In honor of Julia Child’s 100th birthday this week, I read her 2004 New York Times obituary. From it, a lesson carried on today by a lot of good journalists and, in this field, America’s Test Kitchen:

Mrs. Child was always a star, never a spokeswoman. She prided herself on not granting endorsements because she was devoted to public television, and she was not afraid to mock corporate contributors to her advertising-free programs. She once demonstrated how to break off a part on a Cuisinart food processor to make it less cumbersome to use even as the manufacturer’s representatives sat in the audience.

Happy birthday, Ms. Child.

(Photo licensed Creative Commons and scanned by Flickr’s Krista76.)