The idea for this book was born in 1969 when Julia and her husband Paul in sifting through letters and photographs of their time in France (1948-54) realized that those formative and joyous years contained the elements for a book. It took thirty-six years but with the help of her grandnephew Alex, “the French book,” as she called it is a delightful reality.

The cackling laugh and self-effacing humor so familiar to those millions for whom Julia demystified French cooking jumped off the page as I devoured this book with the same enthusiasm as a civet de sanglier on a cold Parisian day.

Who could have predicted that the daughter of a staunchly Republican, Pasadena WASP businessman and a social mom who rarely ventured into kitchen would become one of the world’s foremost authorities on The Art of French Cooking?

She did it by absorbing the culture–listening, watching and questioning as in this visit to her local crémerie:
“ Madame was a whiz at judging the ripeness of cheese. If you asked for a camembert, she would cock an eyebrow and ask at what time you wished to serve it; would you be eating it for lunch today, or at dinner tonight, or would you be enjoying it a few days hence? Once you had answered, she’d open several boxes, press each cheese intently with her thumbs, take a big sniff, and–voilá–she’d hand you just the right one. I marveled at her ability to calibrate a cheese’s readiness down to the hour, and would even order cheese when I didn’t need it just to watch her in action. I never knew her to be wrong.”

MY LIFE IN FRANCE chronicles Julia’s education as a chef in Paris, her collaboration with Simone (Simca) Beck and Louisette Bertholle on the seminal MASTERING THE ART OF FRENCH COOKING and the creation of THE FRENCH CHEF cooking show that established her as a media star.

But it is also a love story as Paul’s tender observation of quotidian culinary activity so poignantly reveals: “She’s becoming an expert plucker, skinner and boner. It’s a wonderful sight to see her pulling all the guts out of a chicken through a tiny hole in it’s neck and then, from the same little orifice, loosening the skin from the flesh in order to put in an array of leopard-spots made of truffles. Or to watch her remove all the bones from a goose without tearing the skin. And you ought to see {her} skin a wild hare–you’d swear she’d just been “Comin Round the Mountain with Her Bowie Knife in Hand.”

My Life in France feels like a home-cooked meal with Julia in her kitchen.