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MY
ROUSES
EVERYDAY
JULY | AUGUST 2017
the
Burger
issue
T
here’s an opaque curtain between us and our futures. Plan
though we may, what happens on any given day in any
given life is unpredictable.
On March 9, 2000, I woke up with my husband, Ned, in a hotel
room in Providence, Rhode Island. We were attending the
annual conference of the International Association of Culinary
Professionals (IACP), where I’d teach an all-day workshop called
Fearless Writing. I’ve taught it (and still do) in many iterations; this
one was subtitled “Finding Your Voice, Vitality, and Vibrancy in
Culinary Writing.”
At 8:20 a.m. or so, as I was walking across the hotel lobby towards
the venue where I’d be teaching, someone — I’m embarrassed to say
I can’t remember which of my “pan pals” it
was — stopped me. She said, “Crescent, do
you have room for one more person in your
class?”
I said, “Sure.” She replied, “Then we’ll go
over with you.” I turned, and standing next
to her was Julia Child. Thus began my day
as writing coach/mentor to Julia, along with
another 30 or so other culinary writers.
You probably know Child as the charming,
iconic, delightfully goofy woman who
brought cooking well, with passion and
exuberance, to television. Or, you know her
via her foundational
tour de force
bestseller,
Mastering the Art of French Cooking
.Written
specifically for Americans with two French
coauthors, in this book Child’s was the
distinctive American voice, approachable
yet authoritative. Volume 1 of
Mastering
appeared in 1961, Volume 2 in 1970; with
this guide, thousands of people taught
themselves to cook. In 2002, Julie Powell
began the Julie/Julia Project, in which she
cooked all the recipes in the book within
one year, blogging about it as she went;
Mastering
became a bestseller for a second
time. Later, the blog, combined with Child’s
own last book,
My Life in France
, became a
film. Meryl Streep played Child.
I’d met Julia a few times at previous IACPs.
Tall, warm, unpretentious, endearing, she
possessed an irresistibly agile, curious mind;
she embodied the term “lifelong learner.”
She seemed to me eager to meet others
as colleagues. While not unaware that she
was a star, she chafed against being revered
instead of related to. Several times we
went on the same IACP culinary tours at
various conference cities; we participated
in one called “Kosher Philadelphia,” during
which she and sausage-maker Bruce Aidells
peppered a kosher butcher with questions.
When Julia attended Fearless, she was over 85.Though widowed six
years earlier and walking with a cane, she was as vibrantly curious as
ever. I was over 45, happily married, comfortable in my twin careers
as a writer and teacher of writing.
Over the years, other famous writers (not just culinary ones) had
taken my course, side by side with beginning or aspirational writers.
As a teacher, I know it is essential not to be overawed by any
individual’s star power (nor to dismiss someone who has not yet
published), but to try and simply
see
each person’s needs and where
they are in the writing process.
One way I do this is by, at the start of a session, asking students what
they’d like to leave class with. Julia was one who chose to speak up. “I’d
like to leave,” she said, “knowing how to write
funnier, to get across humor on the page.”
When I recall that day, I remember this, and
that, during the catered lunch, she asked
that Ned and I sit on either side of her.
Somehow, the story of my recently having
made barbecued tofu at a small-town
community fundraiser came up. “How,” she
asked me, with genuine curiosity, “do you
make it?”
So. Not only do I have the distinction of
“That Julia Child once took a
workshop with me — and that
to this day occasionally people
wash up in Fearless who tell me,
“Julia told me I should take your
class” — also amazes me.”
the fearless
Julia Child
by
Crescent Dragonwagon