Cooking With Julia . . .

I got married the first time when I was 19 years old. I hardly ever think about that marriage now, as it did not last very long. I’m quite sad to say that I have been married three times, the first time just two months after I graduated from Vocational school. A union that hardly lasted long enough for the ink to dry on the documents. When I think back on it now, I was incredibly naive and had no idea of what being married was all about. It was a very rare thing in those days for people to live together before marriage, and indeed it was very rare for people to even sleep together before marriage…but then again, perhaps that was all a part of my naiveté and having come from a small town where everybody knew everyone else‘s business.

We set up housekeeping in a small apartment in a University town in Nova Scotia, a whole hour away from where I had grown up. It all seemed very sophisticated to me and so Mary Tyler Moorish! Our apartment was on the ground floor of an old Victorian house and so we had the veranda to use, which was right outside our door. The apartment didn’t consist of much more than two rooms with these huge dark, intricately carved, wooden folding doors dividing the one room from the other. On one side was the kitchen/dining/living area and on the other was the bedroom….plus there was a bathroom…horrors of all horrors, without a shower!

My sum total experience of cooking up until then, had been getting supper started while my mother was at work and the home economics cookery lessons I had been taught at school, and, although I had done it very well, I really was not all that worldly in my culinary experiences up to that point. My experience of home cooking was rather plain and simple, as that was the food my mother had always cooked and my father had always preferred to eat. We had never even had pizza until my later years in high school, and even then it had only been a packaged Chef Boy Ar Dee mix! My first mother in law lived on a farm and she introduced me to delicious potatoes fried in salt pork drippings and lovely and rich chicken stews with dumplings. I had bought my first set of cookery books, a Better Homes and Gardens encyclopaedia, and they were expanding my repertoire somewhat. I probably had half a dozen or so at that point, with titles such as “Stews and Casseroles” and “Chicken”…oh and a personal favourite, “Budget Meals”. Still though, plain and simple cooking….with not a foreign dish in sight.

My first husband had a friend named Geoff. They had been room-mates together their first year in college. Geoff had a girlfriend named Julia and they “lived” together in an apartment up at the top of the hill in this bustling, very exciting University town. It as all very intoxicating to me...this fact that these people were "living" together, like something from off of the big screen...a thought that had never occured to me in my limited existance. Julia came from Montreal, and she seemed so sophisticated to me, very worldly and from a place that seemed so much more appealing and interesting than anyplace in my small town experience. Julia seemed very exotic to me and sophisticated. She spoke with a very upper-class…almost clipped, British accent and it was very evident in the way she spoke and handled herself that she came from a very good family, a wealthy family, and had experienced much more of the finer things in life than I had. I was somewhat of a country bumpkin alongside of her. I expect she was “slumming” it, really…and in truth, was probably somewhat of a disappointment to her parents. The lifestyle she was living at that point, was probably her "rebellion." I revered her and her big city ways, sophisticated manner and her very urban way of doing things. When she came in to a room…she didn’t just come in…she “arrived.” She had beautiful big doe like eyes and these full lips and was tall and slender…just like a fashion model, or so I thought….

Julia liked to cook and appeared to be highly experienced in the ways of the world when it came to cooking. Often they would have us up to dinner and dinner was not plain roast beef or chicken with all the vegetables or the piece de resistance...a grilled steak…dinner was always a three course affair, with exotic sounding dishes like French Onion Soup and Chateaux Briande, with perhaps a Crème Caramel for dessert. She used expensive and unusual ingredients I had never heard of , and had a passion for food and cooking I had never experienced before, other than in my own simple musings and beginnings. I loved the way she spoke of food and recipes and listening to her experiences. She was well travelled and had eaten in France and Germany and foreign places I had only ever dreamt about, or so she said. Nothing in my very sheltered upbringing could have ever prepared me for Julia and I was both overwhelmed and smitten at the same time. She had such flair and sophistication and was so intense about everything she did. Looking back on it now, she inspired my being with the want and desire to go beyond my small town experience and live a life beyond the four walls of my narrow and constricting little world. Heck! My own mother had never even ever had a dinner party and my only experience of eating out in restaurants had been to eat at a Howard Johnson’s as a child, when moving residence (once)…or the Holiday Inn in Halifax while on my honeymoon weekend! (Room service…what a wonderful novelty!)

Dinners with Julia were mind expanding and wonderful experiences that took me beyond anything I had ever known and allowed me to believe that there was something far greater out there than anything I had dreamt of. They inspired me to look beyond all that I had experienced and to seek out new and foreign ways of doing things. They made me want to cook new and exotic dishes from lands far away…..taste things and experience things that I up to that point had only imagined, but never thought could be mine….

I am not sure what ever happened to Julia. I imagine her as the wife of some diplomat, living in a foreign country…still entertaining, still “arriving”, amidst the sound of her swishing skirts and a cloud of expensive perfume…while I…small town country girl, am living a different dream, no less exotic or less dramatic…how could I have ever known back then or ever even imagined that I would one day be living the life I am living…living a dream that “that” naive and inexperienced country girl could have never dreamt of in a million years. I, who grew up on meat and potatoes and two veg…I, have cooked for almost royalty…yes, I have…but then again…that’s another story….

This is my favourite salad. I had never heard of little gems lettuce before I came over here. I love their flavour….sweet and yet bitter at the same time…I think Julia would approve!



*Little Gems With Blue Cheese Dressing*
Serves 4
Printable Recipe

This delicious salad calls for little Gems lettuce but I have made it with sliced Cos (Romaine) lettuce with excellent results. It makes a wonderful first course! I could eat a big plate of it all on myown with nothing else, it’s that good!

2 TBS cider vinegar

2 TBS double cream

1 TBS sugar

3 ½ ounces good olive oil

2 ounces Stilton cheese or other blue cheese (I usually use a good Danish blue)

2 little gem lettuce

2 spring onions, finely sliced

Sea salt and cracked black pepper to taste

Make the dressing by whisking together the vinegar and cream, along with a little sea salt and black pepper. Whisk in the sugar and gradually whisk in the oil until emulsified. Crumble in the cheese. Taste and adjust seasoning if required.

Cut the lettuces into wedges lengthwise and arrange on a plate attractively. Drizzle over the dressing and scatter the spring onion over top.

Dinners with Julia were mind expanding and wonderful experiences that took me beyond anything I had ever known and allowed me to believe that there was something far greater out there than anything I had dreamt of. They inspired me to look beyond all that I had experienced and to seek out new and foreign ways of doing things. They made me want to cook new and exotic dishes from lands far away…..taste things and experience things that I up to that point had only imagined, but never thought could be mine….

I am not sure what ever happened to Julia. I imagine her as the wife of some diplomat, living in a foreign country…still entertaining, still “arriving”, amidst the sound of her swishing skirts and a cloud of expensive perfume…while I…small town country girl, am living a different dream, no less exotic or less dramatic…how could I have ever known back then or ever even imagined that I would one day be living the life I am living…living a dream that “that” naive and inexperienced country girl could have never dreamt of in a million years. I, who grew up on meat and potatoes and two veg…I, have cooked for almost royalty…yes, I have…but then again…that’s another story….

This is my favourite salad. I had never heard of little gems lettuce before I came over here. I love their flavour….sweet and yet bitter at the same time…I think Julia would approve!