Just like Julia

My daughter was stationed at the counter, ready to help with the strawberries.  "I know how to hold it like Julia Child!"  she said.

And indeed, she did.

We were making some strawberry-rhubarb sauce (yes, again!) and my assistant had helped herself to the largest knife available and was nimbly chopping up the strawberries.  I admit it, I was a little nervous.  She was not.  She had her fingertips tucked in, just like Julia, and was having a blast.

A while back, I'd borrowed the French Chef DVDs from our local library and we'd watched a few episodes.  I vaguely remember pointing out how Julia kept her fingers tucked away from the blade, but we spent more time laughing at her inability to find things that we, with the camera's view, could see.  She slapped the behemoth lobster, making us all laugh.  By the time she pulled a steamy, bubbling tripe dish out of the oven, we were all ready to try it, and I had a hankering to stuff some sausages of my own (far superior, she insisted, to what you find at the store).

I don't suppose old French Chef reruns are typical family entertainment, here or elsewhere, but I'm glad we watched a few episodes together.  I'd never seen any of them, and I was struck by the pure fun of the episodes.  I always assumed Julia Child was...well, you know, Julia Child.  And yet, reading her memoir a while back, I was amazed to learn she wasn't the Julia Child we know until later in her life.  No matter the time or book, one senses with overwhelming certainty that she was herself, through and through.

At dinner this evening, my son recalled two lines of a poem I'd told them months ago - uncannily appropriate:

"You got a bell man, ring it,

You got a song man, sing it."

I love cooking and spending time with my children, and I hope that whoever they may be, they'll find some pleasure in the kind of time we're spending together. Knives and all.
By Robert Creeley:
One bell wouldn’t ring loud enough
So they beat the bell to hell, Max,
with an axe, show it who’s boss,
boss. Me, I dreamt I dwelt in
someplace one could relax
but I was wrong, wrong, wrong.
You got a song man, sing it.
You got a bell man, ring it.

Knives!

Knives. You just can’t avoid them. In theory, you give a kid a knife and teach her or him how to use it. With a little luck, they learn, they listen and all is good. Of course, getting a mother to buy this is like convincing William Tell’s mother he just needed a little instruction before letting fly with his arrows.

I’ve had to swallow hard and accept that if they’re going to cook, my kids are going to chop. My daughter has her preferred knife, a small, sharp paring knife that’s easy for her to hold. It also fits her cutting board, a little non-slip rubber one her grandmother gave her. It’s a good combination for her. For both kids, I introduced them to cutting by putting them in charge of tofu. It’s an ideal first date with the knife. Easy to manage, simple to cut, no perfection required. From there, we gradually moved onto cheese, mushrooms and zucchini.

My son recently went through a phase of “it’s the eating I like, not the cooking.”

I didn’t fight him on it. But a few weeks later, we were making turkey soup and he was wandering around the kitchen, getting in the way, looking like him might be interested, but not sure how to join in.

I handed him the big knife and the carrots.

Carrots are my personal test-case of parental control. They’re hard. They’re round. The knife could slip. It’s hard for me to watch him chop without reaching in there and taking the knife away.

“I LOVE chopping!” he declared, and he was back in the groove.

Celery, turkey, carrots – they all went into the pot. Chopped.

Given the opportunity, I’ll chop the carrots (or at least get them to have one flat surface) but if a knife is his entry back into the kitchen, so be it.