Julia Child

Was a collector of rubber stamps.

On August 19, 2002, her kitchen was opened as an exhibit at the National Museum of American History in Washington, DC. The exhibit ran until February 2004 and became part of the museums permanent collection.

During WWII, she held a job with the Office of Strategic Services, a forerunner of the CIA. She started as a clerk and rose to the rank of registrar. Her position put her in control of top secret and other highly sensitive documents.

During World War II, she was part of the team of people who invented shark repellent. Julias shark repellent is still used by the U.S. Navy.

She served as the inspiration in the creation of the Muppet, "the Swedish Chef".

When spoofed by Dan Aykroyd on "Saturday Night Live" , she thought it was hilarious and kept a copy of the skit for herself.

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, Volume 170, pages 56-60. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2008.

Biography in: "The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives". Volume 7, 2003-2005, pages 80-83. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2007.

She graduated from Smith College.

She is survived by her sister, Dorothy McWilliams Cousins, of Mill Valley, California and several nieces and nephews.

She was awarded the French Legion of Honor in 2000 for her services to French culinary arts and the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom 2003.

She was an active member of the International Association of Culinary Professionals.

She helped establish the American Institute of Wine and Food, and later, Copia: The American Center for Wine, Food, and the Arts.

She was the first woman inducted into the Culinary Institute of Americas Hall of Fame.

Mentor/friend of Sara Moulton.

She did not learn to cook until she was thirty-two years old.

(July 2001) Announced that she plans to move into a Montecito, California retirement home in November 2001. Is donating her Cambridge, Massachusetts home to her alma mater, Smith College.

Grand aunt of author/journalist Alex Prudhomme.

Pictured on one of a set of five nondemominated USA commemorative postage stamps honoring Celebrity Chefs, issued 26 September 2014. Price on day of issue was 49. Others honored in this set are James Beard , Joyce Chen, Edna Lewis, and Felipe Rojas-Lombardi.

Was portrayed by Meryl Streep in the film "Julie and Julia".

A cookbook is only as good as its poorest recipe.

Life itself is the proper binge.

In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for our hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics. I am convinced that in your zeal to fight against our enemies, you, too, have forgotten what you are fighting for.

" or "Poor little me. . .

" or "This may taste awful. . .

Just like becoming an expert in wine–you learn by drinking it, the best you can afford–you learn about great food by finding the best there is, whether simply or luxurious. The you savor it, analyze it, and discuss it with your companions, and you compare it with other experiences.

But my favorite remained the basic roast chicken. What a deceptively simple dish. I had come to believe that one can judge the quality of a cook by his or her roast chicken. Above all, it should taste like chicken: it should be so good that even a perfectly simple, buttery roast should be a delight.

If variety is the spice of life, then my life must be one of the spiciest you ever heard of. A curry of a life. -Paul Child,. . . The more I learned the more I realized how very much one has to know before one is in-the-know at all.

In France, Paul explained, good cooking was regarded as a combination of national sport and high art, and wine was always served with lunch and dinner. "The trick is moderation," he said.

. . . the average Frenchman would shrug, as if to say: "These notions of yours are all very fascinating, no doubt, but we make a decent living. Nobody has ulcers. I have time to work on my monograph about Balzac, and my foreman enjoys his espaliered pear trees. I think as a matter of fact, we do not wish to make the changes that you suggest.

Good french cooking cannot be produced by a zombie cook.

Drama is very important in life: You have to come on with a bang. You never want to go out with a whimper.

Tears mess up your makeup.

Moderation. Small helpings. Sample a little bit of everything. These are the secrets of happiness and good health.

Fat gives things flavor.

You must have discipline to have fun.

I think one of the terrible things today is that people have this deathly fear of food: fear of eggs, say, or fear of butter. Most doctors feel that you can have a little bit of everything.

As we say in the American Institute of Wine and Food, small helpings, no seconds. A little bit of everything. No snacking. And have a good time.

I was 32 when I started cooking; up until then, I just ate.

Because of media hype and woefully inadequate information, too many people nowadays are deathly afraid of their food, and what does fear of food do to the digestive system? I am sure that an unhappy or suspicious stomach, constricted and uneasy with worry, cannot digest properly.

In France, cooking is a serious art form and a national sport.

Animals that we eat are raised for food in the most economical way possible, and the serious food producers do it in the most humane way possible. I think anyone who is a carnivore needs to understand that meat does not originally come in these neat little packages.

In the 1970s we got nouvelle cuisine, in which a lot of the old rules were kicked over. And then we had cuisine minceur, which people mixed up with nouvelle cuisine but was actually fancy diet cooking.

What a marvelous resource soup is for the thrifty cook - it solves the ham-bone and lamb-bone problems, the everlasting Thanksgiving turkey, the extra vegetables.