My friend Julia

I am proudly Capetonian and while it's not New York or Paris, it's not as backward as some people think.

After reading some of these questions - I cringe to think what people think of South Africa and Africa.

I don't understand anything about football or baseball, I can't buy milk by the gallon, unless I have a dairy (do people really drink that much milk? or do you have calves in your back yard), we don't have snow at Christmas, but still we celebrate it anyway and I don't know what Graham crackers are and Starbucks does not exist in my world.

We do have a Jimmy Choo shop (don't have the courage to go in yet) and MacDonald's (Yippee!).

We do have elephants and lions, but we keep them in game parks (and not roaming in the street). The sad thing is that 90% of the population will never see a wild animal (except our taxi drivers) - a few might see them (the animals) at a zoo. I am one of the privileged that have actually seen the big five (lion, elephant, leopard, cheetah and buffalo) in the wild.

But I digress, there are things that the rest of the world know well, but I missed as an average South African growing up. One such phenomena is Julia Child -until 6 months ago, I had never heard of her. Should I be blushing?

Now I can see the entire North America frowning and deep in thought - did she live under a rock? I guess when it came to TV and food I did. Television only came to this country in 1976, and then it was only for a few hours a day. Many of the programs where dubbed (into Afrikaans). I don't think a big American woman (she is over 6ft tall) teaching people to cook French food would have been a huge hit in this country in the late '70's - we had other issues!. And even if we did, I doubt I would have been allowed to watch it anyway, my parents were pretty strict about bed times and TV watching.

But things have changed, I now know who Julia Child is. I have read Julie Powell's blog (the whole year) and am now I am reading Laura Shapiro's book, Julia Child ~ A Life, a book I received (won) from Coco @ Coco Cooks.

This is an incredible little book, I'm about half way through and I can't put it down. If you are looking for a great little stocking filler for a foodie - even if they don't know Julia yet, this book is wonderful. With excerpts from letters her husband Paul wrote to his brother, things Julia wrote to her family and generally just the fly on the wall commentary on this extra-ordinary woman, you can't but help fall in love with Julia. And as you can see, I am already on a first name basis!

It is very well written, witty and charming. Foodies will love it, just because you'll find a kindred spirit in Julia. I see myself in her, as someone who wasn't born with a natural ability to cook, but had a love for eating and went out and learned how to cook - reading and learning and never stopping until she was happy with the result.

I just love the easy to read language and I quote "Shapiro's Julia Child personifies her own most famous lesson: that learning how to cook means learning how to live" - how very true!