Most people don’t know that Julia Child’s kitchen was painstakingly deconstructed and rebuilt within the sacred halls of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. Most people also don’t know that Julia worked for the OSS, the precursor of our present day CIA.
Julia is a role model for me — not because she was a spy — though I find that fascinating. It’s because she couldn’t even boil water well into her thirties. When she married and followed her OSS husband to Paris, she decided to take some lessons. She revolutionized an industry, became the first person ever to have a hugely successful cooking show on TV (considering her figure, face, grace and voice anyone would say that was a long shot), and reinvented herself, and kept doing so, until her death just before her 92nd birthday.
Note her iconic copper pans on the right wall. These were only recently rejoined with the kitchen a few years ago. Julia Child was so organized that each pan has its outline traced onto the peg board behind it. That way everything always went back precisely into its right place.
And look at that wall on either side of the sink. Julia Child has more knives than any chef I know. Could it be she had honed throwing skills and watched for enemy agents from those three windows? Honestly, there are more implements that could be used for torture or defense than there are those that are only for cooking!
Whatever the case, a trip to the Smithsonian is filled with surprising treasures. I’ll keep bringing you more — along with a few more tidbits about Julia in the near future.
