Julia Child - By Staff Member "Silas Merriweather"

While Julia Child was undoubtedly knowledgeable and quite charming neither of those facts is what endeared her to me. What I found so lovable about that mistress of French cooking was that she screwed up. She didn't try to hide it. She didn't pretend to be perfect like so many of those cooking shows today. Julia accepted failure as a part of life in a kitchen. And she handled it with aplomb.

In one of my favorite moments a wooden spoon escaped from her hand, went skidding across the island and landed with a rattle on the floor. "Well," she said, picking up another wooden spoon, "that's why it's always good to have two."

If you are going to cook well you are going to screw up. Not that any of our mistakes ever make their way to your party. No, our mistakes are what we refer to as staff lunch.

I must confess that I am prone to a certain number of, um, "mistakes." Oh, nothing like the over salted polenta incident of 2006. But I have had my fair share.

The latest involved our caramel pot de cremes. It was the end of the prep day. Tiny caramel pot de cremes was my final task. They take a while to bake so I should have started them earlier. There are times in the kitchen your eye simply skips over a prep task on the list. No one knows why this happens.

Anyway, I made the pot de cremes, helped everyone clean up, and then watched everyone go home as I stayed to wait for the pot de cremes to finish. And I waited, and I waited... and waited. The way to check a pot de creme for doneness is to give the ramekin a little shake. You want the edges solid but for the center to have a slight wiggle, like Marilyn Monroe in Some Like It Hot. Well my pot de cremes were all wiggle, from the center to the edges.

One hour went by, then two hours. It was now ridiculous. My pot de cremes would not set. I called Hugh whose sage advice was, "Maybe you did something wrong." After the third hour I took my wiggly pots out of the oven and went home. A mystery left unsolved.

That is until I awoke at 4 in the morning with the sudden realization - I forgot to put the eggs in.

I convey this story of my humiliation in the spirit of Julia Child. May it bring you solace when you too screw up.