look, created by the gardener who literally plots then toils and worries. There are triumphs, and there are failures. Some years the tulips are outstanding. Other years blight gets the tomatoes. Seasoned gardeners are all too aware of the vagaries of nature, and they plant a wide range of flowers and vegetables, thus assuring that something will bloom or bear fruit.
Yesterday, my husband, Clif, and I delivered a loaf of bread to Mary and Tom Sturtevant. Their house is just off our bike route, so we tucked the loaf in Clif’s bike pack and rode to Mary and Tom’s. They live in a lovely old house that once had an attached barn, as so many Maine houses did. Unfortunately, the barn had to be torn down, but in its place, Mary and Tom have put stonework and benches and gardens. As a result, their half acre—in town—is abloom with flowers and bursting with vegetable seedlings, a wonderful example of what can be done with a small amount of land that gets full sun.
“May we see your gardens?” I asked Mary. (Tom was out.)
“Oh, yes,” Mary said.
“May I take pictures of your flowers?”
“Anytime,” she replied.
Here are a few pictures of Mary’s flowers. As the season progresses, I might go back for more photos. After all, her place is just off our bike route, and my little Cannon—my stealth camera—pops right into my bike pack.
For the past couple of years, my husband, Clif, and I have been fans of Farmer Kev, a young farmer also known as Kevin Leavitt, who lives in our town when he isn’t at university studying sustainable agriculture. I have written previously about Farmer Kev so I will be brief. When Kevin was about twelve years old, he became fascinated with gardening and with growing things. He started with his parents’ backyard, and when that wasn’t enough, Kevin leased land not far from his house so that he could grow things to sell, thus making the jump from gardener to farmer.
Kevin has a booth at the Winthrop Farmers’ Market, and for the past couple of years, we’ve bought vegetables from him at the market. Somehow, his vegetables just taste better than everyone else’s vegetables. His corn is sweeter; his lettuce is crisper; his garlic has more pep and crunch. It really does seem as though Farmer Kev has a green thumb, a sort of “psi” talent for growing things. In reality, I suppose he has a combination of traits that allows a person to excel in any given field—a burning interest in a subject, perseverance, hard work, and the ability to learn from mistakes.
This year, Clif and I decided to join Farmer Kev’s CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program. Each week, starting sometime in June, we will be getting boxes of whatever is ripe in Kevin’s garden. We decided to start with a half share, which is $200, and see how that goes. (A full share is only $300, but we wanted to be sure we could eat all of the vegetables delivered in a half share before moving on to a full share.)
A week or so ago, Kevin sent pictures of his garden to members of his CSA, and he kindly agreed to let me use them in my blog. Above is a picture of his garlic, and despite the cool, rainy weather we’ve been having, it looks as though Kevin’s garden is thriving.
Yesterday was a banner day for my daughter Shannon and her husband, Mike. They were the beneficiaries of a swirl of giving that started with Paul and Judy Johnson and extended to Paul’s son Bob and his wife, Kate. Paul and Judy are selling their house and are moving into a smaller one. As a result, they decided to give away many things that would not fit into their smaller home. A large buffet was one such item, and Paul and Judy asked Shannon and Mike if they would like it. Yes, indeed! After some measuring, Shannon and Mike confirmed that it would fit in their long, narrow kitchen, which has a decided lack of storage and counter space.
Then, Paul and Judy gave their big dining room set to Bob and Kate, which meant that Bob and Kate could offer their old set to Mike and Shannon. (I told you it was a swirl of giving.) Mike and Shannon have a very little table that will technically seat six, but when the places are set, there is no room for the food. Bob and Kate’s old dining room table is much bigger. Plenty of room for dinner plates and serving dishes.
Naturally, this meant renting a truck and moving furniture from New Hampshire (where Bob and Kate live) to Maine (where the rest of us live) and then from Maine to New Hampshire. Thus, as Bob put it, Operation Furniture Transfer was born. For Bob and Kate, it was a very long day, but all went well, and miracle of miracles, it was even a sunny day. (Moving furniture in the rain is no fun.) My husband, Clif, took off the day to help with Operation Furniture Transfer, and at the end of the day—and I mean this literally—Shannon and Mike had a new buffet and a new, large dining room table.
We ordered pizza from Pizza Magnolia, and we all gathered round to eat at the old table in the new home.
Many thanks to Paul and Judy and Bob and Kate for their generosity. How good it is to be able to give to family and friends. How good it is to give.
In this age of the computer—with Facebook, Twitter, and email—handwritten letters are pretty much a thing of the past. While there are probably some holdouts who prefer pen and paper, I expect most of us communicate electronically via the computer. While this kind of communication has its good points—speed and ease—it also has one very big drawback—impermanence. Simply put, letters written on paper have much more lasting power than messages sent through email.
We can only be grateful, then, that Julia Child and her friend, mentor, and confidante Avis DeVoto did not have use of computers when they were middle-aged women. Otherwise, we never would have had the many letters they sent to each other, starting in 1952 and ending in 1988, a year before Avis DeVoto’s death. For the letters in As Always, Julia are more than just a chronicle of everyday life in Europe (Julia Child) and Boston (Avis DeVoto) in the 1950s and early 1960s, when the book ends. These letters, arranged and edited by Joan Reardon, trace the arc of a remarkable phenomenon that, like most phenomena, would seem to be a foregone conclusion but really wasn’t. I am referring, of course, to the publication of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which did so much to change the way Americans cook. While most foodies know that Julia Child was the driving force behind Mastering the Art of French Cooking—Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle also worked on the book—few foodies realize the pivotal role that Avis DeVoto played in getting this important cookbook published. DeVoto has been called “the midwife” of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. Indeed, after reading As Always Julia, I wondered if Julia Child ever would have become JULIA CHILD without DeVoto’s help. We’ll never know, of course, but it’s fascinating to think about, and this book is a terrific lesson about the importance of friends.
It’s funny and somehow appropriate that the correspondence began with a knife. Bernard DeVoto, Avis’s husband, was a historian and a journalist. In a 1951 issue of Harper’s, Bernard DeVoto bemoaned the deplorable state of American knives, which were by and large stainless steel and thus couldn’t hold an edge. Julia Child and her husband, Paul, read the article, and even though neither of them knew Bernard DeVoto, they admired his writing, and Julia decided to send him a good knife along with a short letter of explanation. At the time, the Childs were living in Paris, and it was easy for them to get good knives. Avis DeVoto, “mainstay of and secretary to her husband, the mother of two sons, a reviewer of whodunits for the Boston Globe, an editor, an accomplished cook…” answered Julia’s letter and thanked her for the knife. Something immediately clicked between the two women, which resulted in more letters and a friendship that would last until Avis died in 1989.
When Julia Child first began corresponding with Avis DeVoto, Mastering the Art of French Cooking wasn’t really Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Instead, the proposed title was French Cooking for All, and the original idea was for it to be published in five individual volumes by Ives Washburn. Julia Child decided to send a first draft to Avis DeVoto, “who immediately saw [the book’s] potential” and thought it should go to Houghton Mifflin, her husband’s publisher. The manuscript did indeed go to Houghton Mifflin, and when they eventually got cold feet because of the manuscript’s length, Avis DeVoto managed to convince Alfred A. Knopf and a “talented young editor” named Judith Jones to read the manuscript and to consider publishing it as one long book. This they did, and Mastering the Art of French Cooking was finally born. This, of course, is only the briefest summation of what really happen during the long, long gestation of Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
In addition to this fascinating history, the smart and witty personalities of each woman shines clearly in this book. Both were passionate, liberal Democrats who were thrown into despair by Joseph McCarthy and his thugs. Child and DeVoto were interested in books, art, and ideas, and this correspondence should put to rest the notion that the 1950s were an intellectual wasteland. While not everyone was a vibrant thinker and a brilliant conversationalist during the 1950s, the same is also true of people today. I would even venture to guess that the percentages are pretty much the same between now and then, but I don’t have any numbers to back up this hypothesis.
Finally, while I have long been a fan of Julia Child and her large, glowing personality, I became totally smitten by the intense, loyal, funny Avis DeVoto, who did so much for Julia Child. How I would have loved to have had a conversation with the two of them.
As Always Julia is a fascinating chronicle of a critical era in American food history, and it certainly belongs in the library of anyone who loves and is interested in food.
A blog about nature, home, books, movies, television, food, and rural life.
Notes From the Hinterland 