A more accurate headline would be, “Why Does Lou Dobbs See a Conspiracy In The Lunch Trays of The Baltimore City School System?”

But it just isn’t as catchy, so I’ll stick with the original.

What the heck am I talking about here, I am sure some of you are wondering.

It’s like this: The Baltimore City School System has instituted a Meatless Mondays policy and, even though CNN could not find any parents in Baltimore who were against having their kids eat more vegetables and fruits during school, the whole thing is obviously a conspiracy to turn kids into socialist vegan heathens or something.

Never mind that the whole idea came about as a way to promote healthier eating habits among children. Never mind that having kids eat more vegetables might do something to curb the epidemic of childhood obesity that is supposedly running rampant in our country. Oh, and don’t notice that vegetarian chili and grilled cheese sandwiches are cheaper than even the crap-quality meat that is scraped off of the meatpacking companies floors and is sold to school systems. Yeah, and never mind that our country is deep in a recession and nearly every school system in the US is strapped for cash.

Dobbs ignores all of these inconvenient facts and decides that the school system is pushing a political agenda just because PETA gave them one of their Proggy Awards for being the most progressive school system in the country because of their Meatless Monday policy.

I don’t know if you know this, Mr. Dobbs, but blaming the recipient of an award for having a political agenda just because the organization giving the award does have an agenda, is pretty twisted and screwed up logic. Yes, PETA has an a very definite agenda, but just because they recognize the Baltimore school system for being progressive does not mean that the aforementioned school system has the same agenda.

Watch the clip and then tell me the reporting isn’t slanted and bizarre:

I love the little banner on the bottom that reads, “The Food Police?” while the Baltimore school officials are on the screen. That is so–slanted.

And who does CNN get to talk about how it is a bad idea for any school system to do this?

A spokesperson for the American Meat Institute, a trade organization of meat packers and processors. Is this an unbiased source? Um, no. And did you notice that the reporter also was careful to point out that the spokesperson was also is a mother of two children? Why is this mentioned? Does CNN regularly tell us how many kids every spokesperson they have on their shows is blessed with? No.

No, they mentioned that mother of two children bit so as to make the viewer think that this woman is speaking more as a concerned mother than as a paid shill for the meat packing industry, an industry, which, by the way, keeps selling meat tainted with E. coli to the public, including to schools. You know, the very same industry that lobbies against tighter food safety regulations and more mandated health inspections.

You know, those trustworthy creeps.

And what does this paragon of unbiased information have to tell us? What does she say?

She points out at the end of her statement that 75 percent of American schoolchildren are deficient in protein, and for many of them the only protein they eat is what is in their school lunches.

Um, yeah.

Has no one ever pointed out to this highly credible and well-paid spokesperson and concerned mother of two that beans, grains, nuts, and dairy products such as cheese and milk all contain protein? So, the truth is that the kids we see in this news segment who are eating the vegetarian chili with rice or the grilled cheese sandwiches are not being deprived of protein as the American Meat Institute would have you believe. They are actually eating plenty of protein.

It just happens to come from somewhere other than meat.

And then, Dobbs goes on to talk about how the Meatless Monday policy is a “political storm in the making” and insinuates that it is meant to indoctrinate kids into the shadowy world of progressive socialist vegetable-eating, tree-hugging evil-doers.

Look, Mr. Dobbs, it is like this.

Kids should eat more vegetables. You know this, and I know this. The mom interviewed in your news story whose kids actually go to school in Baltimore knows this, and frankly, the American Meat Institute mother of two knows it, too.

And I think, sir, that you know this isn’t some ploy to turn all of the children in America into vegetarians, one school lunch at a time.

But you have to get het up about something and get your viewers upset so they will keep watching you.

But really, the truth is, there are people of all political stripes all over the world who eat very little meat, or who are cutting down on meat, or who eat no meat at all.

And there are plenty of socialists who eat meat. Go to France if you don’t believe me and watch them chow down on some cassoulet, boeuf bourguignon, and foie gras, goodness sake.

And for that matter, plenty of us progressives eat meat, too–just not meat from confined animal feeding operations like the ones that the American Meat Institute favors.

Eating more vegetables is not going to hurt the kids, Lou. It isn’t a vast left-wing conspiracy that is out to turn the nation’s children into elitist arugula-loving activists.

It is really just what the principal and the nutritional director from the Baltimore school system say it is–a way to help kids eat healthier while saving the schools some cash.

Stop hating on the veggies, man and chill out.

Because, dude, just because some kids in Baltimore are eating no meat for lunch one day a week doesn’t mean that PETA is coming to pry your Big Mac out of your cold, dead hands.

This is not a usual pattern for me–I am not a regular reader of Gourmet, and never have been. But, over the years, I have plucked individual issues off the newsstand because I was intrigued by the stories advertised on the cover and when I read them, I was rarely disappointed. But, the general tone of the magazine, with its emphasis on travel stories and restaurant reviews, tended to be extremely unappealing to me. (I am one of the few people I know who loves great food, but could care less about most travel writing. I just don’t care about where people go on vacation. I’d rather read in-depth memoirs of places and people from the viewpoint of expatriates. My Life in France by Julia Child is a great example of the kind of travel writing I like. Short articles are just too short and too–uninspiring for me to grok.) And the aspirational ads for luxury items from cars that cost more than a small house to pearl and diamond-encrusted jewelry to wine glasses that cost more than most of the bottles of wine I have ever had the pleasure to drink in my life, I found to be preposterous. (I can’t help it. I grew up poor, dammit, and some of the stuff that people will spend huge amounts of money on boggles my mind. Hundreds of dollars for a place setting? Wha? Does it make the food taste better? For that price, it should go in the kitchen and cook the damned food.)

But, it seems that the lack of those annoying ads is why Gourmet is now going away–yes, Conde Nast has announced today that Gourmet will cease publication after their November 2009 issue.

And even though I am not a regular reader, I am very disappointed.

No, disappointed is not a strong enough word. I am, quite simply, sad.

See, here’s why–while I have never cooked a recipe from Gourmet, the writing in its articles–even if they were not something I, personally, was interested in reading, was top-notch. Great food writers from James Beard to MFK Fisher and on to the current editor, Ruth Reichl all have helped make Gourmet magazine the bastion of food journalism that it was until today. Serious in-depth articles on food, politics and the intersections between the two, were part of what made Gourmet unique and interesting, at least from this reader’s perspective.

And I find it really annoying that Bon Appetit, also a Conde Nast product, is going to continue onward, as I find it to be a very shallow, middle-brow mish-mash of aspirational articles showing upper-crust dinner parties, along with menus and recipes from celebrities and other well-heeled folk and entry-level trend-following “fine food” recipes. (I also know for a fact that some of those recipes do not work out too well–I learned that long ago, in fact, much to my beginning-cook’s chagrin.)

I say this as someone who once had a subscription, and kept it for years. Granted, I bought that subscription back when I was in high school and in early college, and I have to say that back then, Bon Appetit did often have technique-based articles that did indeed help me teach myself how to cook. It also helped give me a foundational knowledge of ingredients, the French vocabulary of cookery and second-hand experience with different cuisines than what was available in West Virginia at the time, and for that, I am grateful. But after a few years, I found that the emphasis on expensive tableware, wines I would probably never be able to afford and on those silly dinner party stories (as little as I care about where other people go on vacation, I care less about what the rich family of the month is serving at their latest “casual” dinner party) to be by turns boring and annoying.

Then, I discovered Fine Cooking Magazine, and later, Saveur, and have not looked back.

Still, I find the lack of Gourmet to be really, depressing. I mean, the magazine has been a part of American food culture since 1940–and having it disappear while a lower-quality publication continues on, essentially in its stead, is really a shame.

But it is all a numbers game. The ad revenues dropped more for Gourmet than they did for Bon Appetit.

And Conde Nast is just protecting their bottom line.

And that, my friends is how capitalism works. You have to go with what makes the most money, quality be damned.

I’m really sorry for the Gourmet staffers–the writers, editors and amazing food photographers. I hope that they can all find employment somewhere, because they are all really good at their craft, and I hate to see them join the vast ranks of the unemployed. (Truthfully, anyone who loses a job in this economy makes me both sad and angry. Sad for the ones without employment and angry at the robber barons and elected leaders who have contributed to the rapid decline and destruction of our economy.)

I am interested to see where these folks go, and what they do. I’d like to think that they might go and start up their own magazine, but I know that is nothing but wishful thinking at best, and a pipe dream at worst. The likelihood of a new food magazine starting up in this economy is minimal. Okay, it is vanishingly small.

All right, it is next to impossible.

But, a food blogger can dream, can’t she?

And when I drove up with my crew, which consisted of Morganna and Brittney, both well-trained (by me) line cooks who now have held jobs in various restaurants around Athens, we were all shocked at how BIG the crowd was. The parking lot was filled–I had to fight to find a place to park after I let the girls out with our huge stockpots filled with garlic mashed potatoes and the marsala-braised rabbit and wild mushrooms.

I finally had to park at the farthest end of the lot, and jog back to the tent where our tasting was to be held, while dressed in my all-black chef’s gear. (Chef’s jackets are not great workout gear. Just sayin’)

Once there, we waited while Chef Jana of Jana’s Soul Food Cafe wrapped up her tasting of potato leek soup with corn cakes, then with great alacrity and much help, we set up our gear, and within a handful of minutes, started passing out tastes of our food. The generous first tastes I nabbed and ran around to deliver to the farmers whose produce we used: rabbit from Rich at Harmony Hollow, mushrooms from Becky at Green Edge Gardens and garlic from Rich at Rich Organic Gardens. Once again, I must say, chef jackets and bistro aprons are crap workout gear, but I managed to deliver my plates without drowning in sweat, tripping over my clogs or running over anyone in the at times, shoulder-to-shoulder crowd.

When I got back, the girls were deep in plating and serving, so I slipped into the line and started garnishing and passing out plates. While I worked, I chatted up everyone, answered questions about the rabbit, told people that while I didn’t currently have a restaurant, I was planning on opening one in a couple of years after Kat goes to school, and made periodic announcements about the various farmers whose produce was used in my offerings.

Feedback was pretty instantaneous: folks asked for my card, demanded that I open a restaurant, and one self-proclaimed hillbilly scraped his plate clean and reached out and clapped a beefy hand on my shoulder declaring, “Darlin’ you did that rabbit proud.”

One could ask for no higher praise.

We ran out of food within forty-five minutes, and later, I found out that Rich’s rabbits and Becky’s mushrooms that I had used in my recipe were all sold out, and that they had both seen plenty of customers they had never seen before.

I consider that to be a very big success.

All of the chefs I spoke with, as well as the farmers, had a great time–it was fun, the farmers did very well that day and the crowd was filled with excitement to be tasting the creative offerings from the area’s restaurants. And, as one farmer said to me, “It is so fun and exciting to see all the chefs striding around the market in their uniforms, looking all official and wonderful!”

For those of you who were not there, my dear friends Dan Trout, Heather Irwin and I put together a video report of the event so that my readers could “get a taste” of the Farm to Table tour. The interviews you see here are unrehearsed and unplanned–Dan had been taping stuff while I was at work in the tent giving out food, and when I was done, he caught up with me and suggested that I do interviews for our video report. So, I doffed my hat (a black cowboy hat a la Lee Van Cleef because my black skullcap looked ratty and ugly), pulled my hair out of its ponytail and had at it. I used to be a journalist, so I am good at asking questions, although this was my first foray into video–I have always worked in print media before.

Expect to see more video reports in the future–Dan and I have big plans on the horizon for not only video blogging but also for another, more ambitious project.

And, look for a recipe for the Marsala Braised Rabbit with Wild Mushrooms later this week.

You know, I had forgotten how good French food is.

This is because once I got out of culinary school, I can count on one hand how many times I have made French dishes. Oh, yes, I use French technique every day that I enter the kitchen, either at home or in a restaurant, but as for actually making full-on French food–nah, I haven’t done that in years.

Until today.

See, I got all inspired by watching Julie & Julia–all of those porn-worthy shots of delicious looking food got to me and I just -had- to dig out my old dog-eared, butter-stained and battered copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking and give some recipes a go.

And the first one just had to be Boeuf Bourguignon–not just because it is featured prominently in the film, but because it is one of my favorite French braises. And I hadn’t made it since my first year of culinary school. And I realized that when I was looking at a beautiful pot of it in a red Le Creuset French Oven just like the one that Zak’s Grandma handed down to me, and it was just a shame.

So I had to make it again–and I wanted to use Julia’s recipe and method–just to see how different it was from the version I learned in culinary school.

It was different; in culinary school, I remember tossing the meat with flour and then browning it in rendered bacon fat and olive oil. The meat was then removed, and onions and carrots were browned in the same oil, while scraping up bits of browned flour from the bottom of the pan.

Julia’s recipe calls for the meat to simply by dried with a paper towel and then put into the pan with the nearly bacon fat and oil and browned well on all sides. Then the meat is removed and set aside, and the onions and carrots are browned in the pan. Then the onions and carrots are removed, and the cooking fat is poured out of the pan. Back into the pan goes the beef, bacon lardons, onions, and carrots. At this time, the flour is sprinkled over the meat and it is tossed together so the meat is coated lightly with flour.

Then into the a 450 degree F. oven the pan goes for four minutes. After four minutes, you take the pan out, toss everything around again, and pop it back in for another four minutes and when it comes out, the meat has a kind of crusty crisp coating of browned flour and there are bits of browned flour goodness all over the onions and carrots. The oven got turned down to a nice moderate temperature–325 degrees F.

In to the pot goes the wine–I used Cabernet Sauvignon–a nice dry and robust one I had around–and beef stock or broth, some tomato paste, minced garlic (Julia crushes hers, but I like more garlic flavor, so mine got minced), thyme, a bay leaf and some salt and pepper. Everything got a nice stir, the liquid was brought to a simmer on the stovetop, then the lid was clapped on and into the oven it went, there to cook, pretty well unattended (I did check on it twice) for about three hours.

Now, I ask you–how hard is that, really?

And the technique of sprinkling the flour on -after- the meat is browned–I really like the texture it gave the beef, and I also like the fact that it made a nice thick, smooth sauce by the end of the cooking time with minimal effort from me.

So, for the first two hours that the beef cooked, I went into my sewing room and worked on a quilt. I didn’t need to be in the kitchen, hanging over the stove, waiting for the beef to do its thing. It was fine all on its own. That is the beauty of making a braised dish in an enameled cast iron pot in the oven–you don’t need to hover. It does all the work for you.

So, I waited for the last hour of the cooking time to make the brown braised pearl onions and butter sauteed mushrooms. I had forgotten how simply cooked both of these absolutely fabulous vegetables are, but simple doesn’t mean flavorless. Oh, no–these tasted amazingly good.

The onions are simple–you peel them–easily the most annoying step in the making of this dish. I do it the way I learned at my very first restaurant job–cut a tiny slice off the top and bottom of the onion, and then make a shallow slit from top to bottom that cuts through just the first layer of onion skin and flesh. Then peel that layer off and voila! You have a pretty, shiny pearly onion, all ready to get browned in butter and olive oil, then braised in a bit of wine and beef stock.

When they are done, they are even prettier than they were all shiny and new and white. They are brown and delectable; the liquid they are cooked in reduces to a thick, deeply colored and flavored glaze that coats those dear little alliums in a cloak of sweet, meaty goodness.

I made an extra couple of onions and it was a good thing–because once I tasted one, I had to give on to Brittney to try. But then, maybe if we hadn’ t tasted them in the first place, we would not have tortured ourselves to keep from eating the rest before everything else was done.

So, we contented ourselves with licking the thick syrupy bits of leftover glaze that clung to the sides and bottom of the saucepan.

The mushrooms are simplicity incarnate. You wash them, you dry them and you cut the bottom edge of the stem off. Then you either leave them whole or cut them into quarters–I decided to cut mine up–and you saute them in butter–in small quantities–never crowd your mushrooms in the pan or they will steam instead of saute–and that is it. I did mine in two batches and got the brownest lightly crisped on the edges mushrooms you could ever want.

Boiled potatoes are a traditional side for this dish, so I did whole small Carolas and French Fingerlings boiled in their jackets until done. Then, I drained them and popped them into a saute pan that had melted, bubbling butter in it, and sprinkled them with salt, pepper and minced fresh rosemary and tossed them around over high heat for about five minutes. The butter browned lightly and coated the potatoes in a delicious golden glaze that made them shimmer, flavored with those lovely deep green flecks of rosemary leaves. The rosemary really highlighted the natural nutty flavor and smooth texture of these little potatoes, while not interfering with the sauce from the beef.

Then, I just made a simple green salad with a honey-Dijon vinaigrette, and cut into a baguette, and strained the sauce from the beef–which had attended to itself so perfectly that I didn’t even have to reduce it any farther in order to get it to gently coat the back of a spoon.

And dinner was served.

Now, here are a few caveats–I did take a few shortcuts and made a few tiny changes to Julia’s recipe–mostly having to do with the bacon. I didn’t have bacon that hadn’t already been sliced, though I had some that had been quite thickly sliced, so I used that. And I didn’t blanch the bacon, because I saw no really good reason to do so.

And, when it came time to put the meat back into the pot before pouring the strained sauce over it–I had forgotten to pick the bacon out of the tangled mess of spent onion and carrot corpses and put it back in with the beef, so we ate it sans bacon. But, you know–it still tasted damned fine anyway, so I don’t feel all that bad about it.

And one more thing–here is a tip directly from me, not Julia, about what to do if your perfectly sublime sauce turns out to taste just a little flat. If adding salt and pepper to taste rounds it a bit, but not quite enough–give it a little dash of balsamic vinegar. No really–it will perk up any sauce or gravy that might be just a bit too rich to taste right–the taste will flatten out sometimes. The vinegar rounds it back out and gives it sparkle. I am talking just a little bit–not much–a half teaspoon to a teaspoon at most, and sometimes even less than that. Be sparing!

Looking back on tonight’s dinner, I’m not really sure how or why I forgot how good French food is–but I don’t intend to make that mistake again.

Now I just have to figure out which recipe to turn to next in Julia and Simone Beck’s magnum opus.

Boeuf Bourguignon
Ingredients:

6 ounces thickly sliced bacon cut into 1/2″ wide pieces down the length of the bacon slices
1 tablespoon olive oil
3 pounds fairly lean stewing beef, cut into 2″ cubes (I used half top round and half chuck, well trimmed of fat)
1 large peeled and sliced carrot
1 large sliced onion
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
3 cups of full-bodied red wine (I used Cabernet Sauvignon, as I noted earlier)
2-3 cups beef stock or broth
1 tablespoon tomato paste (I use the kind that comes in tubes like toothpaste–so convenient!)
2 large cloves garlic, minced (mine worked out to be about a tablespoon and a half after it was minced–big cloves of garlic!)
1/2 teaspoon thyme
1 bay leaf, crumbled
18 pearl onions, peeled
1 1/2 tablespoons butter
1 1/2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 cup red wine (from the same bottle as the wine for the beef!)
1/2 cup beef stock or broth
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme
salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons butter
1 tablespoon oil
1/2 pound fresh mushrooms, washed, dried and trimmed–if small, leave whole, if larger, quarter
salt and pepper to taste
a tiny amount of balsamic vinegar–if needed*
fresh thyme leaves and chopped fresh parsley leaves for garnish

Method:

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees F.

Heat the first measure of olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet over moderate heat. Cook the bacon until it is just starting to brown and is nicely brown, but is not crisp. Remove from skillet and set aside on a plate. Turn the heat up to high and let the oil and rendered bacon fat come nearly to the smoke point.

Dry the cubes of beef well on paper towels–remember if the meat is not dry, it will not make a nice browned crust. Brown it on all sides in the same skillet in which you cooked the bacon. Do it in batches if you have to–don’t crowd the pan or the meat will not brown as nicely.

When the beef is brown all around, remove it and set it aside on the plate with the bacon.

Dump the sliced onion and carrot into the same skillet and sprinkle with the salt and pepper, then cook, stirring, until the onions brown really well–they should be a reddish color, and the carrots are browned at the edges. Scoop the vegetables out with a wire skimmer and put them with the meat. Dump out the cooking oil.

Put the beef, bacon, onions and carrots into a heavy bottomed Dutch oven or deep casserole dish. Sprinkle the flour over everything and toss the meat especially to coat it well.

Pop it uncovered into the oven for exactly four minutes. Take it out and stir it well making sure to turn the meat, and put it back in for another four minutes.

Take it out and turn the oven temperature down to 325 degrees F.

Stir in the wine and enough stock or broth to make sure that the beef cubes are just barely covered. You can have wee bits and corners of the cubes poking out–but you don’t want huge swaths of meat uncovered–you don’t want it to dry out. Stir in the garlic, the tomato paste, the bay leaf and the thyme, then turn the heat on under the pot and bring the liquid to a nice easy simmer.

Clap the lid on the pot and into the oven it goes. Check it now and again to make sure it is simmering, not boiling and that the liquid level is not reducing too quickly. Otherwise, you can leave the pot pretty well undisturbed.

While the beef cooks, prepare the onions: Melt the butter and olive oil measures that come in the list right under the pearl onions in a skillet or wide saucepan. Add the onions, and cook, tossing and stirring and rolling the onions gently around until they are as evenly browned as you can manage–they won’t be perfect because these little rascals just roll back and forth and won’t keep enough to get an even tan.

When they are a nice golden color flecked with some pale white shimmer showing, pour in the wine and stock or broth and add the thyme.

Bring to a simmer over high heat, turn the heat down and cover the saucepan and cook, stirring as needed, until the onions are mostly tender. Remove the lid from the pot and cook, shaking and stirring until the liquid reduces down to nothing more than a shiny deep reddish brown glaze that clings mostly to the onions, but a bit to the pot. Add salt and pepper to taste to the onions, toss them once or twice more to distribute the salt and pepper, and set aside to be added to the beef at the last moment before service.

Once the onions are done–make the mushrooms.

Melt the last measure of butter with the last measure of olive oil in a saute pan. Put half of the mushrooms in the pan, and cook, stirring and tossing, until the mushrooms take on a deep golden hue with lightly crispy browned edges. Pour the cooked mushrooms into the same bowl as the onions and cook the second batch the same way. Set them aside with the pearl onions.

The beef is finished cooking when a fork with easily pierce it and just as easily slide out again. If the beef clings to the fork, even if the fork went in easily, the meat still need to cook some more. But when it is ready, remove the beef from the cooking pot and set it aside with the pearl onions and mushrooms. If you want to go fishing around for the pieces of bacon, by all means, do so, but I didn’t bother and the dish was still fantastic.

Then place a fine sieve over a saucepan and scoop the liquid and remaining solids out of the cooking pot into the sieve. Press the solids against the sieve to remove as much liquid from them as possible–the sauce is thick and will cling to the solids. What I did was ladle the contents of the pot one or two ladlesful at a time into the sieve, and then I was mash and stir the stuff in the sieve against it and let all of the sauce be pushed or drip out, then I would empty the solids from the sieve for the compost bucket, though if I still had dogs, I would have given the solids to them–they would have loved it. Then, I repeated until I had the pot emptied and the sauce all collected.

Then, scrub out your cooking pot, and dry it well. Put the beef, pearl onions and mushrooms into it.

Heat the sauce in the saucepan over medium heat until it simmers. If it is thick enough to lightly coat the back of a spoon, you are golden and have to do very little. If it is too thick, thin it out with a tiny bit of broth–if it is too thin, bring the sauce to a boil and reduce it to the proper thickness. If you defatted your beef and poured out the oil well, you will have very little to no excess fat in the sauce, but if you do, and some comes to the top as you simmer it, skim it off and discard it. You should end up with about two and a half cups of really delicious sauce. Taste your sauce and add salt and pepper as needed–and a tiny dash of balsamic vinegar if it is properly salted and peppered, but still tastes just a little bit flat.

When the sauce is the proper thickness, pour it over the meat and vegetables and give it a nice stir to coat everything, and then sprinkle with the fresh herbs and either keep it warm in its pot–this is why cast iron enameled pots are so great–or serve it right away, with a salad, some boiled potatoes and some good baguette to sop up the sauce.

Sometimes, I am just all late and wrong.

Last night is the first time my girls and I (my daughter Morganna, the 19 year old line cook, and her best friend Brittney, the 18 year old line cook) could get together and get away to see Nora Ephron’s film, Julie & Julia. Which means, since it opened on August 7th, that I am sure that everyone else in the country, especially food bloggers, have already seen it. (OK, not everyone else has seen it. My dear Aunt Judy hasn’t seen it yet, either–she is going later this week.)

Late and wrong as I am, I still want to write some of my thoughts on the film, because I think that one of the best things that films do is they bring people together to talk about them. (Yeah, I have a minor in film, along with one in history, one in biology and one in women’s studies. Yes, I am a super-geek who would go to college the rest of her life if she could get away with it.)

Unsurprisingly, I really liked the movie, and I love the way that the script was structured, flipping back and forth between Julie Powell’s life as sourced from her blog and later her book, Julie & Julia, and Julia Child’s as remembered in her memoir, My Life In France.

Viewed as a purely structural device, bouncing back and forth between the two women’s lives and marking parallels between them brings a beautiful symmetry to the narrative, and builds a sense of anticipation as the stories unfold. The actors were all superb, and each of them brought an authentic sense of their characters’ humanity and reality to the screen. Even the supporting actors, particularly Linda Edmond who portrayed Simone Beck, were spot-on, their performances sparkling, fresh and genuine. They all brought a strong humanity to the characters which made them very appealing to the viewer, even when the characters’ personalities were not ones which would normally appeal to the viewer.

Here is where I tread in dangerous waters as a food blogger. It seems that any criticism of Julie Powell as a writer or as a person portrayed in this film or in her memoir, especially when written or uttered by a food blogger, is viewed as a sign of jealousy or personal attacks by herself and her fans. This is a shame, because the fact is, Julie Powell put herself out there in public view–she wrote her blog and wrote her book in a way which she can easily be viewed as narcissistic and shallow by readers–so if there are some who look at her work and declare their honest opinion of it, it doesn’t mean that they are attacking her personally. It means that they read her words and her own portrayal of herself and had an opinion about them–an opinion which may not be positive.

And that is okay. As a food blogger and a chef, I have taken plenty of flak for things I have written, and have gotten personal attacks which may or may not have been warranted. It comes with the territory of writing for the public. If you write strong opinions on issues, you are going to step on some toes, and you are going to hear about it from readers. And yeah, some of them are going to get personal, because frankly, some people take what you write personally, (even if it isn’t personal) and respond in kind.

It is just something that you should expect.

And really, if you write about yourself, as in a blog or memoir, you as the author are the one who is making it personal. And the fact is–not everyone who reads about someone is going to like them as a person. It is just how it is. Not everyone is equally loved by the rest of the world, because different people get along with different personalities, period. End of sentence, paragraph and story.

So, knowing this, I am just going to say the bad thing that food bloggers have to be very politic and not say: I did not care for either Julie Powell’s blog, nor especially, her book.

There. I said it.

And if readers want to see it as sour grapes or jealousy, so be it, but the truth is, I found Julie’s writing to be very shallow and her story to not be all that compelling. Her idea of cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking was a stroke of genius, and as a blog subject it was perfect. It still stands as one of the best thematic hooks in the history of food blogging. I bow to Powell when it comes to the narrow focus and time limitation on her blog, especially since I have never been able to narrow down what I want to write about in my own blog. (I am just too damned interested in too damned many topics to impose limitations on Tigers & Strawberries.)

It is just the execution that I found lacking–I just didn’t like her writing style.

And that is fine. I don’t have to. Lots of people love the way she writes and what she writes about and I am happy for them and for Powell.

Now that I have said the dangerous thing, I can get on with what I wanted to say about the film. Amy Adams’ portrayal and the script make Julie Powell a much more interesting and sympathetic character than Powell does herself in her own writings, and that is a good thing. However, her story is just not as compelling or interesting as the story of Julia Child in postwar Paris, and that is the film’s greatest flaw. The two tales, while superficially similar, are not that analogous, and while presenting them equally in the structure of the film provides a sense of symmetry, the overall effect is not symmetrical.

Even though I liked Amy Adam’s portrayal, I found myself growing impatient during the segments that showed Powell’s struggles to complete her self-appointed mission. I wanted to go back to France, or Germany or Norway–wherever Julia and Paul had been stationed, and see what was happening there, because it was just more interesting to me. Like many reviewers, I feel that it was a shame that My Life in France wasn’t given its own film treatment, because it is just that more fascinating to the viewer.

(Let me add that one of the most interesting sociological contrasts between 2002 Queens and 1950’s Paris was the amount of cigarette smoking that was going on in the 50’s. Everyone smoked. Everywhere. In restaurants, in restrooms, at home–everywhere. And, while I am at it, I must applaud Nora Ephron’s eye for detail–the costumes, hairstyles, make-up, props, sets and street shots of Paris were period-perfect and really drew the viewer into that world.)

But, flawed as it was, in truth Julie & Julia has had one great effect on me: it made me want to crack open my ages old copy of Mastering the Art of French Cooking, get in my kitchen and whip up some Boeuf Bourguignon, a dish I haven’t made since culinary school.

And it seems that I am not the only one who wants to revisit the classic tome: The New York Times reports that for the first time since it first came out, Mastering is once more at the top of the best-seller list, as it rides on the coattails of the movie that it partially inspired. Nearly fifty years after its publication, it is once again flying off of the shelves (along with everything else in print by Julia Child, including her memoir, as well as Julie Powell’s book) and hopefully into kitchens across the country.

Many readers, however, seem to be stunned by the amount of fat involved in these recipes, and many are adapting them to lower the fat content, while hopefully retaining the flavor. One reader quoted in the Times article who made what she called “beef fauxguignon”–great name, by the way–admitted to using a can of cream of mushroom soup, a can of burgundy wine and a can of cream of French onion soup seems to have missed the point in lowering the calories–cream of mushroom soup is anything but low-calorie. When she said, “Yes, Julia Child rolled over in her grave when I opened the cream of mushroom soup, I’m pretty sure of that. But you know what? That’s our world.” I had to laugh. The truth is, the opening a can of this and a can of that and popping some wine in the pot isn’t just our world–it was the world of 1950’s American cooking that Julia Child set out to change in the 1960’s too.

The irony is delicious.

But, when all is said and done, I think that we cannot dismiss the fact of Julia Child’s lasting impact on the eating habits and cooking abilities of Americans, nor can we downplay the effect that this film will have upon a new generation of American cooks.

By getting people who were only tangentially aware of Julia Child as a pop-culture icon out of the theatre and into the bookstore and then, hopefully, their kitchens, we also cannot dismiss the fact that by writing her blog, and then her book, and by selling the film rights to that book, Julie Powell helped remind America of why we loved Julia Child in the first place.