Julie & Julia: See the Movie, Buy the Book!

In Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron, tells the story of two real-life people, both newly wed and restless with vague ambition and how gourmet cooking leads them to self-discovery.  In parallel storylines, (think Ephron’s “Sleepless in Seattle” or “You’ve Got Mail”) spanning two eras and two continents, Ephron travels to Paris in the late 1940s and frames the larger-than-life exuberance that was Julia Child.  Ephron allows the audience to revel in Child’s love for her husband, Paul, and la belle France. Meryl Streep portrays the 6-foot-2 gourmet chef who became the first television cooking show star and author of a number of best-selling cookbooks.

Fast forward to the early 2000s to find Julie Powell, Amy Adams as a 29-year-old transplanted Texan in New York City, using Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking as her exit off the office “temp bridge to nowhere".  As she cooked all 524 recipes in one year, Julie blogged about her epicurean experiences and how they taught her the art of self-expression and the glories and artistry of cooking.

Always inspired by the zest and delight with which Julia cooked, we are newly enthused by Powell’s experience and Ephron’s movie.  So, inspired that we have ordered Child’s revolutionary guide to French cooking.  This beautiful book, with more than one hundred instructive illustrations, is revolutionary in its approach because:
  • It adapts classical techniques to modern American conveniences; and,
  • It shows Americans how to buy products at supermarkets that reproduce the taste and texture of French ingredients: equivalent meat cuts; the right beans for a cassoulet; the appropriate fish and shellfish for a bouillabaisse.


At this point in our “economic recovery” we all deserve a double helping of joie de vivre.  So, see the movie…and buy the cookbook. 

Bon appetit!

 

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