The Joy of Cooking

My sister and I just finished watching Julie & Julia, which I surprisingly enjoyed, despite not particularly relishing all the lobster boiling and chicken deboning!

The movie features happily married women who feel a bit lost and purposeless. Julie loves to cook and, with the support of her husband, decides to cook through Julia Childs' Mastery of French Cooking in exactly one year and record the entire experience in a blog. The movie also tells a parallel story of Julia Childs' own discovery of French cooking and attempt to get published.

Both women find success and meaning in their diligent determination, and the movie left a warm glow in us--and a renewed interest in our cookbooks! In fact, I have a fantastic cookbook, Carol Gelles' 1000 Vegetarian Recipes, that I use as my 'staple' cookbook, and I momentarily considered trying to cook my way through it! However, that absurd notion soon passed, of course!

I was intrigued by the assertion that Julia Childs added to her cookbook careful explanations of how to cook, for the 'servantless' American housewife...in order to actually teach French cooking to the average American. Despite the fact that most of the book would not be of interest to me (due to its heavy focus on animal products), I am curious about French cooking techniques and tips...perhaps I'll check it out from the library before I invest in it!

I have been thinking about the purpose of art and other skills not related to basic survival for quite some time. I often step back from my determination to get the kids to practice their instruments or learn some cultural trivia and think, "why? what is the real point of any of this?" My sister and the movie seem to answer, "Joy and Fulfillment!" A brilliant artist or chef provides nourishment for the soul, and, after basic survival, this nourishment is a basic need that we have. We seek beauty and pleasure, and overall joy can be derived from developing and implementing these skills, even if there are difficulties encountered in the course of the development of these talents.

Thank you to my sister Stephenie for this thoughtful insight. I wanted to record it while it was still fresh in my mind, so that I can periodically remind myself if need be!

P.S. I've just gone back to add the title to this blog, and, to bring it all together, I thought I'd mention that we actually did spend some time looking at my copy of The Joy of Cooking, which was discussed and shown quite a bit in the film. It is an amazing book with a lot of extra writing on how to cook. There are a lot of different sections, but I have to admit that I keep finding myself on the meat sections, out of sheer shock value! This book tells you how to skin and prepare porcupines, squirrels, rabbits, etc.! Organ meats are discussed in detail with lots of recipes, too! I take a strange sort of comfort in knowing that we have a sort of 'survival' manual like this for our clueless selves if survival ever becomes an issue!:) Anyhow, that's an aside, as The Joy of Cooking is a fabulous cookbook for the regular American kitchen, and I'm delighted to know that there are many sections on cooking techniques that do apply to the vegetarian cook, including flambe and souffle and such, so no need for any fancy French cookbooks yet or likely ever!