In case you’ve been living under a frying pan or hanging out at the pool for the past few months and are not familiar with “Julie and Julia,” it is the newest foodie movie coming out on August 7th. The movie tells the story of Julia Child and Julie Powell and how their lives intertwined 41 years apart from each other. It is a movie based on the book Appetite for Life, the biography of Julia Child by Noel Riley Fitch, and a food blog–turned book–Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. The film is written and directed by Nora Ephron and stars Amy Adams as Julie and Meryl Streep as Julia.
It all started with this simple blog entry by Julie Powell on Sunday, August 25, 2002:
The Book:
“Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. First edition, 1961. Louisette Berthole. Simone Beck. And, of course, Julia Child. The book that launched a thousand celebrity chefs. Julia Child taught America to cook, and to eat. It’s forty years later. Today we think we live in the world Alice Waters made, but beneath it all is Julia, 90 if she’s a day, and no one can touch her.
The Contender:
Government drone by day, renegade foodie by night. Too old for theatre, too young for children, and too bitter for anything else, Julie Powell was looking for a challenge. And in the Julie/Julia project she found it. Risking her marriage, her job, and her cats’ well-being, she has signed on for a deranged assignment.
365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.
How far will it go? We can only wait. And wait. And wait…..
The Julie/Julia Project. Coming soon to a computer terminal near you.
Powell was living with her husband in New York. She was nearing 30 and miserable in a dead-end secretarial job, but instead of continuing her descent into despair, she resolved to reclaim her life by cooking, in the span of a single year, every one of the 524 recipes in Julia Child’s legendary Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She loved this book as a child and often pulled her mother’s copy down from the bookcase and proceeded to sit for hours, engrossed by Child’s enthusiasm and descriptive way of writing. When Powell made her first blog entry in 2002, she had no idea that anyone would be at all interested in her experiment, but immediately she acquired a very active and enthusiastic following. Her book, Julie and Julia, chronicles her year-long cooking adventure.
I read Powell’s book a couple of years ago and it sparked my interest to learn more about Julia Child. I found Fitch’s biography and could not put it down! Julia Child’s life was truly remarkable. She was a wildly exuberant California girl who spent her college years at Smith College. Her zest for life and her easy going nature made her a favorite of anyone who came in contact with her. She volunteered with the OSS in India and China during WWII and there she met her future husband, the cosmopolitan Paul Child. It was he who introduced her to the glories of art, fine French cuisine, and love. Theirs was a deeply passionate romance and a modern marriage of equals. Their relationship is as fascinating as her account of learning to cook in Paris and the background information on how she came to write her bestselling book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, as well as her PBS series, “The French Chef.” Her cooking show series would become such a classic that after Child’s death, her entire kitchen was torn out and moved to the Smithsonian!
I love what Powell wrote about Julia Child in her book’s introduction:
“Julia taught me what it takes to find your way in the world. It’s not what I thought it was. I thought it was all about . . . I don’t know, confidence or will or luck. Those are all some good things to have, no question. But there’s something else, something that these things grow out of.”
“It’s joy . . . obnoxious word, isn’t it? And yet, it’s the best word I can think of for the heady, nearly violent satisfaction to be found in the text of Julia’s first book. I read her instructions for making béchamel sauce and what comes throbbing through is that here is a woman who has found her way.”
Julia Child brought French cooking into American homes and Julia Powell did an ingenious, modern twist on a classic. Don’t miss the books or the movie!
Bon Appetit!
-Norma
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