A few months ago I read Julia Child's My Life in France. Julia found her bliss in her late 30s. She enrolled in the Cordon Bleu school of cooking while living in Paris with her diplomat husband. This started her on the road to writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking, which led to a television cooking career.
This week I finished reading Julie & Julia by Julie Powell. This book tells how an almost 30, government secretary found her bliss. Julie set herself the task of making every recipe found in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. That's 524 recipes in 365 days.
To me, that's a formidable task. I can take experimenting in the kitchen in small doses only. After I try a new recipe, give me a few weeks to recover, please! That's why you'll find me cooking the same things over and over in my kitchen. Most recently, it's been individual artichoke pizzas using pita bread. Sooooo good! But that's another story.
Not only did Julie decide to make all these recipes in a limited time frame, she did it by shopping after work and often cooking late into the night. That's dedication. I don't like to be in the kitchen after 8 p. m.
At her husband's suggestion, Julie recorded her adventure on a blog. People started commenting, and her following grew. This led to media coverage, interviews, a book deal, and now a movie*. So now we know that French cooking has been life changing to at least two women in America.
* The movie, Julie & Julia will be released August 7, 2009. Directed by Nora Ephron, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams.
4 comments:
I posted a comment on another blog yesterday about this as I am currently reading a bio of Julia by Laura Shapiro. It is so interesting I want to read her autobiography about her time in France. I may even break down and buy "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". I've hesitated to purchase that seminal book because I've assumed for years it would be too difficult. This biography has led me to understand she wrote this book as a teaching manual for American women and it's as much about her belief in a French approach to food as it is about the food.
Did you like this book? Is it about the food or the preparation of the food? I understood the author to have lost her job and used this project as a way to cope. Is that incorrect? I'd like to hear more.
California Girl,
Did I like ,Julie & Julia? Yes, I did. Some readers might be put off by the author's language. She talks a lot about sex, but I think that Julie Powell, like Julia Child, is in touch with the sensuous nature of food.
This book is not a how-to-cook book. It tells the story of a young woman who dislikes her job and feels her biological clock ticking away. She takes on a year long, crazy project and somewhere along the way makes sense of her life.
According to the book, Julie Powell was employed during this project; but it brought new opportunities to her. I think now she is self-employ writing.
As far as Mastering the Art of French Cooking, I've never seen a copy of it. I know it contains recipes for foods I would never cook (organ meats) and uses lots of butter. I struggle with weight, so even though I might read it, it's unlikely that I'd cook with it.
I read this book about a year ago. I'm looking forward to the movie.
So am I. From the trailer, I think it will be very funny and light-hearted.
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