inspiration strikes

Following a dinner of a delicious chicken club sandwich (bacon, tomato, and chicken with guacamole on a baguette) at the classic Upper East Side Institution, "EJ's Luncheonette", I decided to catch the 7:30 of "Julie & Julia." Expecting a slightly saccharine tale paralleling the stories of now famed blogger Julie Powell, and the legendary Julia Child, the movie turned out to be just was I was craving.

The endearing charecter of Julia Child, as played by Meryl Streep, admits early on, "Its hard not to love me," and could not have been more right. Its not new news she endeared herself for years through her books and television programs teaching Americans how to eat, cook, and "master" the previously daunting world of French Cuisine. This week, five years after her death, Americans are reminded why they fell in love with her in the first place, and fall in love with her all over again.

Amy Adams plays the spunky Julie Powell. Through her challenge working with "Aspics" (yes they can be just as bad as they sound) I am reminded of my experience in my sophmore year "Food Science" class working through my food science binder chapter bearing the same name. I was assigned, with my lab partner, to concoct a somewhat strange gelatinized version of a chicken salad which which bore the moniker "Chicken Little Mold" and which I hope to not experience again anytime soon.

Julie Powell also reminds us of the joys of cooking and eating, yet perhaps even more importantly, that there is no time like the present  for setting lofty short-term goals to aspire to every day. Leaving the theater, I returned home to see an old copy of "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" stacked on top of my shelf of cookbooks. While I occasionally thumb through its pages, prepare a recipe or two, and hope to one day seriously study and cook my way through it in its entirety, my ultimate inspiration was not to begin my own "Julie / Julia" project. Rather, I felt inspired to truly begin work on this small journal and see where it may ultimately lead.

Exactly one year after moving to New York, it seems to me that now is the perfect time to begin recounting this adventure which is already underway, take stock, shape, and focus it, and set some short term goals which with any luck will one day make the "big goals" seem somewhat within the realms of possibility. Now if that's not abstract enough for you, I'm not sure what is.