Sara and Julia ... and More

There must be a million food blogs out there. There's even a blog about food blogs. I suppose the grand-mere of them all is the Julie/Julia Project, and thank God for that, because without it no one would ever have thought a movie about Julia Child would sell, and we'd never have had Meryl Streep cooking it up with Stanley Tucci. So even if you find Julie Powell extremely annoying, thank her for that.

This blog, on the other hand, is about whatever crosses my, and sometimes Little Orange Librarian's, mind. It is named after a handsome little cat, who sometimes appears in it along with his more dignified tabby elder. It frequently touches on nature, birds, gardening, travels near and far, family, and history. And sometimes food. In a nutshell, it's about what I love.*

This past spring we followed our amazing West Virginia birding and nature trip with a few days in Washington DC. We hung out with some folks who are pretty dear to us: Aunt Nancy, Uncle Don, and Cousin Megan. (They technically belong to Kelly but after nearly 25 years I have a claim as well.)


Kelly with Cousin Megan on the green rooftop of Megan's workplace, the Center for Urban Agriculture.

We also hung out in some holy sites. Like this one.



That's right, Julia Child's kitchen, now in the Smithsonian Museum of American History. It featured prominently in the movie Julie and Julia, including in a scene where Julie Powell visits it in its current location, leaving behind a pound of butter as homage. I was pretty excited about seeing the kitchen; in fact it was the one single thing I absolutely had to achieve on this visit. Kelly was slightly worried that I was also going to try and bring along a pound of butter, but frankly that would be a waste of good animal fat and I am pretty sure that Julia Child would not have approved.

There are other scenes in that kitchen that I like better anyway: Paul Child tracing the outlines of Julia's pots and pans on peg board.


Julia opening the package containing the advance copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and squealing with delight. That scene makes me cry.


I appreciate the Smithsonian's inclusion of the kitchen in its collection; it speaks well to the institution's understanding of history. Not too far away from Julia's kitchen is the lunch counter from Woolworth's in Greensboro NC where, around the same time that Julia was learning about French food, students were holding sit-ins to end segregation. In two very different ways, American society was being transformed over food counters.


Food is a powerful force, and carries all kinds of history with it. We can trace the lineage of African American slaves in their cooking, which carries forward into soul food today. Many Newfoundlanders still relish the poverty-induced salt-and-fat-rich diet of our past. You can map the history of immigration in Toronto by food. Spadina used to be the place to go for bagels, cream cheese and lox. Now you go uptown. Then it was the locale for Chinese. Now you head to the suburbs for dim sum and to Spadina for pho. Churassco chicken, custard tarts, and bacalao fritters? College Street. Gelato? St. Clair. Bloor/Ossington or Danforth/Woodbine for injera and tibs, and Kensington market for pupusas. Lawrence East between Victoria Park and Warden is a little Lebanon.

And sometimes the history is deeply personal. I've written here before about my mother's simple, classic cooking, which I try to duplicate but can never quite match with the same ease that she had. Last night I posted our supper menu as my Facebook status (herbed oatmeal-crusted trout; sauteed beans, okra, and summer squash; herbed quinoa); I do this frequently. Friends asked for recipes; they do this frequently. But I had no actual recipe to share.

The quinoa was an attempt to duplicate part of a delicious meal we had at the Museum of the American Indian on this same DC trip (I cooked the quinoa and tossed it with basil, thyme, oregano, sage, and chilis, all from our garden, which I had whizzed up with olive oil).

The vegetables were the product of our CSA share this week, and were quickly tossed in the frying pan with a skim of olive oil and many thin slivers of fresh local garlic, then sprinkled with sea salt.


And the fish? Well, that was a slightly more sophisticated take on how my father cooked trout for breakfast when we were camping. It was not nearly as fresh or as sweet as what he and my brother and I would have caught that morning or the night before, but it was still dipped in milk, rolled in oats, and quickly sauteed in butter. (The sophistication? I ground the oatmeal and added to it some finely chopped rosemary and garlic.)


That fish is one of three dishes I remember my father making. Another was soup, which he learned from his father, a fishing schooner/lumber camp cook. The third was a delicacy that he made for lunch when we went fishing on Grand Lake one Saturday: ham and cheese sandwiches. I still remember my amazement at this sandwich that I was sure he had invented.

It's not the work of a Cordon Bleu chef. But it's a part of my culinary history.


*What did I say that I liked to write about? I think I've hit on just about all of them today.