The Way to Cook instructional videos

[The Hersch]

I've just been watching the Julia Child instructional videos originally released on videocassette in either 1985 or 1989 under the title "The Way to Cook". I didn't know they existed until a few weeks ago, and it's been really nice having a whole new helping of Julia. (I've never tried to conceal my Julia Child groupiedom.) Although these videos share a title with one of Julia's cookbooks, there is no very clear tie-in between them. I didn't acquire the book until the late 1990s, and there was certainly no tie-in then. Apparently they were finally reissued on DVD in the wake of the Julie & Julia movie. They come with a very bare-bones recipe booklet, which Julia on-screen refers to as "the book", not meaning the actual book. The mid-1980s were very productive for her. The cookbook "The Way to Cook" is probably her most thoroughly useful book, and during the same period she had a several-page spread in Parade magazine every week for I don't remember how long, but it was the last time Parade was worth opening. She also did her only really embarrassing television series during these years, "Dinner at Julia's". If you've never seen it, there's no way I can convey how awful it was, but I'd love to see it again. Why aren't all of her programs available on DVD? Of the material before the 1990s, there's a very small subset of "The French Chef" available, and that's it. "The Way to Cook" was not produced for television, and as far as I know was never shown on television.

Anyway, "The Way to Cook" instructional videos are very much worth seeing, and Amazon will sell them (six hour-long programs on two DVDs) to you for $15. Netflix doesn't have them.