Embarking Upon an Adventure, If Only in a Book

Memoirs strike me as the perfect escapist reading. When it becomes tiresome to live one’s own life readers have the delicious opportunity to flee into someone else’s problems, struggles, victories, and daily grind. As the semester is winding down and as I steady myself to teach summer courses, my favorite escape is Julie Powell’s blog-turned-memoir, Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.

Julie Powell was a temp for a long, tiresome time. Finally, in the midst of all her employment drama and the realization that at nearly thirty she hadn’t reached her life’s goals, she decided to take some control and cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s seminal cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The real kicker is that she started a blog about it, found that there was a whole slew of readers interested in her life, and eventually became a real-live paid writer as a result. It is every blogger’s wildest fantasy.

I have absolutely no interest in French cooking. Though I watched Julia Child on television growing up because I was a food show junkie even as a pre-teen, I far preferred “Frugal Gourmet’s” Jeff Smith, to the nasally, weirdly-accented Julia. Nevertheless, the shining star in Julie and Julia is Julie Powell herself. She reminds me of a girlfriend I’d like to have—some leftover party-girl-grownup from college. Powell is snarky, neurotic, whiny at times, but genuinely likeable in her writings about her family, friends, work foibles and food adventures.

In one particularly funny chapter, Powell discusses the ins and inevitable outs of preparing aspic, a jelly based on fish or meat stock used as a mold for meats or vegetables. If your reaction is anything like mine or Powell’s you’re probably thinking, “Eeeewww!” and you would be absolutely correct. Her first attempt at aspic is Oeufs de Gelée, or jelly of cow hoof with a fried egg suspended inside. Powell makes this scarily exotic treat as an appetizer to Thanksgiving dinner and writes:

I woke up at six a.m. on Thanksgiving morning to finish putting the little bastards together. I rewarmed the aspic and placed a cold poached egg on top of each tarragon X in each chilled ramekin. The least attractive side of the egg is supposed to face up. This was largely academic in the case of my eggs. Then I poured over more liquid aspic and set the eggs in the refrigerator for their final chilling. By then it was eight a.m., and though I still had a whole Thanksgiving meal left to cook, roast goose and cabbage and onions and green beans and soufflé, I felt giddy with relief. The rest of the day would be a picnic, a Victorian one with parasols and white georgette dresses and games of whist and servants to carry all the baskets, compared to fucking eggs in aspic.

Anecdotes like this one, both yucky and intensely weird for the everyday home chef, burst from the seams of the book. In addition, Powell’s stories about her friends and husband are equally as entertaining. Her brother, Heathcliff, is delightfully nomadic and aloof, her husband seems a bit squirrely, and her friends are a mixture of promiscuous and sweet. Powell observes it all and intertwines her real life adventures with her kitchen adventures, and the result is delicious and entertaining.

Short sections of partially fictionalized moments from Julia Child’s life begin each chapter of the book, but Julia herself takes a secondary role in the book despite her name in the title. While the bits about her life before she became a culinary superstar are interesting, they serve to frame Powell’s experiences. Powell adores and admires Julia Child, which is obvious, but Child is not the star here.

It seems that Powell is able to find an iota of stability in testing Julia’s time-honored recipes amidst the chaos of her life. She is more than a bit “excitable” to put it nicely—prone to flights of enjoyable volatility (within normal range) and self-deprecation. In short, I see a good bit of myself in Powell—her tendency toward humor to hide deeper emotions, her wish to be somewhat distracted, and her joy in writing. More than anything else, Powell’s memoir makes me wish I could come up with such an unusual adventure to embark upon in my own home.

Books mentioned in this column:
Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell (Back Bay Books, 2006)
Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child and Simone Beck and Louisette Bertholle  (Knopf, 1983)


Andi is a recovering university academic employed by the North Carolina community college system as an English instructor. While she decided to forego a Ph.D. and career as a professor, she fills in all the free time her current position affords her with editing literary publications, reviewing, freelancing, and blogging at Tripping Toward Lucidity: Estella’s Revenge. Her work can be found in the journal, Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS), and Altar magazine as well as online in various venues such as PopMatters.com. She is a member of the National Book Critics Circle (NBCC), and writes fiction. Her turn-ons include new books and gelato, while her turn-offs are reality television and washing dishes. Contact Andi.