eat, pray, love

I read Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert a few months ago (I listen to the audiobook) and I have been thinking about it lately. I loved this book! Maybe it is where I am in my life right now, but I have never been truly been inspired by a book by the way I have with this one. It is a cross between a woman's growth into an independant self that she likes, her travel experiences, and learning about cultures and foods from around the world. The book is separated into three parts. Eat: she is based in Rome and explores Italy. Pray: she is at an ashram in India learning about herself. Love: she is in Bali winding up her adventure and setting her paces for the next step in her life.

I want to listen to it again and maybe I will. The book was different than I thought it would be. I thought it would be more about her travels, not about a woman finding herself. So I kind of tuned out some of the first parts when she was in Italy. But I got completely caught up in her and her experiences once she got to India. She practices meditation and she goes through thinking how tedious some of these practices are and how unrealistic they are in every day life. But then she gets swayed over by her guru. I found her path very interesting.

Some of my favorite parts is how she described her relationships and the people she meets from all over the world. And when she goes to these places she lives there for four months each so we find out what life really is like. The foodie in me absolutly loves the way she describes not only the food but also the culture and why their food is an important part of the culture. The audiobook is read by the author herself and she seems like someone who thinks and feels the same things as me. I want to be her friend :)

book review: Julie and Julia

I just finished the most interesting book. Well, interesting to me as a person on a cooking quest. Prior to this, I haven't sat down and READ a book in a long time. It's usually audiobooks while driving. I bought this book at the airport on the way home from Lake Tahoe earlier this month. It's called Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.

Julie Powell is a 29-year-old secretarial temp. Unhappy with her job. Not sure what to do with her life. Not ready to have kids. She decides to take on a project: she will cook all of the recipes in Julia Child's famous Mastering the Art of French Cooking. There are 524 recipes all of which Julie plans to cook within one year - 365 days. AND she blogs about her experience. Her Julie/Julia Project blog is still available online.

I dream of doing something like this. I LOVE cookbooks. I buy them and look through them but then am usually too tired from reading to actually cook anything. I've been really making an effort to cook more and more lately. So I love this gal's concept and determination. In fact, I started rachel's bite as a way of having some ownership and sharing my experiences with my recipe cooking. You can say that this book inspired me.

What is really interesting is that a few months ago I listened to the audiobook of My Life in France by Julia Child. This was the last book she wrote before she died and it was all about how she got started cooking, cooking lessons at Le Cordon Bleu in France, her decision to write a cookbook about French food for Americans (Mastering the Art of French Cooking) which she wrote with two friends, and the beginning of her television series. That book was GREAT. Julia Child is a very interesting person.

I really enjoyed Julie and Julia because Julie is a real person, similar to myself, who is going to conquer this old cookbook and I got to read about her trials and errors. It is humorous too because she discusses all her frustrations in finding rare ingredients and the all the difficult techniques first identified by Julia Child. These are the typical things I go through almost every time i cook a recipe from a magazine or something on The Food Network (especially Emeril!). And it really is a different world now. Mastering the Art of French Cooking was first published in the 60s. Ingredients and kitchen gadgets have changed so much since then. And that book fills each recipe with butter and cream which seems so unhealthy now.

Of course the down side is that now I want to complete a similar project. I have no interest in cooking everything int Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I don't like French Food too much, even though I'd love to execute some of Julia Child's recipes - just to say I can. However I would like to make all the recipes in The Joy of Cooking. I would love to learn to cook all the basics in that one. Unfortunately that one has over 4500 recipes so it would take me years to complete. But who knows . . .

Below is a cute clip I found on YouTube which someone made highlight one of the funniest part of Julie and Julia . . . Julie's experience with attempting to get bone marrow for a steak recipe: