Triss Stein--Almost Julia Child

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Last week our Lucy Burdette talked about her current obsession with cooking icon Julia Child. In the comments on that post, our JRW author friend Triss Stein commented that she'd lived in the same Cambridge neighborhood as Julia and that she had some stories to tell. 

We were intrigued and asked Triss to come on the blog and share those stories with us!

Almost Julia Child

by Triss Stein

Julia Child’s first television broadcast was in February 1963. In 1966 she was on the cover of Time magazine. In 1967, I moved into the apartment in Cambridge MA that made us neighbors.  Some context here:  I was a college senior, a hick from a small city in New York dairy farm country. I had never, ever seen any famous person in real life or believed I ever would. 

Well, we were almost neighbors.  My shared apartment was on Trowbridge St., south of Kirkland. 

It was at the back of a typical Boston three decker with stacked porches in the front, floor-throughs long since chopped up into student rentals. 

One bedroom had a built-in china cabinet- we had no china-  and we looked out at the scenic driveway.  

North of Kirkland Street, this student  almost-slum became a neighborhood of spacious Victorian homes occupied by Harvard senior faculty, and yes, Julia and Paul Child. Right there  on Irving Street. 

Savenor’s is the grocery store mentioned in the series. It was right around the corner from us, on Kirkland Street, handy for that forgotten quart of milk, and run by an intimidating, messy, elderly woman. Imagine our surprise when we learned she was Mrs. Savenor and the store had a butcher department famous all over greater Boston. Yes, Julia bought her meat there. The housekeeper for John Kenneth Galbraith, the renowned diplomat, writer and Harvard professor, also shopped there. Someone I knew overheard her telling the butcher the meat had to be especially excellent as Mrs. Kennedy was coming for dinner! (Yes, that Mrs Kennedy.)  

Sadly I never did see Julia  around the neighborhood, but I knew people who had. The best story ever: some grad students decided it would be an adventure to cook a whole suckling pig. They managed to obtain one but then realized they had no idea what to do with it. So they did what any smart grad student would do in those olden times: they opened a phone directory (a paper book, free from the phone company), looked up Julia Child’s home number and called her.  She was enthusiastic about their project and walked them through the whole process. I remember that she invited herself to the dinner, but it is possible I made that up.  

Finally, years later: my husband worked at Knopf, and would bring home the best cookbooks ever, a whole new kind of cook book, edited by the brilliant Judith Jones, another unforgettable character in the PBS series. Classics by Madhur Jaffrey, Claudia Roden, Edna Lewis, Lidia Bastianich, came to me hot off the press.  

I’ve read several books about Julia and Paul and that time and place. Here are two of my favorite Julia facts: she liked McDonald’s French fries and wasn’t afraid to say so. And when Paul Child was old and ill and needed constant nursing care, she called him at the nursing home every night, same time Cambridge time, no matter where she was and what time it was there. 

Triss Stein has spent most of her adult life living and working in Brooklyn. She was inspired by Brooklyn’s varied neighborhoods and so is her urban historian heroine, Erica Donato. In the most recent, Brooklyn Legacies, (Poisoned Pen Press, 2019) a chance encounter draws her to the quaint streets and deep conflicts of historic Brooklyn Heights.

 

These days, Triss is hard at work on an entirely new project.

DEBS: What lovely behind-the-scenes glimpses of Julia, Triss. Did your husband know Judith Jones? I wish they'd make a TV series about her!

And of course we're hoping you'll give us a teeny hint about your new project!

Reds and readers, have you ever brushed orbits with someone famous?

Oh, and has anyone managed to watch the Julia documentary?

Lucy‘s having a moment with Julia (Child, that is)

 

LUCY BURDETTE: No one would ever accuse me of being a trendsetter, including my recent obsession with Julia Child. I did watch the movie Julie and Julia (twice) and absolutely adored the performances of Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci as Julia and Paul. But I don’t own Mastering the Art of French Cooking, either volume one or two. I do have a lot of other books about Julia Child but until now I hadn’t read them.

But things changed as we watched the new mini series called Julia, focusing on the launch of her television career. Sarah Lancashire is brilliant as Julia. And now I’ve become officially obsessed.

 

 If you’ve seen it or if you decide to see it and you become infatuated with the show and the characters as I have, here are some other fun places to dive deeper.

A podcast about the making of each episode. You might think this is a dull topic, but it's not, it’s so interesting! (Including one for you Hank, about the inclusion of the black woman producer, who is one of the few completely fictional characters in the show.)

Here's Adam Robert’s interview with the Director, Daniel Goldfarb, in addition to a chat with Dorie Greenspan.

French pastry chef David Lebovitz wrote a long article in his newsletter about what the show got right, and what wrong—he has met and worked with a lot of the big name chefs under discussion so it’s fascinating to hear his take. 

Baker and cookbook author Dori Greenspan has two recent articles, one about Julia’s influence on her, and the other about the food stylist for the TV show, Christine Tobin. Both fascinating!

Because we had a discussion behind the scenes of our blog about what was real and true in the show, I finally read My Life in France by Julia Child (written with her nephew Alex Prud’homme.) Amazing book! She was an incredible woman, indomitable and totally unflustered by roadblocks in her cooking career, or in her life. It’s also a primer on having a good marriage.

And I forgot to add this photo earlier--celebrating Julia Child's birthday in 2012 with my mother-in-law and sister-in-law Lisa, who is always on trend!

Over to you Reds. Do you own or use Julia's Cookbooks? Have you watched the show? What did you think?

Sharing Our Stories. And Omelets

Late-breaking (ie, from last week) news: Kathy Reel is the winner of E.J. Copperman's WITNESS FOR THE PERSECUTION! Kathy, contact E.J. at Jeff at Jeff Cohen Books dot com for your prize.

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: For Christmas, my daughter shared with me a subscription to an app called Storyworth. Every week the recipient of the gift is emailed a question. Some are stock, as in "Who were your grandparents?" Some are asked by the giver, like "Where did you go on vacations as a child?" 

You answer the questions in as much detail as you want, and you can add photos, too. Then you hit SEND and your little post goes to the giver. (You can go back and edit, too, thank goodness.) At the end of the year, Storyworth compiles all your stories into a book. Isn't that a terrific idea? 

Of course I am cringing to admit that I've hardly answered any of the questions! They trigger a flood of memories and stories, but I am so under the gun on my book and all my time and energy is going into getting those last pages done. Huge apologies to Kayti! But I promise, as soon as I send off my manuscript, I'm going to have a great time filling in those blanks. (The questions make terrific journaling prompts, too.)

This week's question was "What are your favorite recipes to cook, or to eat?" and my first thought was of big meals, which I've never been very good at, dinner party and holiday sort of stuff.

And then I thought about omelets. Prompted, in part, by the one I made for dinner last night. Sauteed mushrooms, cherry tomatoes, sharp cheddar cheese. And butter, as that is the only proper way to make an omelet.  Fabulous.  It is the best dinner I can think of.

That led me to think about my mom, who loved omelets, too, and about our trips to France. My mom's favorite Paris meal was an omelet with a green salad and a glass of wine, in a brasserie. That was the height of sophistication as far as she was concerned! I have to say I agree.

And that led me to Julia Child. Is anyone else watching JULIA, the new HBO Max series about Julia's early days on public television? 

(I hate that we can't all watch the same things!) The British actress Sarah Lancashire from Happy Valley plays Julia--is that bizarrely unexpected? (She's really good, though.) I don't remember my mom owning a copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, but surely she watched The French Chef, because it was the sixties and that's what you did. And how else did she learn about French omelets?

Those are questions I would ask now, if I could, and I think it's a lovely idea to share  these stories, rambling as they may be.

How about you, REDs and readers, are you sharing stories--or asking the questions?