Bon Appétit! the delicious life of Julia Child – Review

“People who love to eat are always the best people.”

Let’s have all those picky eaters out there chew on that! This lovely quote is opposite the title page of the new picture book biography,

Bon Appetit! The Delicious Life of Julia Child by Jessie Hartland (Schwartz & Wade Books, a division of Random House, 2012).

Before I read this book, most of what I knew about Julia Child I had learned from watching the 2009 movie Julie & Julia. I knew, at the very least, that Child was a truly original character who had led a very interesting life. Bon Appétit expands on the basic facts with funny anecdotes, peppered with French banter and a few mini cooking lessons, all wrapped up in a lively comic-book style that keeps one’s eye in motion.

Though it’s geared toward 7 to 10 year olds, there is plenty in this book to entertain an adult audience as well. It’s the kind of book that is filled to the brim with things you might not know. What exactly is Welsh Rabbit? What did Julia Child -then McWilliams- have to do with sharks off the coast of Sri Lanka? How do you really pronounce bouillabaisse? I even love the endpages, where we get an illustrated sampling of probable objects from Julia’s everyday life, labeled in English in the front, French in the back. In terms of information per page, this book is dense.

Like Julia Child herself, Hartland’s book has a sense of vivacity and a sense of humor. It is thoroughly enjoyable to read. Halfway through the book, BeanTwo asked me why I was using “that funny voice” when Julia was talking. (I’m sure I do a horrible impersonation.) I explained that Child had a cooking show, in fact the first ever cooking show, and that I was trying to talk like her. Both my Beans have seen cooking shows on PBS and on the Food Network, and they were interested when the biography got to that part of her life. Bon Appétit includes some of the funnier highlights from those shows.

At the end, Hartland gives us her own recipe for French Crêpes, with all the detail Julia herself would include. BeanOne and BeanTwo loved both making them and  eating them. I prefer mine rolled up with a generous squeeze of lemon juice and sprinkle of sugar. The kids liked them folded, with bananas and nutella. When I said I was taking a picture for my blog, BeanTwo insisted it had to look like something, so there’s a crêpe butterfly. But really, they didn’t sit on the plate long enough to be much appreciated that way.

As much as I like that opening quote about people who love to eat, I think the my favorite quote of Julia Child comes at the end. “Don’t apologize for your cooking mistakes,” she says. “It is what it is.”

I think smell a philosophy for Life in there.

 

Secrets of the Garden – Review

We’re well into Summer now, and the gardeners among us are already reaping the rewards of vigorously tended vegetable beds. With all the optimism of newly growing seeds, my Beans and I really enjoyed reading

Secrets of the Garden: Food Chains and the Food Web in Our Backyard by Kathleen Weidner Zoehfeld (Knopf, 2012).

It’s a non-fiction book about the interconnectedness of living things right in our backyards (literally.) But Zoehler is wise to make the topic completely relatable to young kids by using a first-person viewpoint of a young girl named Alice. She explains all about planting her family’s garden with her brother and their excitement at watching it grow. While BeanTwo likes the colorful illustrations and cute animal friends, I appreciate the concise and clear text and the family’s backyard chickens, Maisy and Daisy, whose banter provides the book’s scientific backbone as well as some comic relief.

Alice and her brother are great vegetable eaters (not that BeanTwo is taking the hint yet.) Zoehfeld pays a lot of attention to the explanation of food chains, which of course always start with plants. BeanOne was interested in the idea that when we eat vegetables, we are consuming the energy of the sun which has been converted through photosynthesis. I had never before thought of it that way, but it was pretty neat to think about the next time we had salad. The notion even motivated BeanTwo to have a few more bites than usual.

 

Sea Lion on a Sandy Beach

It’s a sea lion, not a seal. I have been mistaken about this my whole life. Apparently sea lions, which we often picture balancing balls on their noses, have front flippers they can use to walk around on land. Seals, on the other hand, tend to wiggle around on their bellies on land, flippers out to the side. Of course there are a way more differences than that – click here for a good rundown. What I really want to talk about right now is chopped liver!

Actually, Mock Chopped Liver  – a terrible name for perfectly good food. I prefer to think of it as Vegetarian Paté. It looks very convincing as “brown sugar” beach sand, but much more yummy. It’s great with crunchy bits of wheat toast or wheat-thin type crackers. It’s also really good with cucumber and bell pepper slices. Your kids will never detect the protein from hard-boiled eggs and walnuts hidden in there. Carmelized onions and garlic pack in flavor, and a can of peas holds it all together. Normally, I would not ever eat canned peas, but for me, this recipe justifies their existence.

Vegetarian Paté

• 2-3 onions, chopped
• ¼ cup vegetable oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• ½ to ⅔ cup walnuts
• (1) 15oz. can peas -without added sugar, drained
• 3 hard-boiled eggs
• ½ to 1 tsp salt

Sauté onions in oil on LOW for a good long time, 30 – 40 minutes or more, until they are deeply carmelized. Add garlic and sauté for a minute or two longer. Then remove from heat and let cool slightly.

In a blender, process walnuts until finely chopped. Add onions, and remaining ingredients. Blend until it makes a smooth paste.

How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A. – Review

In the last decade, a lot of people have been talking about teaching kids where food really comes from (i.e. not simply the grocery store), tracing it back to the original sources. I think it’s a fine idea, especially when children can experience it first-hand, like collecting eggs from chickens, or picking blueberries, or milling flour by hand.

But I also think that kids get the idea about where food comes from very quickly, and picture books on the subject need to be pretty inventive to be successful. In 1994, before all the current media hype over nutrition education, author/illustrator Marjorie Priceman wrote a book called How to Make an Apple Pie and See the World
in which a young girl takes us around the globe to gather ingredients for a pie because her grocery store is closed.

In her follow-up book How to Make a Cherry Pie and See the U.S.A. Priceman takes idea one step further. The same young girl is back, ready with the ingredient to make a cherry pie, but she doesn’t have a pie tin, or a rolling pin, or any of the tools needed to make that pie. It’s the Fourth of July, and the Cook Shop is closed. So, together we traipse across the country collecting raw materials to make a metal pie pan, plastic measuring spoons, a clay mixing bowl, cotton pot holders, etc.

BeanOne was amazed. “You mean glass is really made out of sand?” BeanTwo had no idea that cotton is a plant and that plastic comes from oil. Priceman gives us a mini geography lesson that races by a dozen cultural landmarks, and we also learn about natural resources that can be found within our beautiful country (handy maps in the endpages).

Sour cherries are in season in Michigan, where I live. I bought two quarts at the Farmer’s Market yesterday with all intentions of making the pie recipe in the front of the book. I started pitting the cherries at about midnight, and by 12:30, I decided to go for Cherry Cobbler instead. At that hour, the prospect of making a pie was too daunting. I’ll serve it with vanilla ice cream and maybe some fresh blueberries for a red white and blue dessert.

Earth Day (Repost)

Here’s something from the Archives in light of Earth Day, just around the corner.

The Incredible Book Eating Boy – Review

Is it possible to have too much of a good thing? Sweets and treats, maybe. But what if it’s books?

In The Incredible Book Eating Boy artist and writer Oliver Jeffers takes a funny look at what happens when young Henry discovers that books satisfy his stomach as much as his brain.

If you love books as objects, you must get this book. Jeffers’ paintings are fantastic. He uses actual books and pages from books as canvases for his whimsical art. It gives me a really tactile sense of books that underlies the story.

After a literally devouring half a library of books, Henry’s body just can’t take it anymore, and though it saddens him greatly, he gives up books. Then he discovers one day that he can just read them, and that they’re pretty good that way too. Good thing, because he’s moved on to devouring mountains of broccoli.

Occupational Surnames

BeanOne, almost 8 years old, is working his way through the Harry Potter books right now. He’s way ahead of me in Book Four; I’m lagging sorely behind in Book Two. (I’ve always liked the children’s fantasy genre, but I’m finding it strangely difficult to get in to Harry Potter.) Of course, Harry’s a wizard, but his name means that somewhere in his family tree, maybe way back, at least one of his ancestors was a pot maker by trade.

For years I’ve been mentally noting occupational surnames like this, which are quite common in Western culture. I first started paying attention to them reading books about or set in the Middle Ages, which were populated with blacksmiths, and barrel-makers (coopers), and millers, and the like.

With older children, make it a game to see how many of these names you can think up. Here are a few more to get you started:

• Cook
• Mason
• Fletcher
• Wheeler
• Baker
• Tanner

I have a list of at least twenty in front of me now; I’m sure there are many more. Keep in mind other languages or altered spellings. For example, Schmidt is the German equivalent of Smith. Faulkner has is roots in the word falconer, a keeper or trainer of hawks.

If your Bean gets really interested in this stuff, check out Good Masters! Sweet Ladies!: Voices from a Medieval Village by Laura Amy Schlitz (Turtleback, 2008). It’s a collection of monologues. Each character in it is between the ages of 10 and 15, and they all inhabit the same 13th century English village. It’s very well done. (It won a Newberry Medal.)

Maybe it’s my inner geek coming out, but there’s just something I find so interesting about the way language and culture and identity all intersect in these names. These were often family trades as well as family names. I wonder when the names began to stick regardless of a person’s avocation?

Do you have an occupational surname I can add to my list?

PBJ Polar Bear

Yes, that’s white bread. HandsomeBean couldn’t believe I came home from the grocery store with it. I’ve been wanting to do a polar bear tangramwich for a long time, and obviously only white bread will do. Let me rationalize further, to make myself feel better about the whole thing.

Once in a while, it’s okay to have a treat, and white bread is definitely a treat. So soft! So delicious! Think of it as a tantalizing vehicle for peanut butter consumption. Is it any worse than a cookie? Maybe it’s even a little better. It’s not hard to find white bread that is free of transfats and void of high fructose corn syrup these days.

BeanOne and BeanTwo haven’t had any of this bread yet. I plan to treat it like a treat, and we’ll be sticking with our usual whole-grain sandwich bread. It will be interesting to see if my Beans would opt for white bread for dessert over, say, ice cream.

The polar bear shown here, by the way, is peanut butter with orange marmalade. I like the brightness of the citrus, especially on these cold winter days.

Ugly Pie – Review

If you have an young, especially picky-eater, and simply boosting calorie intake is an immediate goal, why not try pie? While the calorie-to-nutient ratio might not be ideal for the long run, there are some pies, like pumpkin pie, that have more to offer than just sugar and fat.

BeanOne and BeanTwo like this book, Ugly Pie by Lisa Wheeler (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010). It’s the story of Ol’ Bear, who has “a hankerin’ for pie. Not just any pie. Ugly Pie.” But his pantry is not well stocked. So he follows his nose and visits his neighbors, who offer Ol’ Bear some of the delicious and beautiful pies they have made. But Ol’Bear stays true his vision and gladly accepts the only ugly things his neighbors can contribute: wrinkled raisins, sour apples, bumpy brown nuts. Pretty soon Bear has the makings of an Ugly Pie!

Wheeler’s text is folksy and fun. And the watercolor illustrations by Heather Solomon are so beautifully rendered: technically tight yet still wonderfully loose. We enjoyed following Ol’ Bear on the winding trails, meeting his friends and neighbors.

Here is our Ugly Pie, made from the recipe at the end of the book. Neither my Beans nor I had ever made a pie before this. I have always been intimidated at the prospect of attempting a beautiful flaky crust. Ugly Pie isn’t supposed to be pretty, so it was liberating in that regard. While it was easy to make and to handle, I was disappointed by the crust’s flavor (needs a bit of sugar, and less salt). You can get organic shortening at health food stores to help you feel better about the fat.

I like the Ugly Pie filling a lot. Apples. Raisins. Walnuts provide a little protein. Molasses has a lot of iron and some B vitamins. I backed off on the sugar a bit, and it was fine since we served it with vanilla ice cream. If I were to serve this pie alone, I’d stick to the print. We also had a lot of fun making Ugly Pie, but be forewarned: several bowls and utensils are involved in the hour-long preparation process.

I try to stay calm after agreeing to the use of “real” knives. Thankfully no injuries to report.

If you can convinced your little Bean that he likes pie, you might be able to pitch the idea of a savory pie next, like a ‘breakfast egg pie’ (a.k.a. quiche), or chicken pot pie. And of course there is pizza pie. Milk the power of pie for all it’s worth.

 

Tangram Christmas Tree

Jolly! Jolly! Cream cheese on toasted wheat, sprinkled with colored turbinado sugar. The crunch of the turbinado sugar is really satisfying. Just like tinting regular sugar, I added a few drops of food color to a small dish of the turbinado and mixed it until the color was evenly incorporated.