one slice of strawberry tart with not so much rat in it

First off, lemme just say "grrr" as I had this post all written and forgot to save it, went off on a google hunt to correctly ID the quote i was planning to use as a title and forgot where i was in the process and checked outta Safari and lost the whole thing.
Just finished watching a Food Network tribute to Julia Child, which was overall very good. Lots of clips from her shows, reminiscences from Jacques Pepin, Sara Moulton (who worked for Child on the Julia Child & More Company series) and others. I'd have preferred less Flay and more Alton, but that's a minor quibble. My only major beef is I thought they made too much of the contrast between the horrors of pre-Julia American cooking (TV dinners, canned everything, etc) and the techniques and recipes Child advocated on her shows and in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. This plays to the horror of all food processing that no doubt grips the majority of the Food Network's target audience but is not an accurate reflection of how things were in the 60s, when Julia Child was exhaustively testing her recipes to make them work with American ingredients like canned mushrooms or frozen spinach. Or when Jacques Pepin turned down the chance to be chef of the JFK White House to be head of the kitchens at Howard Johnsons.
Some of my fave Julia Child TV memories:
an appearance on the Carson Tonight Show (this would've been late 70s or early 80s) when she fired up an acetylene torch to finish off some dish. I knew nothing of creme brulee at that point but remember being impressed that bigtime professional cooking had the possibility of including such implements of mayhem as blowtorches;
a broadcast on C-SPAN of some food-related event from DC (saw this in the late 90s on one of the first trips Sarah and I took to Asheville) and someone asking Child what she thought of the common sight in France of dogs in restaurants. Her response was that she thought it was lovely to see a well-behaved dog in a restaurant, just as it was to see a well-behaved child;
a live-performance event shown on PBS (late 90s again) with Julia Child and Graham Kerr cooking together. This was during Kerr's "low fat zealot" phase and there came a point in a recipe they were doing where some duck breast had to be ground up, and Child stressed that it was important to chill the duck before you began so that it would absorb more fat (she was adding heavy cream, I believe). To his credit, Kerr only missed a beat or two, but with a look of such abject horror on his face that you'd think Julia had suggested driving around town putting babies on spikes.