Two Fun Books

I ran across a couple of fun books and decided to share.

The first is Julia's Cats by Patricia Barey and Therese Burson.  It's a charming little book and touches on something that I had not known before.  It turns out that Julia and her family had dogs (Airedales) when she was growing up so she knew the fun of having pets.  It was not until she and Paul moved to Paris that she began to have cats as pets.

It started out as a preventive measure.  The apartment she and Paul rented had a mouse problems.  One day Jeanne, the maid, decided enough was enough and brought along a kitten.  In France most folks called their cats Minou (Pussy).  When Paul was introduced to the kitten, he discovered it was female, so they named it Minette.  This began a lifelong love affair between Julia and Minette and numerous other cats during her long life.

"Really, the more I cook, the more I like to cook.  To think it has taken me 40 yrs. to find my true creative hobby and passion (cat and husb. excepted)."  -- Julia Child

She even invented a word 'poussiequettes'. 

It's an easy read and makes me wonder why nobody seems to have bothered to mention this facet of Julia's life before.

The other book is more of a raucous read.  It's by David A. Fryxell and is called Good Old Days, My Ass.  As you can imagine from the title, it's an exceedingly irreverent look at what most people look at nostalgically.

Examples of why the 'good old days' weren't:
- A Western Union internal memo in 1876 dismissed the telephone as having 'too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communications.'
- When the Catholic church was at its peak of influence, at one point eating anything meatier than fish was forbidden on nearly half the days of the year.
- Before the pure-food laws and food inspectors, 'fillers' were often added to food.  Fillers included dirt, sand, plaster of Paris, and gypsum  One suspicious buyer in the Victorian era found his tea shipment to be almost half dirt and sand.  Henry J Heinz was a fan of food purity.  One of his early successes was horseradish sold in a clear jar to show that his product contained no turnip filler, leaves, or wood pulp (unlike many of his competitors).
- Before the trend for tanning - pale skin was considered desirable.  As far back as ancient Greece and Rome, makeup could contain chalk, animal fats, starch, and powders or pastes of white lead.  In the 6th century, women sometimes bled themselves to look more pale.  In the nineteenth century, whitening concoctions also incorporated mercury, silver nitrate, and acid.

I'm only part-way through the book but I have to agree with the author.  I much prefer the here and now.  It's a funny, albeit sometimes gross and gruesome, read.

Papillon