Few years ago, I watched a movie that actually impressed me in different ways: “Julie/Julia”.
Julie & Julia (2009)
While working for a Corporation in August 2002, Julia Powell began the “Julie/Julia Project”, a blog in which she attempts to cook all the recipes in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. Quickly this blog gained a large success, and Julia, later, signed a book deal. The book, “Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen”, was published in 2005. Few years later, the movie adaptation followed.
“Julie Powell wanted to be a writer after all. She started the so called “Julie/Julia Project” blog to write about what she truly loves – cooking ”. Starting writing about what you really like: there’s no better way to begin.
So, why am I talking about this now? Because, as lots of people did in the past 13 years, I also would like to use Julie’s example to both improve my writing skills and, most important, to have fun by sharing what I know (and having fun).
Cooking is, also, something that connects people all over the world, no matter your race, gender, religion, and diversities. Gisela, a Mexican chef, started her “Julie/Julia/Gisela Project” to share her experience as a chef in Korea. Lawrence, instead, used Julie’s experience to make his own challenge: “Julie Powell managed to cook her way through all 524 recipes in Child’s cookbook in a year, learning valuable life lessons along the way. I hope to learn as much, if not more, by watching the film Julie & Julia every day for a year”. Jana, on the contrary, used a different approach. She was “taking on a similar challenge [- Julie’s], only [she is] blogging [her] way through a very healthy cookbook! And [she] will learn to master the art of healthy cooking! The book is called Eat For Health by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. [she] will cook every recipe start to finish in four weeks just as they are laid out in the book. [She] will write about the recipes, show pictures, and tell how [her] SAD (Standard American Diet) eating, carnivorous husband likes them too”.
Interestingly, everyone found in “Julie/Julia Project” a way to express his/her self in a unique way, so I, also, would like to be part of this used-to-be mainstream universe by adding my own original point of view: cooking Italian(-ish) dishes found in Child and Powell’s books with my Italian students, one recipe per month for one year.