Things were not going very well for Julie Powell. She had moved to a crummy apartment in Long Island City, Queens, with her husband and was working at a succession of even crummier temp jobs rather than fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer. Like so many New Yorkers on the cusp of turning 30, Powell was questioning every aspect of her unfulfilling life. As she told blogger Christopher Lydon, she often lamented, "Why am I in New York? Why am I torturing myself with the commute and the un-air-conditioned apartment and making $50,000 a year but still being unable to pay my bills?"
Unable to reconcile her life or find a constructive outlet for her increasing hostility (particularly irked by that daily commute, she was known to punch and shout at subway cars), Powell turned to a book, which she has described as having "totemic" qualities. The book was her mother's well-worn copy of master-chef Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Powell didn't exactly consider herself to be a great cook, but she began to formulate a seemingly hair-brained project that might give her life some much-needed structure. She decided to tackle all 524 recipes in Child's cookbook in a single year.
The project started relatively easily as she whipped up some potato soup. Soon enough, however, the dishes became increasingly complex and Powell's pet-project became a true test of her mettle (not to mention of a test of her husband's commendable patience).
While diligently working her way through Julia Child's cookbook, Powell chronicled her progress on the Internet via her own blog, appropriately naming the project "Julie & Julia." Much to Powell's surprise, the funny, self-deprecating, often potty-mouthed and completely unpretentious accounts of her trials and triumphs in the kitchen became a big hit with readers. Before she knew it, the project she began as a means of giving herself a bit of direction yielded a whiz-bang memoir with the unwieldy title of Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: How One Girl Risked Her Marriage, Her Job, & Her Sanity to Master the Art of Living (mercifully abbreviated to Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously in its most recent printing). Suddenly, Powell was no longer just another unsuccessful, struggling New York artist. Her book became a smash hit amongst readers and critics. The Library Journal declared it "well-executed" and "entertaining," while Kirkus Reviews applauded "its madness and pleasures." Periodicals including The New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post, and Publishers Weekly were also quick to recommend the book, and Powell even snared a James Bean Award and a Quill Award for her efforts. Incidentally, Powell has also discovered that she has become something of a celebrity.
"When I was working on my first draft, in the summer of 2004," she told Powell's.com, "I took my dog Robert up to the Adirondacks, to this primitive cabin all by itself in the middle of nowhere... [I] got to talking to the couple, about how beautiful the country was, and how quiet, and how I like the cabin -- the only one on this particular tract of land that had electricity. I offered that I needed electricity to power my laptop, since I was working, so they of course asked me what I was working on. I'd barely gotten out ‘Well, I'm writing this book about how I cooked all the recipes in Mastering' -- when the wife said, ‘You're Julie Powell! I'm a huge fan. I read your blog all the time!' That was pretty gratifying -- if just the teensiest bit creepy."