I’m discovering the wonderful recipes of Julia Child. After 30+ years of listening to the low-fat nonsense, I’m taking my healthy eating to a new level of awesomeness! Image source: www.foodrenegade.com.

As I continue my quest for that ketosis sweet spot, my greatest challenge is getting enough healthy fat each day. I’m aiming for 75% of my daily calories to come from fat. With my low carb way of eating, I average 65% fat each day (for the uninitiated, that doesn’t mean I’m deep-frying foods!). Scanning lots of low-carb, high fat (LCHF) sites, one name kept popping up over and over:

Julia Child.

“With Enough Butter, Anything Is Good.”
— Julia Child

Trying to put together weekly menus higher in fat isn’t that simple. Oh sure, I could simply serve a rib-eye steak with a tablespoon of butter on top (don’t get me wrong, I do!), but I really want to learn how to cook wonderfully rich, real food.

So I have to admit I got a little annoyed when I didn’t think to turn to Child’s cookbook that made her a household name.

Why annoyed? Bombarded with messages about the virtues of high-carb foods and the evils of saturated fat since junior high, I never associated her cooking with healthy eating.  On occasion, I’d catch my dad watching reruns of her show, The French Chef, and when I saw all the butter she used in a dish, I’d say “Gross!” My dad’s response: “You don’t know what’s good for you.”

Growing up, butter, lard, tallow, and full-fat cream were synonymous with bad food. So I stayed away from her recipes.

Clearly the horribly wrong idea I had about her cooking remained buried deep in the back of my mind up until this weekend. Myths are hard to bust.

Even as her name kept appearing on LCHF recipe sites, my first thought was “Eww!” Then 30 seconds later a light bulb went off and I screeched “Of course!” Much of French cooking is geared perfectly for high fat, low-carb eating.

So this weekend I headed over to my local bookstore and picked up a copy of Mastering The Art of French Cooking.

“The only real stumbling block is fear of failure.
In cooking you’ve got to have a what-the-hell attitude.”
– Julia Child

There’s so much more to cooking than turning on the stove. The passion to learn is there…but so is the fear of failure. When I see a seemingly complicated or technical recipe or if I want to just play in the kitchen, fear takes hold and I just fix something I’ve cooked a million times before. I’m so afraid of screwing up.

Yeah…so what?

When it comes to weight loss, one of my constant refrains is, “If I wait for perfection, I’ll never lose weight.” One reason for my success after years of failed attempts to lose weight is I stopped striving for perfection. When I screw up, I try to do better next time.

Yet here I am letting my fear of not getting it right stop me from doing something I love. Well that comes to an end now. I have a whole chicken to cook today. Julia’s Poulet Roti recipe will do just fine, thank you very much. I’m sure I’ll screw it up, but I’ll just do better next time.