Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously

Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously by Julie Powell

Julie Powell, a 29-year-old Manhattan secretary, unable to decide what to do with the rest of her life, decides to cook her way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. There are some drawbacks to this plan: she lives in an apartment with suspicious plumbing in Long Island City with her husband & menagerie of 3 cats, a snake, and I don't know what else, and she has a DAY JOB! that leaves her running around finding obscure ingredients and cooking until 10 or 11 at night AND there are 536 recipes--that's more than one dish per day.

She also says f*** a lot. That's not a problem for the cooking, but she is also blogging about The Project. Her readers--bleaders, she calls them--do complain. But they also support her when she gets down and even come up with a way to help fund the veal chapter.

And it's very funny the way she cannot name the government agency she works for. They are the ones who are deciding the appropriate memorial for the World Trade Center 9/11 victims and who have the visitor center for "the site" in 2002-2003. Not such a secret after all.

As Julie works her way through her angst, her possible futures, and her relationship with her husband, she comes to grips with who she is and creates her own future--as a writer! no kidding! And her husband--who is a saint by the way. He WASHES DISHES!!! and basically doesn't give up and leave no matter what disasters occur, is still there at the end.

So pick it up and read--but watch out, you'll be wanting to start cooking French by the end.