Julia Child celebrates 90th birthday with great food, wine and butter

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Chef Julia Child Rings in 90th Year with ... Butter Sat Aug 3, 9:54 PM ET By Lisa Baertlein

NAPA, Calif. (Reuters) - America's culinary grand dame Julia Child on Saturday celebrated her upcoming 90th birthday with spectacular meals, great wine and lots of butter.

"I plan to go on for some time," said Child, who was shamelessly pro-fat before being pro-fat was cool.

Child turns 90 on Aug. 15, but will celebrate for an entire month, while raising money for her favorite culinary causes.

On Thursday, 20 restaurants around the United States feted Child, who turned up for the sold-out $300-per-plate dinner in San Francisco. The next day, she headed north to the wine country and its cultural center called Copia, where she was guest of honor at a $500-per-person gala.

In a fitting tribute, the planners of Saturday's festivities at Copia threw a butter tasting into the mix.

Child is a trustee of Copia and has given the center some of her copper cookware, along with the much-coveted right to call its restaurant Julia's Kitchen.

The lanky cook, with her unmistakable voice and low-stress approach to French cuisine, said her high profile career was built on the old-fashioned ingredients of luck, timing and hard work.

"By chance, I was the right woman at the right time and I did it," said Child.

It was not, however, her first job choice. Fresh out of college in the World War II era, she signed up with the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor of the CIA ( news - web sites).

While Child is said to have had a hand in concocting a shark repellent that helped Allied forces blow up German U-boats during World War II, she said her contribution to the war effort was through more mundane tasks, such as filing.

TRAINED IN FRANCE

"I was never a spy," said Child, who eventually married a diplomat and accompanied him to France.

Child was in her 30s when she trained to cook in France. On request, she and some friends then started giving lessons. That led to a cooking school, which led to "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," the best-selling cookbook published in 1961 by Child, Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle.

Child's next act was a cooking show on Boston's upstart public television station, and the rest is history.

"She was able to transcend from the professional world to the home kitchen," said famed chef Jacques Pepin, who attended the weekend party along with food and wine celebrities including chef Alice Waters and Robert Mondavi, the iconic American vintner and founder of Copia.

"She is appreciated by a zillion people," added Pepin. Two years ago Pepin was the master of ceremonies when Child became the second American -- after slapstick comedian Jerry Lewis -- to receive France's highest honor, the Legion d'Honneur.

Child, ever gracious and good humored, said her timing has a lot to do with her standing among her peers.

"It's because I'm older," joked Child, who is tentatively slated to attend a third Copia event on Sunday. She'll spend her birthday with family in Maine and celebrations will wrap up in Washington, D.C., where three benefit dinners are scheduled for later this month.

Child, accompanied on Saturday by her 85-year-old sister Dorothy Cousins, said her secret to longevity is grandparents that lived well into their 90s.

-- Anonymous, August 04, 2002


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