From my cookbook, The French Chef Cookbook

I went to see Julie and Julia on Monday. I’m considering going to see it again this evening. I enjoyed every bit of the movie. It was fun to see on celluloid the story as interpreted by Hollywood. Meryl Streep played a perfect Julia. Amy Adams was a kind nod to Julie Powell.

It was surreal to see the film version of a blog I had read in 2002. The food blogging community then, was a small group of bloggers, and it wasn’t difficult to find a food blogger with a story. Julie fascinated many of us with her antics and goal. It wasn’t until the book deal that things got ugly. Volleys were thrown back and forth, with prominent bloggers challenging Julie’s abilities as a cook, with Julie answering with terse or non-existent responses. A word I read far more than any other descriptive was “bitch”. Sadly, it turned me off to the whole drama and I walked away. I didn’t buy the book, and was surprised to read of the movie.

I did love the fact that in the movie, whoever wrote the screen play, cut everyone off at the pass with regard to the “bitch” reference. Instead of trying to dance around the word, they hit it head on and didn’t leave room for the community as a whole to push it further or monopolize on the lack of illustration in the movie. Well done, screen writer. My only wish would be that Julie Powell had pursued her wish to actually meet Mrs. Child. She had time, she had connections, lost opportunities it seemed.

Back to Julia. What I found most interesting was they way she cooked. She learned traditional French cooking at a time when women were not really accepted in the profession. Butter, sauces, mayonnaise, and heavy cream were her standard bearers. It is wonderful to know that she cooked everything using these ingredients – from scratch – and lived to be two days shy of her 92 birthday. As did her husband. All those evil fats and rich creams, must have done her in! When people mention we should not be eating naturally produced butter, cheeses and creams, much less the foods they produce, I will remind them of Julia. It isn’t the natural foods that are killing us, it’s the processed ones, people.