Until she died, I’d never taken too much notice of Julia Childs. And I’d cerainly never heard of Julie Powell even though I had more than a healthy interest in food and blogging. That was until I tripped over Julie & Julia: 365 days, 524 recipes, I tiny apartment kitchen.
What surprised me was how much I enjoyed this book. Julie, 30, embarks on the challenging of cooking every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year.
Many disasters, vodka and tonics and cigarettes later Julie becomes one of the most famous food bloggers out there.
Culinary disasters await around every corner. As do successes. It’s a very funny book and its great to track her progress from secretary to food writer. Food writing needs more fresh young talent and here it is.
She’s now hanging around in her pygamas wrinting. And blogging. Me thinks she needs another food project.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
I am looking forward to reading this book over the summer. I remember sifting through Julia Child’s recipe books as a child and thinking WOW!
It’s a pretty funny book – I wonder how many people have experienced something similar too.
How about Aussie food bloggers cooking Stephanie Alexander. The cookbook, not the person, obviously.
Stephanie Alexander scares me. I mean her recipes dont. But she does. Maybe its because I’ve had bad experiences with librarians as a child :/
Shows you how vague I can be sometimes. Some articles; here, here and here on Julie Powell and her backlash on food bloggers.
Hmmm, dunno if I enjoyed the book as much as say Amanda Hesser’s. AND she freaked me out with the maggot thing!
I hadn’t heard of Amanda’s book. I Googled it. Was it Cooking for Mr Latte? Did she blog it?
I considered cooking the recipes in Stephanie’s as a long term project – when my friend Niki told me about what Julie was doing. The problem with Stephanie’s book is that there is just sooo much in it. Would I get bored? Probably! And also the cost scared me. Buying all the ingredients for that amount of cooking would be horrific! even over 2,3,4 or more years! Of course if I did it I wouldn’t have wanted to be stingy on the gourmet recipes!! I think I am having better luck learning Japanese cooking!
Hey Saffron, somehow you got caufght in my spam filter. I can see Julie’s point about elitist food writing. I reckon most bloggers aren’t. But in the mainstream there is this pretentious element. It really is about what the individual enjoys. i tried to avoid the pretentious thing with Tomato Mag and banned the words f–dies and g–rmet. But it is so easy to be sucked in. Keep it real.