Julie & Julia

0901 Julie and Julia
Originally uploaded by rooruu

OK, I'll admit it, I tripped over this while browsing bargain audiobook CDs on the Barnes and Noble site a while back. The concept got my attention - funny, a tad nutty but intriguing. I ended up buying the audiobook on CD and the book (the hardcover was on special. I suspect I'm sounding cheap about now, or at least thrifty. Do remember that a) audiobookCDs are more expensive in Australia and b) I did have to pay postage).

Anyhoo. I'd started the book a while back, and was chortling through it while simultaneously trying to imagine cooking with as much butter as Julie was describing. Julia Child , and her 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking (containing the 524 recipes Julie set out to cook in a single year, and blog about) are, I gather, American classics, through the book and Julia Child's TV shows.

The Australian equivalent, I guess, would be Margaret Fulton . The Australian Women's Weekly cookbook was in hundreds of thousands of homes, but it was/is a collective work, lacking the same cult of personality/individual imprimatur. I still refer to MF's Encyclopedia of Food & Cookery, and have a copy of the AWW Cookbook (the harcover one before they started publishing dozens of softcover narrow-focus ones) that was a school prize way back when.  Now, of course, the world is full of telecooks.

On the recent road trip, for some of the time, Julie & Julia got its turn on the car's CD player. As read by Julie Powell, the author, so you KNOW she must have the emphases right... and it was great fun to listen to.

If you're of tender sensibilities, be aware that she is not, or at least addresses with gusto (and salty language) topics that might make your mother wince here and there. But she also talks about food and cooking in wonderful, evocative ways, as the project she undertook to in some ways save her life, instead changed it in ways she could never have imagined.

This must be one of the earliest blog-to-book success stories. The film (directed by Nora Ephron) is due out later this year, with Amy Adams as Julie, Meryl Streep as Julia and Stanley Tucci as Paul Child.

Julie's original blog, The Julie/Julia Project
Julie's current blog
IMDB entry for the film