By Jo Cooper
A trip downtown to the the National Museum of American History to view Julia Child’s kitchen proved to be a delightful outing for the culinary devotees in my family on New Year’s weekend.
If you have seen the film Julie & Julia then you already know that the Smithsonian Museum received the original kitchen and all its contents from her Cambridge, MA house from the grand Julia as a gift in 2001, when she was moving back home to her native California. Stuffed with Julia memorabilia along with the actual kitchen (yes, the real kitchen, not a model) a visit is such fun!
I especially savored her bookshelf, which ranges far beyond the expected cookbooks to field guides, world history, “How to Clean Everything”, and Bulfinche’s Mythology. I can picture her leaping up from dinner conversation to consult one of these for a salient point, can’t you?
Click here for a link to the exhibit website, which includes an item-by-item tour of some of her fascinating batterie de cuisine.
Bon appétit and bonne année!
