"Ali & Julia"

This is Julia Child

There's a movie coming out called "Julie & Julia". You can see a preview here.

This young woman named Julie, decided to embark on a project where she would cook all of Julia Child's recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in one year. She kept a blog of her adventures, successes, and failures. Her blog ended up being so popular that it became a book. Then the book became a movie with Meryl Streep in it! Now she is rich and her life is probably awesome. I'm jealous.

The book looks like this:

I could talk about Julia Child all the time...I love her that much. When I was younger, I was terrified of her because she was so tall and awkward looking. And because her voice was shrill and scary sounding. I was also disinterested in cooking and food and France. Now I'm obsessed with cooking and food and France. Therefore, I'm obsessed with her.

It all started in the year 2007. For my birthday, my husband bought me a book called My Life in France. It looks like this:It's basically an autobiography (her nephew wrote it after endless interviews with her) about her life in France and how she learned to cook. He got it for me because we went to Paris for our honeymoon and I also was interested in being a better cook.

I.loved.it.so.much.

Then, at Christmas, my sister got me Julia's Mastering the Art of French Cooking Volume I and a DVD set of The French Chef (Julia's TV show) (notice how I call her by her first name...because I pretend that we were friends and I'm on a first name basis with her).

I then borrowed the other two DVD sets of The French Chef from my cooking teacher and watched episodes all the time...over and over and over again.

Why do I love her so much, you ask? Here's a a few reasons:

1. She was a million feet tall and didn't let it bother her at all. (she even had the counters in her kitchen raised up to match her height).
   
2. She did not even know how to cook until she was in her 40's. When she had a goal, she went for it. She decided she wanted to cook so she went to culinary school and ended up having an enormous culinary career. She has helped me to believe that I can be whatever I want to be, whenever I want to be it.
3. She was a spy during WWII...seriously, how cool is that?
4. She had three times more personality than most people anyone I've ever met.
5. Her voice was so shrill that it can make you cringe at first...and then you grow to love it.
6. When she messed something up, she didn't let it phase her at all. She said on one of her shows that if she dropped something, she would just pick it back up..."Who is going to know?", she'd say.
   
7. She was an incredibly hard worker and wanted to do things right...but sometimes things went really wrong on her show and she just laughed it off.
8. She adored her husband from the day she married him until the day he died. She was truly devoted.
9. She did goofy things on her show and made up silly names for things. I especially like when she would slap around raw meet or make chickens sit up on their rear ends. Oh, I almost forgot...she used butter like there was no tomorrow.
10. She rescued America from frozen dinners and made housewives everywhere feel confident enough to try new flavorful ways of cooking. She helped us to realize that eating doesn't just have to be something you do to live...it can be something you are passionate about.

And these are all reasons why I wish there was a book called "Ali & Julia" (which would then be turned into a movie, which would make me rich and famous). Because she inspires me...and makes me laugh.

I wish I could have known her.

I think we would have been good friends.