Bookworm: My Life in France

I love reading, cooking and traveling so when my friend A handed me a copy of Julia Child's autobiography "My life in France", I should have known I was about to fall in love. Julia was a woman who seemed to be before her time. She was independent and forward thinking and liberal and yet warm and diplomatic and caring. The ease with which she intertwines stories of food with the open road and with settling in a new place was page turning for this foodie traveler.

I related to her lament about the lose of relationship to food in our modern age. I am lucky enough to have a bakery, butcher, cheese shop and sweet shop all within meters of our flat but even with that luxury I tend to end up shopping in the big super markets for convenience.

On a political note, it was also a sober reminder reading of her husband's experiences during the McCarthy trails that the ebb and tide of right and left cycle and circle. A country drifts one way and then the other and there is never really a golden age. It's just that collective memory is colored rose by nostalgia.

There are some fabulous quotes about adjusting to life abroad. For those who have taken that plunge, they will find a kindred spirit in Ms Julia Child.

"It's easy to get the feeling that you know the language just because when you order a beer they don't bring you oysters," Paul Child, husband of Julia Child, on his French language knowledge

"Travel, we agreed, was a litmus test: if we could make the best of the chaos and serendipity that we'd inevitably meet in transit, then we'd surely be able to sail through the rest of life together just fine." -Julia Child, on her memory of moving to Paris with husband Paul