A break from your regularly scheduled programming.*

Today Julia Child would have been 100.

This is a salad I made recently, inspired by the Salade Nicoise recipe in her Mastering the Art of French Cooking:

This is a totally charming video of “Julia Child Remixed” by John D. Boswell, aka melodysheep, for PBS Digital Studios:

This is one of Julia Child’s mantras, as captured by artist Lisa Congdon in her 365 Days of Hand Lettering project:

This is my grandma. Today is her birthday, too:

Pretty fly and spry for 90, right?

When I was really little, we used to play “Child Julia” (get it?) in her kitchen. We’d pull out her old Joy of Cooking or the recipe cards written out in cursive by her mother, my great-grandmother Gladys. I’d crack the eggs into the brownie mix or cookie dough, facing the toaster (which served as the “camera” in our “TV recording studio”), and narrate each step. When it was time for lunch, during my phase when I hated anything interesting on my sandwiches, my grandma would put mayonnaise and iceberg lettuce between two slices of white bread, cut it into two triangles, point them toward each other on the plate, and tell me it was a butterfly.

This weekend I get some Grandma time and some brand-new niece time and some serious cooking time. Like the dough Julia Child sings about 30 seconds into that video, I am ready to roll.

*Don’t worry; 28 before 29 series will resume shortly. I’ve got lots of ground to cover before August 29th! If you’re reading this and you want to participate, please don’t be shy – comment or email to let me know.

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My photos in this post: Salad Nicoise on our Chicago patio, July 2012, 35 mm film; Grannybird, fall 2009, Georgetown, DC.