The other evening I was sitting with some friends and we started to talk about the movie Julie & Julia and the blog. One of the women hadn’t heard the story….
The Blog: Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.
Take a step back in time…. Julie Powell began blogging on Sunday, August 25, 2002.
The blog was about Julia Child and her book “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. The blog quickly gained a large following. This blog even predates WordPress which started in 2003! Having a unique great idea and posting regularly is the perfect recipe for blogging success.
You can find the original blog here in the Web Archive.
The Book Deal: Sept. 22, 2003 “I have landed a book deal”!
It wasn’t so much that Julie Powell had amazing writing abilities that landed the book deal, it was the fact that her blog had an established readership. The publishers knew that her blog had already created a market for the book and the media had already picked up on her story. The book would practically sell itself.
The Film: A film adaptation, also based on Julia Child’s autobiography My Life in France, directed by Nora Ephron, and titled Julie & Julia, was released August 7, 2009. It stars Amy Adams as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child. It is an enjoyable film especially for a blogger who also likes to cook!
The Julie/Julia portfolio and the surrounding publicity changed Julie Powell’s life and rocked her marriage. Powell’s second book, Cleaving: a Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, which details affairs she had after the first book’s publication, as well as her experiences learning the butcher trade, was published November 30, 2009. You can read more about Julie Powell on her current blog.
I am looking for the entire Julie/Julia blog. I sm a big fan of Julie Powell. Is it possible to direct me to the right website? All the websites end with her bog on 29 November. Thank you
Here: https://web.archive.org/web/20021217011704/http://blogs.salon.com:80/0001399/2002/08/25.html
thanks:)> i have the dvd alsoVV
I too zm searching for Julie’s blog after learning. About her from the film and video. Like Mrs. Powell , I am a huge fan. Of Julia Child and became so after years of failure of attempting to make a proper loaf of Bread a la francaise as . That first proper loaf was made possible by Jumia Child. She did not help me, however, make possible a proper Rye Loaf. I spent years trying to achieve that using recipes from the Gourmet Cookbooks. You could build house with the rock hard inedible loafs these recioes turned out!! Then Paul Ckayton’s first edition of his book on bread walked into my kitchen. Eureka! Voila! I wish the same Clayton results for you. Get the first edition cause Paul’s son and later editors messed up the book as Paul wrote it. One word of caution:Do not make the borrowed biscuit recipe of the ‘The Yearling’ of Marjorie Rawlings ‘s mother as written .because it contains . enough baking powder to cause a heart attack. Instead cut these levelers down to 2 teaspoons or less instead of the 4-6 asked for. Mrs. Rawlings must have been using expired baking soda whose leveling abilty had been compromised by Florida’s humidity which had caused it to ‘fiz’ in the box.
Hi Ruth.
Thank you for sharing such an inspiring journey with us. Stay blessed (:
Regards,
Akshay Chugh
[…] are so many voices out there now. Originally, for me, there were just a few stellar ones, like Julia Powell of “Julie and Julia” fame, or Molly Wizenberg, whose first book after years of the blog Orangette, was “A Homemade […]
I just watched the movie!!! I can’t wait to watch it again. Thank you so much!!!
I just finished the book and watched the movie! I totally loved them both. I wish I could have been a part of Julie’s blog back then I would have been a faithful follower. Here’s to you Julie and Julia Child! I have my own copy of Mastering Art of Fench Cooking and I’ve had it for quite a while. Now that I’ve read the book and watched the movie the book is now my treasure as Julie Powell and Julia Child are🤗. Sherry Svoboda