In the beginning....

I heard Julia Childs long before I ever saw her. At age 5, after a particularly grueling battle between my Star Wars figures and my best friend’s G.I. Joes (I don’t need to tell you who won that battle), I stumbled into the kitchen, high on a cocktail of Juicy Juice and freeze pops, thinking that one a pigeon from out in the yard had somehow learned to speak English, and was now giving cooking lessons to my mother.

Now, my parents are more or less pacifists, owing mostly to the fact that they were never around, and had to punish my misdeeds by proxy. So now that I think about it, they weren’t pacifists at all…instead they had installed our nanny as a puppet dictator, so they could freely wash the juvenile blood from their hands. And they would do this with all the tiny, “fun-size” bath amenities that they collected with startling regularity on their constant tours around the world. We never spent an errant dime on soap, which was probably what allowed the financial freedom for my parents to roam, happily ignoring their children, and more often than not, leaving them in the care of housekeepers that ranged from excommunicated Peruvian nuns to biker couples with plastic pink flamingoes in their living room.

Side note: the two times that I had my mouth actually washed out with soap, a regulation-sized bar of Ivory would magically appear. My mother said it was the best tasting brand, “from experience,” but I think it just adds to their sadistic parental tendencies. We’d shower with hotel bars of soap the size of your thumb, but somehow they had stocked up on just enough of the big bars to break out for these “special occasions.”

Side note part deux: Both reasons for my oral cleansing, care of the Ivory Soap Company, were for using foul language; the first time at my sister after she ruined a seemingly indestructable pillow fort in the living room; the second, when I saw my mother try to substitute concentrated lemon juice for fresh while making a hollandaise. In still feel justified in both instances.

Needless to say, amidst the barren wasteland that was much of my childhood diet, dotted periodically, if at all, with frozen fish sticks and mac & cheese, I never saw my mom raise a hand in hunger. She didn’t cook. Well, maybe she did, but it was done under cover of darkness, so my sister and I wouldn’t be privy to her mortal skills.

So with 10% real juice coursing through my veins, I walk into the kitchen and see my mom struggling with the carcass of a small animal. Praying it was my sister, I ran to help, and was only slightly discouraged to find out that it was a baby lamb. With disappointment fading only slightly, I started to lock in on what the talking bird was saying. On the tv, an NFL linebacker in drag was systematically taking apart a whole lamb, and the I could see the bloodlust of hacking up good food start to appear in my mother’s eyes.

Is there anything so great as being given a cleaver larger than your head, and, at the age of five, with tendons flapping like broken rubber bands and bone fragments flying everywhere, hack away at a back end of lamb? By the time I reached college, I was able to take the head clean off a pig in under ten seconds flat. Ok, that may be a bit disturbing, but I’ve always respected every animal I’ve broken down, and besides, coming from a very military-heavy family, it was appreciated, nay, encouraged. Alright, that may be a little dark, you’re right.

In any case, my first exposure to Julia Childs was also my first exposure to bladed instruments. When I was finally able to harness the power of fire, I would be all set. Of course, I would have to wait several decades, but I could be patient. After all, I didn’t want to blow my culinary load at the age of 5. Hell, I didn’t even know enough about “loads” to make such a metaphor at age 5.