Book, 2005 by Julie PowellWith the humor of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, Julie Powell recounts how she conquered every recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and saved her soul.
Julie Powell is 30-years-old, living in a rundown apartment in Queens and working at a soul-sucking secretarial job that's going nowhere. She needs something to break the monotony of her life, and she invents a deranged assignment. She will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and she will cook all 524 recipes. In the span of one year. At first she thinks it will be easy. But as she moves from the simple Potage Parmentier (potato soup) into the more complicated realm of aspics and crepes, she realizes there's more to Mastering the Art of French Cooking than meets the eye. With Julia's stern warble always in her ear, Julie haunts the local butcher, buying kidneys and sweetbreads. She sends her husband on late-night runs for yet more butter and rarely serves dinner before midnight. She discovers how to mold the perfect Orange Bavarian, the trick to extracting marrow from bone, and the intense pleasure of eating liver. And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. She has eclipsed her life's ordinariness through spectacular humor, hysteria, and perseverance.
Movie, 2009 directed by Nora EphronFeatures: Amy Adams, Meryl Streep
Tagline: Passion. Ambition. Butter. Do You Have What It Takes?
Awards: Meryl Streep was nominated for the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role. She won the Golden Globe but Sandra Bullock beat her out for the Oscar for The Blindside.
Julie Powell's blog during the year of cooking and beyond was called the Julie/Julia Project. Have you visited it?
Have you read the book or seen the movie?
We just got a new TV package that includes movie channels (yay!) and I was up sick last night and decided to watch Julie & Julia. I was very surprised by how much I liked it and would definitely recommend seeing the movie. I always enjoy books and movies with more than one story line. I'm even kind of tempted to try cooking some of the recipes from Julia Child's book (or make Brad do it!).
