Julia Child

It seems customary to report on the subject thanks to the movie made by the idiotic-beyond-idiotic, border-line retarded "chick-flick twit". No, the CC has not seen the movie but we're gonna talk about the cookbook author and not the persona or the chick-flick or the twit.

It is no great secret that most foodies have read Julia Child.

Opinions differ on the subject, and the CC has definitely besmirched the woman's reputation on her favorite subject of omelettes (with perfectly good science and reason.)

Arguably, you would do better to learn French cooking by consulting Anne Willan or Richard Olney.

And she was no more "authentic" than Paris Hilton. She wore wigs during her show and had two face-lifts. Chances are they don't tell you those things during the movie. Nor do the asinine foodies bother with such blunt brute facts during their wild adoration bordering on hagiography.

But there would never have been an Olney or a Willan without a Julia Child. Plus, we're here to judge her on the basis of her books not her vanity.

What matters is the sheer joy of food as well as pure unabashed joie de vivre that leaps off every page. It's opinionated, detail-oriented, definitely old-fashioned. It's not "pitched" to a "marketing control group". It's tone is friendly if bossy; accurate if opinionated.

Certainly, some of the equipment has dated. We can do better in that domain, and she'd agree herself. But her dictum that happiness is as much in the doing as the final result is completely on target.

Above all, there is the sensual love of food and life. She was sui generis and so are the books.

It shows. It shows in spades. You can't fake this.

If ever there were books that just by the sheer forceful power of the author's personality could dispel the blues, it's these ones. There are few better things worth doing in life that spending an afternoon on the couch with Julia. (And yes, she'd howl in mirth at the smuttiness of that pun!)

She was right about butter too.