Pfui!
Sat., November 12, 01:53 PM
I’m sure that would have been Nero Wolfe’s comment, had he been forced to read Julie & Julia, by Julie Powell. I probably wouldn’t have read it myself if it hadn’t been for the microwave. On the day I went to Costco to compare microwaves, I also bought a couple of new tires. Since there were several customers ahead of me, I decided I had better get myself something to read.
One of my criteria for buying a new book is whether someone else will enjoy it, because I have to get my money’s worth. I have added a new factor – the print has to be fairly easy to read. I thought this book would fill the bill
Julie Powell has gotten hooked on reading Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child, et al. I can understand that. It is perhaps the last thing I understand about this book. Julie sets herself a project – she will cook all the recipes in the book within one year.
For starters, I don’t understand why she chose to do this. Maybe I should have been reading her blog about it. When she began the blog, she had no idea what one was. On that date, she was twenty-nine years old. On that same date, when I was, um, over sixty, I had been writing my own journal for some time. I realized at that point that we were not going to connect much about this.
It turns out that the book isn’t very much about cooking. It more about a twenty-something’s year of angst, with which I have little sympathy. (She had a pretty good life at that time and really didn’t need to whine.) And when Julie does talk about cooking, it’s usually about something she did wrong, most often because she didn’t plan ahead. Crazy me, when I was experimenting with cooking, I always read as much as I could about what I was doing before starting, although my reference of choice was The Joy of Cooking, since Julia Child was not yet known when I got married. But some things are universal.
As it happens, Julia Child was very careful about specifying what you would need, equipment as well as ingredients. Certainly, if you don’t have a pastry bag or a mandoline, you find out what you can use instead… Or not.
As I read, I kept thinking that I know people who could have done this better. Some who would be accurate when it had to be accurate, and truly funny when it was supposed to be. I would have loved to see Kitchen Logic's take on this project.
I soon realized that U.D. was not going to be able to read this book because it mentions “dead animals,” that is, what the rest of us call meat or fish. But M.D. may enjoy it, and I will bring it to her. Meanwhile, I remembered that about thirty years ago I actually bought Mastering the Art of French Cooking, with the idea that it would make a nice gift. And M.D. has mentioned that she would like to have one (not knowing I already had it), so I finally remembered what I did with it, and she will have reading material for quite a while.
Oh, I did buy a new microwave. It’s very spiffy and modern, compared to the one it replaces. We’re still getting used to the increased power, for we had been managing with the old one as it got weaker and weaker. Husband loves the new one. It says “End” when it’s done, which is nice because he can’t hear the beep. He’s a piece of work.
