Having watched (most of, we will finish it tonight) Julie & Julia last night I have been thinking, lots, about Somerville/Cambridge, circa 1975. Here we are, Allen and I, around that time...



... and thinking about riding my bike everywhere, before we had a car, or walking, to Harvard Square, the unbelievably decadent hot fudge sundaes we would get at Bailey's Ice Cream with the fudge dripping over the sides of the stemmed metal bowl to the metal plate below, mocha chip ice cream drenched in fudge and whipped cream that didn't keep me up all night from the caffein and lactose, before I was so sensitive to those elements. Allen met Julia Child around that time. Bumping into Carla Pollack at the Harvard Coop where she had just purchased Mastering the Art of French Cooking, she asked him to accompany her to Julia's house so she could get her autograph. Julia was a fixture in our lives - we watched her on TV, saw her VW Bug toodling around town with its soup ladle antenna, passing Savenor's butcher shop, where Julia bought her meat, and going in once, as a pilgrimage. Carla and Allen arrived at her house at lunchtime. She invited them in, and what Allen remembers is a wall of copper pots. She and Paul were having lunch. She signed Carla's book and they were off. Very generous of her, not to be bothered by autograph seekers. Seeker, I guess; Allen did not get her signature on anything, Claire was very disappointed to learn last night, while watching the movie and skimming through OUR two-volume set of Julia's book, quite disgusted by some goose liver pate or other such meat innard dish. Claire had been uninterested in watching the movie with us the night before so we watched something else of her choosing and grudgingly sat and watched with us at dinner last night. "Who IS she", she moaned, utterly bored at the beginning. As I said, by the end of the evening she was under Julia's spell, with Meryl Streep magically and brilliantly embodying The French Chef. Hmmmmmm, what to cook tonight....