Julie & Julia

I was asked if I would like to receive a copy of the Julie & Julia DVD prior to it's release in the UK - would I?

The film kept my attention all the way through and I just loved, loved, loved it! I am not a film critic and so I can quite rightly get away with saying - I just loved it!

The DVD comes with a scaled down version of the book Mastering the Art of French Cooking and very generously gives us thirty recipes, many of these you can see Julie cooking in the film.

Julia is played by the legendary Meryl Streep who characterises the part of Julia perfectly. Julie Powell is played by Amy Adams.

The film goes back in time from the moment Julia Childs and her husband arrive in Paris in the 1940s, taking us through her time at Le Cordon Bleu to writing Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Cleverly, the film then swings back and forth from Julia Childs to Julie Powell, who is cooking and blogging her way through the book.

Julie Powell embarked on this project as a way of escapism from her job as a full time secretary, she came home in the evenings and set about mastering the recipes from her heroines book in her tiny kitchen above a Pizzeria.

Julie set out to cook a staggering 524 recipes in 365 days and blog about the recipes on a daily basis. She started blogging in 2002, when the blogosphere was a much smaller place, and thought she was blogging to a void. After 5 weeks of blogging she had her first comment - unfortunately it was from her mother saying she was the only reader!

The first recipe Julie cooked from the book was Artichokes with Hollandaise Sauce. Julie put herself under considerable pressure trying to cook and blog every day and often went into meltdown! There are many very funny scenes in the film - I can only say lobsters - but you will have to watch the film!

She admirably completed the Julie & Julia Project, was given a book deal and invited to appear on the Food Network. To celebrate she invited friends to her apartment and cooked her last recipe from the book, Boned Duck Encased in Pastry.

Here is my Boeuf Bourguignon from Mastering the Art of French Cooking, and as cooked by Julie Powell in the film - not the same Le Creuset Volcanic casserole though!


Julie Powell was unique, she started food blogging in the early days when the majority of us had never heard of blogs, cooked and blogged her way through Julia Childs book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in her own inimitable way, her book Julie & Julia was published and subsequently made into a film. This is now being released on DVD and Blu-ray on the 8th March, 2010.

Apart from feeling as though I was blogging to a void in the very beginning, I couldn't be much further away from Julie's story, in so much as I have never become obsessed with a chef/cookery writer or their cookery books. I prefer to flit from magazine to book, chef to cookery writer and then move on. Julie Powell was also young, creative, and living her dream. I am not sure if there will ever be another 'Julie Powell' perhaps she set the bar high - only time will tell.

Thank you to all at Greenroom.