Julie's Julia, My Julia, Your Julia

So I was a huge fan of Julie Powell's earth-shaking blog, Julie/ Julia. It was in the early days (for me) of blogging, and I was fascinated at how someone could dig their way out of crap-ville towards fulfillment, or some semblance of. I was also fascinated at the hutzpah to approach the holy grail of recipes, and Julie's husband's very cool support of her endeavors. I thought I had read the whole thing, having read the blog, but decided to grab a copy of the book, Julie/ Julia at Tattered Cover last week. I imagined it would be like hanging out with an old friend and it was. If you read the blog, the book is the bigger/ lovelier version. Julia was a feminist, adventurist and the kind of woman who grabbed at life. Gotta love a 6 feet tall girl from Pasadena with the kind of gusto to hang out the window on roo-de-loo.

I have an old copy of Volume One of Mastering the Art of French Cooking that I bought years ago, used at Moe's Books in Berkeley. It has sat impressively on my shelf without any love at all for years. When I dove into Julie's book, I wondered why I hadn't made some of the simpler recipes. So last week, I tried it. I know I've mentioned that our CSA has gone potato crazy. We've got potatoes coming out of our ears...Er. Seriously, I had to do something with the little guys threatening to take over my cabinets. I grabbed some leeks and made Potage Parmentier, or Potato-Leek Soup, the first recipe in the book. I'm kind of ashamed that it had never occurred to me that the easiest, most approachable recipe would be the first one. The soup is "simplicity itself" made from leeks, potatoes, water and butter. The only trick was mashing the ingredients so that they were not "baby pap" as Julia warned. I used my hand blender with the lightest touch. It was fantastic and I got rave reviews from the other folks I live with, especially the kid. I love it when a recipe turns the corner from "that was nice" to "make that again" in the first go round.

I'm off to make cookies for the first go-round of Christmas wing-dings. I love the holidays.

Stay tuned for Onion Soup...