Monday, August 8, 2011

Im in Love

OK the credits just started to roll and i couldn't get my laptop, well on my lap, quick enough. I'm in love with the movie Julie and Julia. I have heard of it but hadn't netflix-ed it or streamed it or hulu-ed it or whatever it is that you are supposed to rent a movie. If any of those are even renting... ANNNNYYWAAAYY I went with the old fashioned way and borrowed it from the Library for free. I love this movie so much that I just restarted it to watch as much as I can before my brood of boys return home. I was mostly uninterrupted during this movie which is an amazing accomplishment alone. I was able to watch it with minimal interruptions... only the occasional pawing of my 40 lb lab mix... ok constant pawing of my 40 lb lab mix.

What is it that I love? Where to begin. I love that they cook with butter. Lots of butter. Butter before Paula Deen hogged it all JUST KIDDING PAULA I love ya! I love that the cooking connected these two women that never knew each other or met. I truly believe that cooking is an amazing way to connect with people. Either a family meal. A reunion BBQ. Dropping off a casserole to a new mom or sending fresh baked cookies to school for your kids teachers. All of these ways are a gesture of one person reaching out to another. To say " I care" or " I missed you" or " I love you"
I also truly believe that cooking can connect us to people we never knew just like Julie does with Julia. I never met my Italian grandfather, my mothers father. But I know that he was an amazing cook and I make his recipe for sauce often. And when I'm standing there at the stove, wooden spoon in hand with the delicious aromas of garlic and olive oil filling my kitchen I wonder what he was like. What did he sound like? How tall was he? Did he twirl his spaghetti with a spoon or not? I may not know the answers to these questions but I love that by simply cooking his recipes I am connected to him.
I have loved cooking, and even more so baking, since I was little. IN FACT when it was the girl scout cookie bake off my cookies... my Italian wedding cookies.. were SO good that my troop leader didn't believe that I made them!! The nerve!!

The premise of this movie is that this young woman turning 30 decides to start a blog and cook every recipe out of Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French cooking.  I love this idea. What I love more is that she was able to stick with it for an entire year. Over 500 recipes in a year. And she cooks every one of them. Now as much as I believe I would love to have the attention span and dedication to stick with something like that but I know myself much better than that. As I mentioned before I have many many MANY cookbooks. I don't think I could be dedicated enough to tackle a huge undertaking like this. So maybe I will do this on a smaller scale and pick one cookbook a week to cook from. And focus on that book for a week or two. Tomorrow I am going to post some pics of my cookbooks. If anyone is actually reading this I will let YOU pick which one I should start with. If my inbox is so overflowing with mail that I can not respond to it all, I will pick it.

One of my favorite scenes of the movie is when Julia is slow to chop her onions in the class of men at the cordon bleu, so she takes a bushelfull of them home and chops til she out chops her male competition. I love that she loves food and doesnt worry about carbs or calories. It is simply an enjoyment of the most basic and simple pleasures of life. Food

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