James Glassman has posted a fitting tribute to Julia Child on Tech Central Station.

His reminder about Child's attitude toward eating and enjoyment strikes me as especially timely, given the seemingly unending admonitions about food and eating that we get these days (frequently accompanied by calls for greater regulation of the food industry, to protect us from the choices we might otherwise be free to make for ourselves).

My worry is that Julia's main message — that eating should be a pleasure, not an exercise in chemical analysis and guilt — is being lost in a country that has become obsessed with carb-counting and, more and more, dominated by the Food Police, the self-styled gang of thin-lipped pseudo-scientists and their pals in the press and the Nanny State, who frighten Americans out of eating anything that gives them joy, from egg rolls to béchamel sauce to omelettes oozing with cheese.

Julia had only disdain for such creepsters. She often talked of her love of McDonald's French fries — though she had second thoughts when the company replaced lard (that is, animal fat, a mainstay of cooking both in France) with healthier vegetable oil. There's nothing better than French fries — not to mention oysters in corn meal — fried in lard, which is still the practice at Casamento's on Magazine Street in New Orleans.

...which reminds me: I've got to get myself to New Orleans one of these days.

If, however, I had to sum up Julia's cooking style in a single word, it would be "butter." Loads of it.

Oh yeah!

Having had the good fortune of being raised on mom's and Tante Marie's French cooking, I can vouch for the indispensability of a generous measure of butter to the finest cuisine. Accept no subsitutes.

One of my favorite dishes from "Mastering" (vol. 2) is Pommes Anna, which, for six people, includes only two ingredients: three pounds of thinly sliced boiling potatoes and a half-pound of unsalted butter.

Now there's a recipe I've got to try!

On the subject of how such eating might affect one's health, Glassman notes of Child:

She wasn't fat, and she lived a long time (her husband was also a nonagenarian). Her philosophy was that healthy eating is rooted, not in denial, but in pleasure, moderation and exercise. Like the French cooks and eaters she emulated, she wouldn't dream of passing up dessert (plus the cheese course). Fretting about what you put in your mouth shortens your tenure on earth.

Amen.

I can't help but think that moderation is a path we seem to have forgotten about. (How else could "Super Size Me" documentarian Morgan Spurlock garner accolades for a film that sets out to prove the seemingly obvious: that eating fast food for every meal, to the exclusion of all else, probably isn't such a good health idea?)

There's even a gem of reassurance in Child's story for those of us who fret too much not just about eating, but about achieving enough early in life:

Julia Child was a late bloomer. She wrote "Mastering" at age 48 and made her TV debut [at] 50. Her last book, "Julia and Jacques: Cooking at Home," written with Jacques Pepin, appeared in 1999.

Glassman leaves us with a final thought, and a recipe:

Julia Child's great accomplishment was making millions of people happier. What could be a better epitaph? But she showed them that nothing good comes easy and that pleasure is the reward for hard work. Prospective cooks had to be serious about learning the rules before they could improvise, and they had to practice. She showed her readers not merely how to bone a leg of lamb or make a perfect bouillabaisse but also, in her last book, how to fashion a great American hamburger.

Start with a thin (one-fourth-inch) patty of good ground beef, cook it quickly on both sides over high heat, pouring on a little salt. Meanwhile, toast the bun and spread it with butter. Then add thin slices of red onion, ketchup, a little pickle relish, a slice of cheese, two pieces of bacon and a couple of tomato slices, then a dab of mayonnaise. Yum!

Thank you, Julia — not least of all for reminding us to enjoy ourselves while we're here.

Otherwise, what's the point?