On Saturday night I was home alone – my husband in Bendigo, my younger children in bed, and my oldest son out at a party. I poured a glass of wine and popped in that DVD that I’m sure my husband wouldn’t be interested in watching – Julie & Julia. I was dying to watch it as I missed it at the cinema and I had read Julie Powell’s book, on which the movie is based, last year.
The book tells the story behind the blog, “The Julie/Julia Project”, that Julie Powell wrote in 2002/3. At the time of starting the blog, Julie is working in a government job answering calls from people affected by the 9-11 Twin Towers collapse, approaching the big “3-0” milestone, and feeling she has nothing to show for it. What she needs is a challenge! Using her mother’s copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, published in 1961 by pioneering American TV chef Julia Child, Julie decides to cook every recipe in the book in 12 months, and to write about it in a blog. Surprisingly, the blog caught on, and Julie’s fan base grew.
You can still read Julie’s blog online and I had a look today. Why was the blog such a success? Maybe it was something to do with the newness of blogs. Since the advent of TV we have become obsessed with celebrities, and anyone can become a celebrity by posting their life on the internet. Blogs were embraced then, much as today’s younger generation have taken Twitter to heart today. Maybe it was the style of the blog – it was witty and funny, and written in a style that made you think you were having a conversation with a friend. Maybe it was the subject matter. I’m sure that many of us can identify with Julie’s ups and downs as we try to cook new dishes. The triumph of doing something complicated well, and the despair when things don’t turn out to look as the picture in the cookbook does. The movie is slightly different than the book as it runs as two parallel stories – the one written by Julie Powell, but also that of Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep), an American diplomat’s wife based in Paris after the WWII, looking for something to do with her time. I was fascinated with Julia’s story and would love to read the book based on it, My Life in France, by Julia Child and Alex Prud’Homme.
Generally I find most movie adaptations inferior to the book they are based on but I can say I enjoyed the movie as well. The book gets a little long winded at times, and it’s not a food book as much as a memoir about someone’s perseverance towards a personal goal. The parallel stories in the movie made for a different type of entertainment while still capturing many of the memorable scenes in the book: Julie falling asleep on the couch while the beef bourguignon cooks slowly in the oven until it looks like a dried up mess, and then after preparing a second one, the guest of honour can’t make the dinner due to the weather; Julie’s reaction to buying live lobsters and then plunging them into boiling water to cook when she gets to the lobster section in the book.
Having read the book, read some of the blog, and now watched the movie, I was taken with how many parallels there are in Julia Child’s attitude to food in the 1950’s, Julie Powell being fed up with the elitest foodie scene in America when she was writing her blog, and with our approach to food today. I quote from Julie Powell’s blog post of 29 August 2002:
“And I have had enough. Enough of the $40 olive oils and imported semolina flour and "please, Turkish oregano only." ….
Julia Child wants you -- that's right, you, the one living in the tract house in sprawling suburbia with a dead-end secretarial job and nothing but a Stop-n-Shop for miles around -- to master the art of french cooking. (No caps, please.) She wants you to know how to make good pastry, and also how to make those canned green beans taste alright. She wants you to remember that you are human, and as such are entitled to that most basic of human rights, the right to eat well and enjoy life”.
Today we are obsessed with farmers markets and gourmet food stores, but with the price of food these days, shouldn’t we be supporting our local food suppliers by shopping at the fruit and vege market, butcher, and so on and worrying about recovering the dying art of everyday cooking. Thankfully, there are many cookbooks on the market today that try to do just that - recipes that we can all cook, taste great and won't break the bank using many of the cuisines of the world.
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