Read Julia's Child (9781101559741) for Free Online

Luke and I got to talk. We liked to put our feet on the coffee table and have a drink—alone. I had feared that having a twenty-year-old Scottish lassie in the room would torpedo our casual intimacy.
    I shouldn’t have worried. Within weeks, Bonnie had discovered the Williamsburg music scene. Most evenings, as the rest of us sat down to dinner, Bonnie would kiss the boys and then vanish on to the subway.
    I resumed wiping down the counters. “So you caved in and read him a story after all?”
    â€œOf course,” he admitted. “And his eyes were rolling back in his head by the time Sam-I-Am ate the green eggs. Then he went down without a peep.”
    â€œNice work, honey,” I said as I sprayed hot sudsy water all over the pasty substance in the mixing bowl. “But Sam-I-Am is the other guy. The pusher.”
    â€œOh. Whatever.”
    I shut the water off suddenly. “You know, that should never have worked,” I said forcefully.
    â€œWhat shouldn’t?”
    â€œ Green Eggs and Ham ! What a loopy, drug-induced story. It’s genius, of course, but just think of the marketing pitch: ‘Buy my book about a lumpy guy trying to feed unnaturally colored food to another weirdo, in rhyme!’ I mean—really! ‘Could you, would you, with a goat?’ Oh—and it’s for children .” I scrubbed the bowl rather more violently than was necessary. “Gosh! Let’s go ahead and print ten million copies! I’ll bet even Whole Foods carries it.”
    Luke gave me a worried frown. “Honey, I think you need to unwind. How about we go to Vermont for the weekend?”
    I sighed. “That sounds like a great idea.”
    To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Re: Mac and cheese for River
    Â 
    Dear Nadja,
    Thanks so much for the opportunity to speak yesterday. It was a pleasure to discuss some of my favorite topics with the lovely mothers of Park Slope.
    Here’s the recipe I promised you. It is a real time-saver—you don’t boil the pasta first! You simply bake the uncooked pasta in the milk and cheeses, and it works like a charm. The milk provides the liquid and the protein and calcium, which I think is pretty neat. One thing, though—it’s better if you don’t do the math on how many fat grams are in here. Because you’re going to want to eat this yourself, and because that way lies the abyss.
    Enjoy,
Julia
    Â 
    Â 
    Mac and Cheese with Plenty of Dairy
    Cooking Time: 70 minutes (10 minutes prep, 60 minutes unattended—giddyap!)
    Â 
    Ingredients
    1 cup organic cottage cheese (not low fat)
2 cups organic whole milk
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
Pinch Hungarian paprika
16 ounces shredded cheddar cheese (about four cups)
8 ounces dry pasta
    Instructions
    Â 
    Preheat your oven to 375°F. Coat the inside of a 2-quart covered casserole with cooking spray.
    In a blender, combine cottage cheese, milk, mustard, and paprika. Allow your toddler to blend until smooth. (I’ve never met a toddler who didn’t have five minutes to operate heavy machinery.)
    In a large mixing bowl, combine dry pasta and the shredded cheese. Pour the milk mixture over it. Allow your toddler to stir the mixture gently.
    Clean up from the toddler’s stirring.
    Pour the mixture into the casserole. Cover and bake for 30 minutes.
    Uncover and bake for another 20 or 30 minutes until brown and bubbly.
    Cool for 15 minutes and enjoy!

Chapter 3
    M y mother was a harried, indifferent cook who looked upon dinnertime as a chore. We ate plenty of tuna casserole at our house—the sort that’s made from cream of mushroom soup. And vegetables always came out of a can.
    But my father’s aunt Odile was French. She taught me to clean leeks when I was four, standing at her sink on a wooden crate. She taught me to make polenta at five. I stirred the coq au vin when I was six. We made duck à l’orange when I was seven.