Foreword Recently, there was a lovely movie about a young writer/blogger who set out to learn the art of French cooking. She set out to cook each of the recipes in Julia Child's famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year. In the end, this blogger not only taught herself the intricacies of French cuisine, but she learned important insights about French culture and a whole new way of thinking, as well. This movie, which was based on a bestselling novel, revived interest in Julia Child and led to a reprinting of Child's most famous book. It also led my wife to pull out her treasured copy of Child's work and order a new copy, because her book was almost unusable--it had been literally "loved to death". On page after page, there were stains: stains of gravy, stains of wine and stains of butter. For contrast, there were bits of flour and pinches of salt, as well--and the pages that contained her favorite recipes were torn, and in many cases, held together with faded Scotch tape.