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

published	2005 by Little, Brown and Company
binding	Hardcover
isbn	031610969X (isbn13: 9780316109697)
pages	320
description	Julie & Julia is the story of Julie Powell's attempt to revitalize her marriage, restore her ambition, and save her soul by cooking all 52...more [close] Julie & Julia is the story of Julie Powell's attempt to revitalize her marriage, restore her ambition, and save her soul by cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I, in a period of 365 days. The result is a masterful medley of Bridget Jones' Diary meets Like Water for Chocolate, mixed with a healthy dose of original wit, warmth, and inspiration that sets this memoir apart from most tales of personal redemption. When we first meet Julie, she's a frustrated temp-to-perm secretary who slaves away at a thankless job, only to return to an equally demoralizing apartment in the outer boroughs of Manhattan each evening. At the urging of Eric, her devoted and slightly geeky husband, she decides to start a blog that will chronicle what she dubs the "Julie/Julia Project." What follows is a year of butter-drenched meals that will both necessitate the wearing of an unbearably uncomfortable girdle on the hottest night of the year, as well as the realization that life is what you make of it and joy is not as impossible a quest as it may seem, even when it's -10 degrees out and your pipes are frozen. Powell is a natural when it comes to connecting with her readers, which is probably why her blog generated so much buzz, both from readers and media alike. And while her self-deprecating sense of humor can sometimes dissolve into whininess, she never really loses her edge, or her sense of purpose. Even on day 365, she's working her way through Mayonnaise Collee and ending the evening "back exactly where we started--just Eric and me, three cats and Buffy...sitting on a couch in the outer boroughs, eating, with Julia chortling alongside us...." Inspired and encouraging, Julie and Julia is a unique opportunity to join one woman's attempt to change her life, and have a laugh, or ten, along the way. --Gisele Toueg
date added	12-19-06 edit book

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devra rated it:

06/21/07

bookshelves: foodlit

Read in February, 2007

it seemed so simple, and so brilliant and so the perfect type of book for me, i remember thinking as i perused--i forget what, probably the new york times--and saw a reference to julie powell's julie and julia project.

a woman who dedicated her year to learning how to cook.
like me. i hoped for inspiration--for my writing, for my cooking, for ideas that i could incorporate into both.

i immediately ordered a copy. or maybe i went straight to borders after work. i started reading the night ...more

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Jennifer rated it:

(review of isbn 0316013269)

08/17/07

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: No One

I love the concept, I really do; not so much the finished product.

Had she not made the fuuny reference to my favorite line in Casablanca near the begininning of the book, I never would have been able to finish it. The thought of finding another gem like that made me stick with it even when I wanted to throw Julie out of a twenty-story window. The whiny, self-absorbed, melodramtic, narcissistic, trite (yet on occasion deliciously funny) Julie Powell decides to take up a project to add meanin...more I love the concept, I really do; not so much the finished product.

Had she not made the fuuny reference to my favorite line in Casablanca near the begininning of the book, I never would have been able to finish it. The thought of finding another gem like that made me stick with it even when I wanted to throw Julie out of a twenty-story window. The whiny, self-absorbed, melodramtic, narcissistic, trite (yet on occasion deliciously funny) Julie Powell decides to take up a project to add meaning to her life, or at least to distract herself from dealing with it: She decides that she is going to cook every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking and that she is going to do it in the time span of a year.

Julie never mentions how many hours she actually works in a week at her "oh pity me, the lowly secretary who still makes enough money to live in New York and buy enough food to cook every single recipe in the Julia Child MtAoFC cookbook" job, but I honestly have a very difficult time believing that she worked full time, commuted, did the grocery shopping, cooked every single recipe in the book, wrote a blog, and yet still had time to watch Buffy the Vampire Slayer. (I mean, really, does anyone that gave this book five stars actually cook?!?) She does make the point very clear that she didn't clean at all that year. And she did allow herself to gain an untold amount of weight rather than work out. I suppose that gave her a little extra time to devote to this project. And on top of all that she expected her husband and her friends to support her insanity, wholeheartedly and unabashededly. Eric should have kept a blog for the year about putting up with Julie!

For a book about cooking, there is a sad lack of description regarding the various recipes. Sure, she does go into detail about excavating bone marrow and dismembering lobsters, but what about the food? I didn't get the impression that she actually loves food so much as that she has a gluttonous relationship to it. Don't want to deal with your feelings? That's okay, just stuff them down with extremely high fat foods and ignore the consequences. I have no patience for this sort of self defeatist behavior; the average overweight american who refuses to take responsibility for their own health and instead assumes a false sense of pride over being carefree about their food choices. And then just accepts a dependence upon pharmaceuticals to manage the ill effects. Is it really any wonder that heart disease is the number one cause of death in the United States?

This may have been an entertaining blog, but the "My bleaders like me, they really like me!" tone did not translate very well into a book. If you have any interest whatsoever in her story, save yourself the money (and grief) of reading this book and just read her blog blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/0...

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Rachel C. rated it:

03/19/08

bookshelves: foody-stuff, real-stuff

Read in March, 2008

Not enough about the food - Powell really only describes making about 25 of the 500+ recipes she refers to in the title. Granted, she didn't start out as a very good cook but she seemed to have a lot of difficulty with the simplest of tasks. As I recall, not one person in my culinary school class had problems making mayonnaise by hand, even the first time around. Powell doesn't master mayonnaise until almost the very end, but somehow managed to debone a duck easily on her first try. I'm not ...more Not enough about the food - Powell really only describes making about 25 of the 500+ recipes she refers to in the title. Granted, she didn't start out as a very good cook but she seemed to have a lot of difficulty with the simplest of tasks. As I recall, not one person in my culinary school class had problems making mayonnaise by hand, even the first time around. Powell doesn't master mayonnaise until almost the very end, but somehow managed to debone a duck easily on her first try. I'm not sure how that works.

Powell notes that she wrote a blog during the year of cooking (the book came after) and it really shows. Lots of minutiae about her everyday life, her marriage, her crappy New York apartment, etc. She comes across as a Bridget Jones-type, by turns adorably inept and inexplicably insane.

My two favorite passages are below:

"If I had thought the beef marrow might be a hell of a lot of work for not much difference, I needn’t have worried. The taste of the marrow is rich, meaty, intense in a nearly-too-much way. In my increasingly depraved state, I could think of nothing at first but that it tasted like really good sex. But there was something more than that, even. What it really tastes like is life, well lived. Of course the cow I got marrow from had a fairly crappy life – lots of crowds and overmedication and bland food that might or might not have been a relative. But deep in his or her bones, there was a capacity for feral joy. I could taste it."

"I baked David Strathairn absurdly complicated pecan-cornmeal cookies… I can’t imagine anyone – a few of the more repressive Islamic societies aside - who would consider baking an act of adultery. Still, for Eric, knowing what he knew of my proclivities, watching me roll out thin layers of cornmeal dough, sprinkle them with chopped pecans, cinnamon, and melted butter, then lay another layer of dough on top, and repeat over and over with infinite patience, must have been a little bit like noticing I’d gotten a bikini wax and a tight red dress the day before leaving for some business convention in Dallas. He didn’t do anything but roll his eyes and grumble with careful good humor, but he knew what I was doing."...less

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doreen rated it:

02/11/08

bookshelves: memoir, non-fiction--food

Read in January, 2006

recommends it for: aspiring cooks in small kitchens, anyone who can appreciate a good home-cooked meal

This book is probably one of the books that set me down the path I am on now in terms of my relationship with food and baking. Not only was I inspired to eventually make a food blog (Tasty Fever!), but I was also given the notion that I didn't need a fancy-shmancy kitchen to turn out amazing stuff.

Julie Powell's story of ambition as a way to find herself through an uncommon means really struck a chord with me at the time I was r...more This book is probably one of the books that set me down the path I am on now in terms of my relationship with food and baking. Not only was I inspired to eventually make a food blog (Tasty Fever!), but I was also given the notion that I didn't need a fancy-shmancy kitchen to turn out amazing stuff.

Julie Powell's story of ambition as a way to find herself through an uncommon means really struck a chord with me at the time I was reading it, and it still does now. As with a lot of memoir work, I can see how some people might not like Powell's voice in the book, especially when she's having a kitchen meltdown caused by the failure to pull a complicated French dish with bone marrow together. Perhaps since I'm used to reading blogs of my friends, as well as writing my own, I didn't mind what others may seem to mark as self-absorbed freaking-out. I liked the humour; she seemed to me like someone I could be friends with, or at least know and have a drink with time to time. In other words, her actions, cursing and crying, seemed honest and real to me.

Although at times I felt a little bogged-down in some of the relationship dramas she had with her friends, the book on the whole had enough personality to carry through the traumas of an ill-cooked dinner, as well as the wonders when everything, even despite a city-wide power outage, comes together beautifully.

In other words, her tale of cooking her way through Julia Child's book is a very personal and personable tale that I was able to relate to, having dealt with my share of tiny apartment and house kitchens. After reading the book, I began to little-by-little try out new recipes, which eventually erupted into the explosion of predominantly baked goods I now turn out weekly--thanks to the further inspiration of my snack-lovin' boyfriend.

You can find the original blog here. Julie Powell has a new blog out, too. You would think that with as much as I loved her book, I'd be keeping up with her latest shenanigans. Well, I'm lazy like that, plus I guess I've got my own blog to tend to....less

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Firecooked rated it:

(review of isbn 0316013269)

05/12/08

bookshelves: foodie-books

Read in September, 2007

The book is written by Julie Powell, about her 1 year self-imposed challenge to cook everything in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of Fine Cooking. The project was motivated by feeling stuck in her job (a low level drone in a government office) as well as rebellion towards the whole Alice Waters, locovore, trendy foodie things. I instantly connected with the author – she was a Buffy the Vampire fan (the blog was going on during the last season), found the act of preparing food very sensual...more

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Jean rated it:

(review of isbn 0316013269)

05/12/08

Read in March, 2008

“Julia leaned gamely onto her knuckles like some otherworldly primate god of
kitchens and good humor.”

Within the pages of this rather indulgent book, you can find many brilliant nuggets such as the one above. Though, Julie herself did not write the above brilliance. It was her old friend Isabel, who also happens to be one of her myriad of devoted blog readers (or bleaders as Julie refers to them). In one of many hilarious blog replies deliciously sprinkled throughout the novel.

N...more

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Carrie-Anne rated it:

08/16/07

Has a copy to sell/swap — Read in August, 2007

Highly dissapointed in this book. The only reason I gave it two verses one star was that it gave me an idea for my own cooking project. I plan to cook my way through one of my cookbooks once I get my place. Otherwise I think that this book lacked focus in that she jumps all over the place... from describing her boring job (and I mean that it bored me) to the project to excerpts from Julia's letters to her social life. The reason I bought this book was to read about her experiences about cook...more

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Lena rated it:

10/02/07

bookshelves: memoir

Read in October, 2007

There are some inspired moments in Julie Powell’s memoir of the year she spent cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Powell can be a very funny writer, and the book is sprinkled with abundant samples of the snarky wit that no doubt made the blog on which this book was based so popular. Her topic is certainly a rich one—the processes of making gelatin from actual calves’ feet or flaying a lobster alive while feeling a generous dose of liberal guil...more

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Sara rated it:

01/02/08

bookshelves: food, nonfiction, not_impressed

Read in August, 2007

recommends it for: whiny, foul-mouthed people with a steel-lined stomach

This was a book that I finished, but didn't really enjoy.

I can appreciate that Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking came along at just the the right time in Julie Powell's life and I can appreciate the difficulty of rounding up Julia's ingredients, like canned onions and marrow bones and I can appreciate the frustration of working in a depressing, post-September 11th setting.

But I could not appreciate the casual mentions of sticky, filthy, cat-hair covered counters and reeking ...more

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Christine rated it:

12/30/07

Read in December, 2007

recommends it for: people who truly love food and no one else

I think there's an unfortunate trend that people follow these days, particularly women, to verbally criticize themselves in a hyper self-aware manner, as if recounting all of their faults (real or imagined)will not only amuse the listener, but prove that they are stoic-even good humored-about being the biggest, fattest, ugliest, ding battiest failures to ever grace the earth.

"Doesn't he get it? Doesn't he understand that if I don't get through the whole book in a year then this whol...more

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Juliana rated it:

12/29/07

bookshelves: memoir

Read in December, 2007

Bravo!! What a fantastic read! You know a book is delicious when a newly legal Manhattanite swears off a social life in favor of hopping into bed with her new paperback. I must have recommended the book to at least ten strangers who heard my uncontrollable outbursts of laughter and had to know what was making me cackle so heartily. Sometimes reading about those sticks of butter did make me feel a bit oily and full, but that Julie Powell, what a refreshing voice. Her wit and sarcasm and dept...more

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Jonathan rated it:

04/22/08

bookshelves: food, time-i-wish-i-had-back

Read in April, 2008

I read The Scavengers Guide to Haute Cuisine, and I really liked it. I figured this book would be along the same lines. Yeah, well, it wasn't. Instead of a book about cooking, it was a book about a whiny, pseudo-intellectual woman who tries to cook because her life is otherwise crappy. Please tell me how cooking an entire Julia Child cookbook will improve your life. Actually, don't, because that is the premise for this book and it sucked.

Oh, and reading about her husband was cringe-wort...more

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Jennifer rated it:

02/19/08

Read in January, 2006

I have a love/hate relationship with this book. I love the concept- the story of the author working her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking one recipe at a time, skipping nothing. At its root it's a true life adventure- something I can experience vicariously.

On the other hand, sometimes the execution is flawed. (I *really* didn't want to know about the maggot infestation in the author's kitchen, I know my kitchen isn't perfectly hygenic. But maggots under t...more

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Katie rated it:

02/09/08

Read in May, 2006

Completely and utterly disappointing.

I was so in love with the idea that Julie came up with: to recreate each of the 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I never had read her blog before, and my expectations for the book were high.

Unfortunately, Julie is a completely repulsive, unappealing and vulgar human being known to man. Her self-deprecating - humor, was it? - didn't make me find her charmingly witty; rather, I just believed what she was te...more

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Kate rated it:

03/28/08

bookshelves: hilarious, memoirs

recommends it for: absolutely anyone!

I am a memoir junkie, and though I usually go for the serious/extraordinary books within the genre, this one was light and hilarious.

Julie Powell, a young married woman stuck in a dead-end job and a bit of a mundane life in Queens, decides on a whim to spend a year cooking every recipe in Julia Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

Julie is one of my favorite narrators/protagonists of all time. She is hilarious and self-deprecating at the same time, but never in a negative wa...more

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Ellen rated it:

01/03/08

bookshelves: beach-reads, food

Read in January, 2008

Julie and Julia is heartwarming. Julie Powell is not a profound, experienced writer, but her honest recounting of her “Project” to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume I in a year is – like the remnants of attempted recipes throughout her kitchen – sticky. I even appreciate how Powell waxes a bit philosophical at the book’s end about how Julia Child taught her more than simply how to cook some French food (I won’t spoil the e...more

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Erin rated it:

04/04/08

bookshelves: book-club

Read in April, 2008

I'm reading this book for a book club, and I'm 1/3rd of the way through it...but I'm seeing a 2-star rating here. Usually I don't judge a book that fast, but...it's irritating me. First of all: please don't insult Bridget Jones' Diary by comparing this self-indulgent novel to that charming book. Julie Powell is not NEARLY as charming as the fictional Bridget Jones, although I think she thinks she is. She comes off as self-absorbed, difficult, self-pitying and whiny, and I feel kind of sorry ...more

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Mollie rated it:

12/19/07

Read in December, 2007

If there was a vegetarian Julia who's name was Mary, Merry, or Marlie, I could be the next Julie Powell. This is a book written for those of use in our late 20's or 30's, having been overeducated, live in an urban environment, want meaning, are good at creating meaning, live lives according to our values, enjoy life's vagaries, lean toward irreverence and are in a constant life crisis. This group is otherwise known as all of my friends and all the people I COULD be friends with. You definitel...more

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Wendy rated it:

04/19/08

Read in January, 2008

recommends it for: foodies, peole who need a good laugh or a little inspiration

In order to give her life some definition,(and blinders to the onset of her 30th birthday) Julie Powell decides to cook every recipe from Julia Child's, Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume One, within one year. She cooks everything from tarts to cow brains in her tiny New York apartment. The book reminded me of Bridget Jones meets, well, Julia Child. It is funny, interesting, and a little inspirational. She is candid with her personal life as well as with the results of what became the Ju...more

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Kristin rated it:

12/20/07

This isn't a book about food. This isn't a book about a perfect, open-minded heroine who learns to cook healthy, flawless food without breaking a nail, throwing a pot or dropping a few f-bombs. Don't read this for the recipies (there are none), the role models (there are none), or the upbeat, positive attitude (there are none).

This is a book about a hilarious and completely hysterical (in the clinical sense of the word) secretary with a boring job, a crap apartment and very little self-con...more

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

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