Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

Since other obligations like writing my Triangle Mom2Mom blog, earning the occasional dollars for my work and sometimes acting like a wife and mom impede my blogularity (that's regular blogging...cute, huh), I've decided to post the occasional rerun. Since my husband and I recently saw (and loved) the movie and bought each other two of the associated books for Christmas, I thought this would be a good one! This was originally posted on August 29, 2006 when this blog was very new and a certain storm called Ernesto was trying to decide whether or not to become a hurricane!

 It is kind of strange...I really am a fiction reader. Geek that I am, I can tell you that since I started keeping track in 1997 fully 75.83% of my reading has been fiction. I don't know what this plunge into reality of late is all about. Please comment if you think you have an answer.

  In any case, as I was contemplating Ernesto who may not really be a hurricane,  I finished the last pages of Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. As Julie struggled to finish those last recipes as the 365th day of "the project" approached, I struggled to decide whether to stay in Boca or flee north to Merritt Island. While Julie's loyal fans were urging her and encouraging her, my husband was packing to fly to Minneapolis for a business trip leaving me, Ernesto, two children and a dog. Finished the book...hadn't made my decision yet.
 

Julie Powell , a self-described "government drone" dreading the impending "big 3-0", counting the ticks of her biological clock and contemplating the deep ennui of her job, decides to embark on the project of preparing every one of the 524 recipes included in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Vol. 1 in an ambitious 365 days. [ed. note: this is the book I got my husband for Christmas...he got me Julia Child's My Life in France which is incorporated into the movie, but not so much in this book.] Child's book revolutionized cooking for untold millions of American housewives (you really MUST click on that link, it's brilliant!) long before the advent of low fat, fusion, Pam, bread machines or mango chutney. Her "Year of Cooking Dangerously" becomes a hilarious combination of frustrating failures and surprising successes and was detailed on a daily blog that attracted a loyal following of "bleaders" (blog readers).

What other book involves boning a duck, excessive vodka gimlets, The Joy of Sex, more aspic than most humans consume in a lifetime, the preparation and consumption of every possible internal organ of various mammals, marital discord, parental disapproval, mice fed to live snakes and disgusting plumbing disasters? I know, you can hardly wait to go out and buy this one! Julie makes it fun, makes you take the plunge with her, brings you to the brink of culinary disaster and makes you almost taste every bite. From the moment her first aspic fails to gel to the first one-handed crepe flip, Julie has you rooting for her success, encouraging her to soldier on and biting your nails that she might not make it.

The best part is that her book-ization of her blog has transformed her from government drone to pajama-wearing writer.  So go fix yourself a vodka gimlet and toast Julie while fantasizing about the tantalizing taste of her next writing effort!

And the movie? Julie and Julia? It's out on Netflix and well worth watching, as everything starring Meryl Streep (directed by Norah Ephron, no less) is. But seriously...even my husband liked it!

Comments

[Pamela]

My daughter and I just watched Julie and Julia last week (no, I didn't read the book), but the movie was very funny. It almost, almost, made me want to go into my kitchen and visit that thing some call an oven.

Fortunately, I resisted.

[JoAnn]

I loved the movie. Streep was brilliant.

That being said, I cannot stand Julie Powell. I read and loved her blog as she was writing it over that year of cooking. The book was not nearly as good as the blog by a long shot. But the worst thing was this:

I recommended the blog to a friend of mine. He liked it too and sent her a generous donation (she asked for donations to help her buy ingredients). A few weeks later, shehad still not thanked him. I wrote a comment on her blog and mentioned this. Needless to ssy, my comment was never posted AND she still did not thank him. Classy, huh?

[Di]

Yikes! Eau de faux pas!!! Yes...I know that makes no sense, but it sounds cool!