August 15th...
On This Day in Herstory, August 15th 1912, American chef, TV personality, author, and WWII spy, Julia Carolyn Child was born.
At the age of 37, after her time working for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services) during the War was finished, Julia learned how to cook by attending Le Cordon Bleu (a very prominent culinary institute). Child was was eager to share her knowledge of cooking and passion for great food with as many women as possible. Her fearlessness in life and in the kitchen paved the way for the female chefs and cooks who followed in her footsteps. Julia was quite often the only women in a kitchen full of men, but because of this she was able to teach countless people that cooking good food at home was possible, and often fun.
Child is most well known for her various efforts to bring french cuisine to an American public who was taken with the new conveniences of processed foods and frozen meals. She managed this with her best selling cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and her various cooking shows, specifically, The French Chef.
Julia’s life was one of many ‘firsts;’ she was the first woman to have a cooking show on TV, she was the first woman to be inducted into the Culinary Institute of America’s Hall of Fame, and her show The French Chef was the first TV program ever to be captioned for those who were deaf or hard of hearing.
Learn more about Child’s feminist ways here: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/blog/julia-child-empowered-women-kitchen-beyond/
Learn more about her life in general here: https://www.biography.com/people/julia-child-9246767
An interesting Thanksgiving anecdote about Julia Child: Her television career began in the early 1960s, and she quickly achieved fame and notoriety. Despite this, she allowed her phone number to remain listed in the phone-book through the 1980s!
Around Thanksgiving she always received an innumerable amount of phone calls from panicked people who were cooking for their families and friends. Child never unplugged her phone, she answered as many of the calls as she could, and offered cooking advice to whoever asked for it.
“This is my invariable advice to people: Learn how to cook- try new recipes, learn from your mistakes, be fearless, and above all have fun!” - Julia Child
