Julia. Anyone into food and cooking knows immediately who you’re talking about. For the uninitiated: Julia Childs – the quintessential cook who, arguably, started the cooking revolution, teachingJulia & Julia movie set Americans how to cook really good [French] food. While many families had moved from farmhouse meals to eating canned and processed foods, Julia was reviving basic cooking techniques, fresh vegetables and fruits and adding a rustic French flair that appealed to American tastes.
Just by being herself (when exactly did reality TV really start?) Julia inspired many Moms to try something new for dinner or to throw a dinner party with something considered very different, like Coq au Vin or Beef Bourguignon.
She probably never dreamed that her inspiration, along with others, would lead to multiple television channels dedicated to cooking and food, blogs, magazines, foodspotting and who-knows-what-else is around the corner! We might still be eating canned peas and spam (the original, not the virtual kind) if it weren’t for her!
Julia’s own kitchen was donated to the Smithsonian and that was used to re-create the room for the movie Julia & Julia in 2009, shown above. Of course, Julia Child remains a beloved figure in cooking – not less for being spoofed by Dan Ackroyd in the 1978 classic skit from Saturday Night Live. Nobody does it better!