I remember being very inspired watching Julie and Julia way back when. Sad to read that the woman whose work inspired the movie died at a such a young age. It was an amazing way to bring zest back to life - cooking every Julia Child recipe while being a home cook. I marveled at the tenacity and devotion to the cause and wished I could find something like that to keep me engaged without pause for a good part of my life. Something that would make me feel alive in ways I had not been till then.
If not cooking hard recipes something else that was challenging but offered a reward soon enough. That was likely the reason Powell was able to persist with her project - it hard enough but not to the point where one must give up. She built momentum upon her successes and it started a virtuous cycle. Lucky her I thought to be able to find such emotional reward out of a cookbook. I had read the blog a few times and enjoyed how Powell was able to mix exasperations with cooking and life into a cohesive story that readers could relate to
The blog was emblematic of the early days of food blogging. Powell embodied a wry, exasperated tone when discussing both food and life, with no shortage of cursing and schadenfreude. While Powell would detail her challenges around cooking with ingredients like aspic, she would also expound on her personal life, quickly growing an audience that was as interested in Powell’s cooking successes and failures as it was in her feelings and relationships.
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