Happy Birthday, and thank you.

Julia Child was born on this day in 1912.  She died two days shy of her 82nd birthday.  I watched "The French Chef" on PBS as a child (in reruns - I'm not old enough to have watched the original releases) and from her I learned to make an omelet, and a soufflé, and to not fear cooking difficult things.

(I also learned that from my mother, who cooking things like moussaka and dolmades, and chicken cacciatore, and other dishes that were probably considered rather exotic when she first tried them.  I didn't realize until much, much later (college? grad school?) that most middle-class USA people didn't eat such things at home, unless they came from that ethnicity, which we very much didn't.  One of the first things I remember cooking when my brother and I were left home to fend for ourselves was miniature hamburgers and cheeseburgers on biscuit buns we made ourselves; another meal was a stir-fry of beef and cucumbers.  We never thought that we couldn't figure out a recipe.)

Since those childhood, faintly-remembered viewings of "The French Chef" I've obtained and read through the cookbook from the show, and "Mastering the Art of French Cooking", although I haven't done as some have (especially during the pandemic lockdowns) and worked my way through them.  But I do plan to continue trying to learn from Julia Child (and her friend Jacques Pépin) and have taken this as a mantra:

That's very much how I cook today, especially during CSA season, such as now.

In other news, today is Granny Square Day.  I've done a few in my time:

Not a traditional granny square,

but for obvious reasons I'm proud of it.

This was my contribution to a scarf for a KnitTalk member
who was fighting cancer.  We were sending a tangible
reminder that we were with her, and I heard she wore it often.

A baby gift, using a more traditional granny square.