Julia Child is my hero. Sir Edmund Hillary may have conquered Everest, but Julia brought cuisine to the United States. And I would guess that the United States was the more difficult of the two. Twenty years ago, if you'd asked your grocer for capers, you would have received nothing but a confused stare. Shaggy and Scooby had capers. Groceries did not. Now you can find satisfactory capers next to the brake fluid in better gas stations. No one could have anticipated the current commercial success and swell of interest in fine food. And it started with a warbling voice and mountains of chutzpah.

My niece came over for our Obama celebration and brought me an old copy of Julia Child's Menu Cookbook. When I sat down and looked at the many photographs, full of screen captures from her television show, I was surprised at how many of the moments and recipes I recalled—the hideous looking monkfish, the lobster soufflé, the beautiful petits vacherin. In one photo, her arm was blurred in motion, shaking a large sauté pan. I remembered her preaching the importance of having "the courage of your convictions" when flipping a potato galette. The advice still serves me well when my spatula proves too small for a flipping task (usually an omelet). A firm, quick swoop of the pan is far better than the widest spatula. And just before the critical flip, I always hear Julia Child's horn-like voice honking in my brain, "You must have the courage of your convictions." Countless omelets around the world owe their short, happy lives to "The French Chef".

Many celebrity chefs have made important contributions to the food consciousness of Americans. Graham Kerr, James Beard, Paul Prudhomme, Alice Waters, and (gulp) Emeril Lagasse all brought unique and valuable perspectives to their audiences. But few would disagree that Julia Child was the Queen Mother of Cuisine. Growing up, I remember sitting in the basement watching her wield enormous knives with confidence in spite of her fumbling ways. There was always the threat of some hilarious blunder. No one could make my Dad laugh like Julia Child. She was a delight. With unflagging humor, she taught us that fine food didn't need to be pretentious. Her recipes sounded intimidating and ultra-French—Coq au vin, Bouillabaisse, Vichyssoise—but her personality and painstaking, practical adaptations made it accessible for a nation mired in toaster waffles and TV dinners.

Despite Julia Child's influence, I still have an occasional, nostalgic craving for a Swanson Salisbury steak dinner. I doubt she would approve, though she was no snob. She adored hamburgers and beer. In fact, she loathed fussiness and elitism in the kitchen. Commenting on presentation, she once said, "It's so beautifully arranged on the plate, you know someone's fingers have been all over it."

My mom depended on unfussy, easy meals. She was a fish sticks and Chef Boyardee aficionado. Dad was more of a "whole foods" type of guy, but mom did most of the cooking. She juggled work, household, and four children; so, at the end of the day, Hamburger Helper was, I'm sure, an attractive option. My favorite flavor was beef stroganoff. I thought the name was exotic. In my mind, I heard it pronounced with the accent of the beautiful Russian spy on "Hogan's Heroes". I'd never experienced this strange combination of pasta and ground beef in a robust creamy sauce. Before Hamburger Helper, pasta took one of two forms—spaghetti with Ragu or macaroni and cheese made with Velveeta and Campbell's cream of mushroom soup. Any departure from those two recipes was revolutionary—even if it came in a box. The art of French cookery was a stranger to our home, except on PBS.

Oddly, Julia Carolyn McWilliams had no interest in food or cooking until she met future husband, Paul Child. Until Paul came along, "she just ate". In her biography Appetite for Life, by Noel Riley Fitch, I discovered a surprising backstory. She was born into a privileged home in Pasadena, California, August 15, 1912. Her accent came from New England parents, not a childhood in the UK. And Julia was a hellraiser—dropping rocks on trains, making mud pies and throwing them at cars, stealing cigars and smoking them high up in the neighbor's tree. 'Juke', as her brother liked to call her, smoked anything she could find. Her father had a musical cigarette box that proved challenging. Undaunted, she disabled the mechanism by sliding paper under the lid so she could steal cigarettes in silence. She smoked corn silk, prunes, etc. in a pipe. She finally quit smoking in exchange for a $1000 bond from her father, made payable on her twenty-first birthday. I hate to think what this incorrigible tomboy was capable of when she was going through nicotine withdrawal. The accounting of her youth reads like a "Little Rascals" episode gone terribly wrong. But the most unexpected revelation was that she was a member of America's first organized spy network, the OSS, a precursor to the C.I.A.. She served overseas in covert operations as head of Registry in Kandy, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), where she managed intelligence data. In Sisterhood of Spies, Elizabeth McIntosh described her as the "keeper of the secrets". Here, Julia met Paul Cushing Child, her future husband. He was a cartographer for the OSS and an adventuresome gourmand. Their ensuing romance spawned Julia's interest in cuisine. She learned to cook for the sake of love.

Until "The French Chef" appeared on WGBH Boston Public Television, cooking shows were considered good TV for folding laundry or darning socks, and mostly relegated to the same time slots as soap operas. People cooked, of course, but creativity and food were mutually exclusive concepts. The United States was largely a culinary wasteland. I picked up a Life magazine from the 1940s and found a recipe for hot dogs in ketchup sauce. It was a full-page ad from a ketchup company, complete with a glamorous illustration. An elegant hand with long manicured fingers held a fork, a chunk of wiener jauntily skewered on its tines, poised over a steaming pot of red sauce. It was a glossy horror second only to the suspiciously shaped McRib. With Julia Child, people began to see food in a new way. Gourmet cooking was fun and, if not always easy, certainly possible. She made you feel that a cheese soufflé was an attainable goal. Her no-nonsense approach left few, if any, questions about difficult procedures. She showed whole monkfish to an audience that thought fish only came in cans, thick breading, or in goldfish bowls. Fast-forward forty some years and McDonalds is serving hazelnut iced coffee and grilled chicken Caesar salad. Subway Sandwiches touts eleven types of bread. Eleven! Kroger carries organic avocados, rosemary focaccia, and smoked sea salt. It's inspirational. I see, in the not-so-distant future, a new age of grocers, wherein at least one full aisle is dedicated to organic, artisanal mustards. I dream of a cheese shop the size of a Super Wal-Mart, shaped like a map of France, where one can tour the cheeses region by region. And meet the cheese maker. And get a foot massage. Anything is possible. An entire TV channel is devoted to the subject of food. Emeril Lagasse, Rachel Ray, and Mario Batali are superheroes. Arugula is now common. In season, it's possible to find, salsify, and mache, and chanterelle in up-scale markets. People talk and plan and explore food with the enthusiasm of glassy-eyed Amway salesmen. It's a great time to be alive. And I purport that none of this would have happened without 'Juke' McWilliams-Child.

We're finally discovering what she knew all along: "Dining with one's friends and beloved family is certainly one of life's primal and most innocent delights, one that is both soul-satisfying and eternal." The greatest thing is that I don't think she was cut out for the life she lived. Her voice was less than ideal for television. Her hair was unremarkable except in reliability. (In forty years of appearances, she never changed her hairstyle!) Plus, she was a thick six feet two inches tall. And despite all her sturdy charm, she wasn't a traditional beauty. All this in an industry that places ridiculous value on blondes with perky breasts. She was unflappable. With disregard to tradition, she planned her adventure to her own liking. It was all in keeping with a favorite Julia Child quote: "Find something you're passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it." Full of optimism and determination, she brought her art to the masses. And though I probably watched more than one of her shows with a mouth full of Banquet chicken, my culinary world was expanded. We're all indebted to her. Even if we never make Coq au vin, at least we know it's not a brown Dodge Caravan.