Tuesday, August 11, 2009

What would be an appropriate epitaph for Julia Child?

I've just finished reading Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, about the year the author, Julie Powell, cooked every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking and blogged about it all. I did find the book funny, although even Julia Child in person couldn't get me cooking some of these things (and perhaps Julia Child wasn't impressed with Julie's project anyway).

After Child's death, Julie Powell at first envisioned Julia with her husband Paul again toasting "whatever comes next" but at the end of Julie and Julia, she
says she thinks Julia's in a grave with a "cool headstone" and she gives her readers a guess what the epitaph is. Well, I immediately thought 'The End' since Julia Child was an author. No, that's not right.

According to Find A Grave, Julia Child's body wasn't buried. Her ashes were scattered instead, perhaps in Santa Barbara and Maine, USA. I see there are over 700 messages there on the Find A Grave memorial pages for Julia Child. That's quite a memorial in itself.

Now what would be a good epitaph though?
Maybe this - often attributed to Julia Child - "Life itself is the proper binge."

Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (New York: Back Bay Books, 2005).

1 comment:

Thomas MacEntee said...

Well my snarky side comes out when talking of epitaphs. For Julia Child, how about:

"Well folks, the timer just went off . . ."

"Stick a fork in me. I'm done!"