Jane / Julia

I just started to read the book “Julie/Julia”, on which the very successful film with Meryl Streep is based. I have had a number of girlfriends tell me that I MUST see the film. One young friend, in her 20’s told me that I reminded her very much of Julia Child and that she’d chuckled at the similarities.
I still haven’t got around to seeing the film, but I have already learned from the book that Julia was 6’2” (I’m also tall, but not QUITE that statuesque), worked for a division of the secret service (ahem, I also aspired to that kind of work post graduation), and didn’t know a bull’s derriere from its elbow when she first started to write her book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”.
I suspect that the similarities end there. I’ve never lived in Paris (dare I say, I don’t particularly like the place) and did not teach an entire nation to cook.
What started me on this? Well, I have wandered down yet another memory trail this evening. It involves another cook book, known and beloved to anyone who was raised in Britain in the 1950s or 1960s; The Be-Ro Book. Be-Ro is a brand of flour (a bit like Edmonds in New Zealand). The book contains basics like pancakes, Victoria Sponge, Rock Buns and Melting Moments. The exotic Cream Horns and Choux pastry come later in the book, when you’ve got a few dozen cheese scones and Maids of Honour under your belt.
My Be-Ro book is the Centenary Edition that I purchased in 1980, just before heading off to University. It is dog eared, and marked with imprints left from fingers that had just rolled out marzipan or nipped together short crust pastry. As I flipped pancakes this evening, I have been thinking it would be fun to relive my childhood and student years by baking my way through the Be-Ro’s floury pages. I could impress visitors with my Marmalade slice and Madeleines, and sink the odd battleship with a steak and kidney pud.


Not quite in the league of Julie/Julia, more Jane dreaming of Delia.