Happy Birthday, Julia Child

The more I learn about Julia Child, who would have turned 94 today, the more odd specifics I find that we share: both of us are over six feet tall. We both liked hard boiled eggs, beer and mayonnaise (Hellmans for me, homemade for Julia) for lunch. We both moved to New York City after graduation to work in advertising and we'll both admit to occasionally using the toilet as a garbage disposal. We're both Americans with strong ties to Europe, partnered to artistic guys. Julia occasionally asked her husband Paul to help her take photos of her food; R* often does the same for me.

Today, under the leadership of Champaign Taste, some food bloggers are cooking up Julia's recipes to remember her today. I have to admit I've never tried one of her recipes, have only seen a few episodes of one of her later shows and I don't own her famous volumes on Mastering The Art of French Cooking (yet).

While I've never made any of her recipes, there's still a little bit of Julia in my Brooklyn kitchen.

This time last summer, R* and I we're stuck with our half renovated kitchen. Steve, our contractor would show up, work for a few hours, disappear for a week. Each night R* would come home to see what work the contractor had (or hadn't) don't that day. He patiently wrote notes on paper plates and taped them to the spots that needed work.

I like to think that Julia and her husband Paul went through something similar when setting up her kitchen in Cambridge. According to the Smithsonian, where their kitchen is now displayed, "While she mapped out the functional principles, Paul brought his sense of design to arranging the kitchen's elements."

R* and I also collaborated on designing our new kitchen. In searching the web for inspiration for paint colors and fabric for the project, I found descriptions and pictures of Julia and Paul's Cambridge kitchen. Their kitchen had a blue and green color scheme with Marimekko tablecloths.

I pulled an all-nighter last summer and spent the whole night searching for color, fabric and fixture ideas for the kitchen. I fell in love with this Marimekko Suma Blue print. While Julia and Paul might not appreciate the busy urban pattern (or would they?), the blue and greens in the fabric and glass backsplash tiles are very similar to the colors Paul picked for their cabinets.

Early on in our kitchen design process, I had dictated that there would be no blue in the new kitchen. My mom's kitchen was always decorated in blue and my pre-renovation kitchen was also blue, but that's just what we ended up with. Our Benjamin Moore Blue Ice walls might be a bit colder and more contemporary than the colors Paul picked, but I bet they would appreciate the update. I wish we had enough wall space for her famous peg board storage. Someday.