paragraph: Grande dame of cooking still going strong at 90: Julia Child celebrates in San Francisco. How does it feel to turn 90 and have attained the status of an icon, a living legend? "It feels just like it felt before," Julia Child says with the throaty laugh familiar to millions who cut their culinary teeth on her "French Chef" television series. The show, along with her seminal book, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" (1961), revolutionized the way America cooks and eats. While making light of the difference a day -- or another decade -- makes, Child intends to enjoy her birthday thoroughly. First, there will be all the public observances, including a sold-out dinner Thursday at San Francisco's tony Fifth Floor restaurant, which -- like dinners that night at 19 other venues across the country -- will benefit the scholarship fund of the International Association of Culinary Professionals (which Child co-founded). Friday to Sunday, the action moves to Napa, with both members-only and public events at COPIA: The American Center for Wine, Food and the Arts, of which she is an honorary board member. Aug. 15, her actual birthday, will see her in Maine at an annual gathering of nieces, nephews, their offspring and friends, who for many years have rolled a joined birthday celebration for several members of the group into a jolly reunion. The schedule Child and her assistant of 14 years, former pastry chef Stephanie Hersh, have laid out is not exactly a senior-citizen routine, even though Child has always been candid about her age and realistic in assessing her own capabilities. When the Pasadena native moved back to California from her long-time home in the Boston area last year, she also made the move from a condominium she and her late husband, Paul, had purchased many years ago to a progressive retirement home. She is in the most active of the four levels available, but should the need arise, she can move on to assisted living facilities within the same complex. 
answer: Julia Child celebrates in San Francisco