REMEMBERING JULIA

The Canterbury Shaker Village is a remarkable place to revisit history. I’ve had a lifelong appreciation of Shaker architecture and furniture. In fact, we used to bicycle out to what had been a Shaker village and catch crawdads in the stream. Our denomination also had its orphanage and retirement center at another former Shaker village not far south of us, and I remember touring its remaining buildings.

But Canterbury was one of the last two villages, and one Friend speaks fondly of his conversations with the sisters. Today it is a well preserved living history museum.

So one weekday, when I was free of the office, my girlfriend and I went up for a tour. As we arrived, I noticed one of my coworkers, Ellie Ferriter, and in greeting, asked what she was doing there. “I’m here to meet Julia Child,” she replied. Yeah, sure. “No really, she’s here to tape an interview with the chef.”

One of the things the museum had done was open a restaurant with a menu drawn from the distinctive Shaker recipes, and there was reason to celebrate the cuisine.

Sure enough, when we came back from our tour, there was Ellie, interviewing Julia. Now Ellie was a large woman, but Julia was larger – in fact, towering above and around the interviewer. I hadn’t expected that, even though one profile had described her as having very long legs when she went to work in military intelligence back during World War II.

Julia had already had a long influence on me. In high school, when we finally got a TV set that included UHF, I could finally watch the “educational station” out of Cincinnati, and there, through the snowy image that barely came through, I was introduced to exotic foods like lobsters, asparagus, artichokes, baguettes and croissants, hollandaise. Well, introduced to their concepts and preparation. The actual introductions would come across the years, and what had been exotic has long since become standard.

We settled into the Creamery, the small restaurant, for lunch – my girlfriend and I along with a couple from England at one table, Julia and Ellie at the next one. We could overhear every word. Our English visitors, meanwhile, had no idea who Julia was.

Later, I noticed Julia sitting alone in a shaded spot. Wondered if she was lonely or just needed a break. I was tempted to approach and introduce myself, but refrained.

*   *   *

About that same time, I was talking with a woman who knew someone whose husband conferred with Julia several times each year, and the wife was expected to serve lunch – a daunting prospect. What do you prepare for one of the world’s most famous cooks and food writers? And then she discovered that a boiled lobster and fresh green salad were always savored.

How I’ve come to love that insight when facing a seemingly impossible assignment – a simple but elegant solution, as the Shakers demonstrated, may be the ideal.

Here’s to Julia’s 101st birthday.