Julie and Julia: by Julie Powell

By Shawn Willis

his superlative volume is a culinary arts romp in itself: what foodie wouldn't want to read Julie Powell’s chronology of cooking her way through Julia Child's “Mastering the Art of French Cooking?” What we have here is a frustrated secretary in New York City who embarked on the Julie/Julia project to find a sense of direction, wherein cooking and writing quickly became all-consuming.

To break the monotony of her life, Powell had taken her mother's dog-eared copy of "MtAoFC," as she calls it, in order to cook all 524 recipes in the span of one year. Passages written in the same vein of Bridget Jones and the vitality of Augusten Burroughs, recount how she attacked every recipe in Julia Child's MtAoFC to save her soul. Some passages in the book are taken from her blog – chronicling a yearlong odyssey - but Powell expands on her experience giving background about her personal life: her doting husband, wacky friends, mean co-workers. Thus making an odd parallel with Child's life here in that Julia Child took up cooking after World War II and shortly after marrying Paul Child and moving to Paris, where Child was posted with the U.S. Embassy, leaving Julia at loose ends.

Technically, this is not really even a cookbook; Ms. Powell's book has no recipes, as all the recipes in question come from Julia Child's famous volume. Still, Julie and Julia reveal a certain charm in revealing her own cooking disasters.

As she moves from simple potato soup to complicated crepes, Powell engages the help of her husband, brother, and friend, as well as the hundreds of fans she attracts to her blog. Powell's story is at once a comic tale of struggling to find one's balance in the adult world, and a witty exploration of why — and how — we cook. Gastronomes, as well as those more inclined to order take-out, will enjoy Powell's dirty little journey into French cuisine, but her depiction of life in general is the main ingredient that holds the recipes together.

And somewhere along the line she realizes she has turned her own little kitchen into a miracle of creation and cuisine. As Ms. Powell states, nothing worth doing is likely to come easy to the inexperienced. She has eclipsed her life's ordinariness through spectacular humour, hysteria, and perseverance. Her writing is feisty and unrestrained, especially as she tackles the marrowbones and cooking late into the night. A nourishing read if you love to cook or would rather stay out of the kitchen altogether. - S.W.