Child and David

I really want to be a cook. There, I have said it. I have a pretty successful career in government and politics, and time was when I would hoover up the current affairs analysis in the Guardian, and the Times and the FT and the Economist. Now I find myself turning to the food articles, and surfing cookery blogs. It was Julia Child's 100th birthday this week, prompting a tsunami of writing in this post Olympics, pre-politics summer lull.

It is often said that she brought to the States what Elizabeth David bought to the UK; a reminder of good food, well cooked with love and enthusiasm, instead as seen as the drudge of a housewife, who would rather blitz ready meals and use labour saving devices. It is interesting that they should both have coincided with the rise of the women's movements on both sides of the Atlantic. Was it a reaction? Or part of the same thing? I would like to think the latter. That women given more time and more choice rediscovered the joy of producing beautiful, sumptuous food. But perhaps it is only like Marie Antoinette and her washed and beribboned sheep. It is only when removed from the real grind of peasant life,  housework and toil that middle-class urban women rediscovered a version that they could enjoy.