Julie and Julia : 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen by Julie Powell

And here I go, on a self-indulgent happy bender back into food books. I wish you could see me now, grinning on my couch in my apartment, so cozy back in my food book addiction. 

So I read Julie & Julia...I picked it up at the library mostly because there's a picture of my egg beater on the cover (see below): 

Now, I have a strong affection for my egg beater...so I decided to judge a book by its cover and check this one out. I had also recently decided that it was about time I get back to my happy place filled with food books. 

I did not, though, take a break from reading cookbooks...I have been put in charge of the pumpkin pie at this year's Thanksgiving celebration (and by put in charge I mean asked to be put in charge) and I don't want to disappoint...so I've been testing recipes. I think I've found a good one, but please please please feel free to add a comment/e-mail me if you happen to know of a good recipe. 

But I digress. 

I read Julie & Julia this weekend...it's not a long read. It details the course of Julie Powell's life as she cooks her way through Julia Child's famous book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking (Volume I). She cooks her way through all of the recipes over the course of a year and blogs about her experiences, eventually compiling the blog entries into a book. You can check out her current blog at www.juliepowell.blogspot.com - but it's no longer about cooking as far as I can tell (and therefore, in my opinion, less worth reading). I want to take this opportunity to push you, once again, towards www.jennsylvania.com - it's really, really funny. Please go there now and see pictures of her pit bull Maisy. 

But I digress again. 

The book was interesting, definitely...although less about food than I had hoped when I picked it up. Powell details the events of her life, her husband's life, her friends lives during the course of her cooking year...which isn't a problem, per se, but just not what I was expecting. I'm rather surprised, in fact, that the book was placed with the other "food books" at the library (next to the cookbooks). Cooking is obviously the central theme of the book, and the whole reason it was written, but I feel like it, in the end, was really more about Powell's rediscovery of self than it was about the food she used to get there. Maybe I should be happier with this outcome, proudly touting this book as evidence that food is a worthwhile and potentially life-defining pursuit, but (and this is where I sound selfish) I care more about food than I do about Julie Powell and her mission to get out of her dead-end secretarial job. Just a thought. 

If you're looking for a true food book, look elsewhere (see other good food books listed in a previous post). If you're looking for a starter food book, check this one out. It's interesting, as I said above, evidenced by the fact that I did read it in two days instead of ignoring it for my Wii (another distraction that has recently strengthened its hold on me given my purchase of Super Mario Galaxy), but it's not filled with the same passion for food that I originally hoped for.