Julie & Julia

Friday night was "girls' night out", and I went with two friends, Katie and Laura, to see the new movie, Julie and Julia. Written and directed by Nora Ephron, this movie is based on two true stories.

Julie & Julia depicts the story of celebrity chef Julia Child in the formative years of her career, contrasting her life with that of blogger Julie Powell, who takes a year to cook all 524 recipes from Child's first cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Ephron's screenplay is adapted from two books: My Life in France, Child's autobiography, written with Alex Prud'homme, and Powell's memoir. In 2002, Powell started a blog documenting her daily cooking experiences for each recipe in Child's cookbook, known as The Julie/Julia Project, and in 2005 published a book, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. The 2006 paperback version was retitled Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. Julie & Julia is the first major motion picture based on a blog.

What a perfect movie for the three of us to see! As an avid blogger, I enjoyed the blogging aspects of this movie. I've been blogging for about a year, and my friends Katie and Laura have recently started writing blogs of their own.

This humorous movie is entertaining for many reasons, but I'll mention only a few. I think Meryl Streep is a wonderful actress and portrays Julia Child well, robust and full of life, while Amy Adams is adorable as celebrity blogger Julie Powell, who blogged her way out of the doldrums and into the hearths of many. It was refreshing to see loving marriages in a movie. Julia and her husband, Paul, are happily married in the movie and adore each other. In an era before many women had careers, Paul encourages Julia to pursue her love of food, to write, and to have her own cooking show on TV. Julie and her husband, Eric, also have a loving marriage in the movie (even if he does tease her about being a "lobster killer", qu'est-ce que c'est?). Parts of Julie & Julia were filmed in Paris and the movie has an appealing French look and feel. I left the theater craving boeuf bouguignon and wanting to get my hands on a copy of Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking.

This is definitely a good movie choice for bloggers, cooks, fans of Julia Child or Julie Powell, and those wanting lighter fare.

View the trailer for Julie & Julia.

Your comments are welcomed.

Pomegranates

Pomergranites? Pommogranits? Pomagranitz? Now is the perfect time to learn to spell the name of this exotic, slightly tart fruit. The correct spelling is above, in plain view: p-o-m-e-g-r-a-n-a-t-e-s (and there will be a spelling test next week).

Pomegranates are one of the oldest fruits in existence, and some scholars suggest that it was the pomegranate, not the apple, depicted in the Garden of Eden. It's great appeal has made it the subject of epics and art, by artists and authors such as Shakespeare, Homer, and Cezanne. Pomegranates are also a superior source of antioxidants, and may help improve health in several ways.

A quick Google search provided many books on pomegranates. I selected but a few to share. Pomegranate: The Most Medicinal Fruit, by Robert Newman, P.H.D., and Ephraim Lansky, M.D., published in 2007, provides readers with the history and science of this fruit as a health food, and includes artistic images and recipes. Pomegranate, by G.M. Levin, P.H.D., published in 2006, is a scientific and informative book, with a very lovely cover (this author has also written another pomegranate-themed book called Pomegranate Roads: A Soviet Botanist's Exile from Eden, published in 2006, which is a memoir of his life and search for rare, wild pomegranates). But you don't need to be a doctor to write about pomegranates. Ann Kleinberg, a food critic and columnist, wrote a beautiful cookbook, published in 2004, Pomegranates, which received many excellent reviews on Amazon. Her recipes are called "flawless" and "creative" by reviewers.

Why all this talk about pomegranates?

I never imagined I'd write a post about this fruit, even though it happens to be one of my favorites (we even have a pomegranate tree which bears fruit). Although I am health conscious (hopefully not sickeningly so), this is a blog about books, not health matters. However, I received an email from Janny of POM Wonderful, who has been sending very generous "care packages" of delicious pomegranate juice to food and health bloggers. I'd commented on a very funny food blog post I'd read, and as a result Janny offered me a free shipment of the juice, which of course I accepted, being partial to all things pomegranate. A couple of days later, I received an email from Jeff confirming the shipment, and the next thing I knew, the package had arrived.

I've been enjoying POM Wonderful pomegranate juice over ice with a wedge of lime on the side of the glass.

After a bit of experimenting, I came up with this quick salad dressing:

POM Vinaigrette

• 2 Tablespoon POM Wonderful Juice
• 2 Tablespoon Apple Cider Vinegar
• 6 Tablespoons Olive Oil
• Squeeze or two of Lemon or Lime

Whisk together ingredients and enjoy. Be sure to top your salad with freshly ground pepper.
(About 4 servings. As with any recipe, adjust amounts of ingredients to taste.)




Thank you, Janny and Jeff of POM Wonderful.
You are wonderful, and so is this refreshing juice!

(P.S. Don't worry, though, if you don't learn to spell pomegranates--there's always spell check. I rely on it. )

Comfort Food

Recipes found in books that are not cookbooks have extra appeal to me. They seem more special somehow, and more worth trying, perhaps because they're not expected, as opposed to having page after page of recipes (although many cookbooks are wonderful, and the photographs can be rather enticing). When my daughter was in second grade, we read a story together called Jalapeno Bagels in which there was a recipe for "chango bars", and we had to bake some, because they sounded (and taste) so good!

In The Friday Night Knitting Club and Knit Two, author Kate Jacobs offers a few tempting recipes, including "Dakota's oatmeal, blueberry, and orange muffins" and "maple apple muffins". Trying out the muffin recipes in these books will add another dimension to my reading experience of them. I haven't yet read Comfort Food, also by Kate Jacobs, but I've learned that it's the story of Augusta Simpson, a famous cooking celebrity on the Food Channel. Augusta, who's called Gus by everyone (this author often gives her characters off-beat, unisex names), is about to turn fifty-years-old, and starts to question who she is and what she has done so far with her life on a personal and professional level. Somewhat surprisingly, I read that this book doesn't have any recipes in it, although it talks a lot about food, especially Spanish food; perhaps the author thought it would be too predictable to include recipes in this book and wanted to focus more on the storyline. Still, my guess is that reading Comfort Food makes you head for the kitchen or out the door to a favorite restaurant. But let me return to my discussion of recipes in non-cookbooks or unexpected places. Here, I present a recipe in an unlikely place, in my blog about books, after a little background information.

I came up with this recipe for miso soup because I wanted my vegetarian daughter to be able to enjoy it again. I found three problems with the fresh paste, instant miso soups on the market. First of all, I couldn't find anything vegetarian--they all have fish in them. They also have MSG and a lot of sodium in them. I thought I could do better, so I asked the advice of friends and some family members, and also searched on the web. The result is my recipe for vegetarian miso soup, below.



Vegetarian Miso Soup ~ A Healthy Comfort Food
Serves 4

Ingredients:
5 cups of water
1 teaspoon shredded dried wakame seaweed, broken up
1 dried shiitake mushroom
1 tablespoon of extra-firm tofu, strained, and chopped into tiny rectangles
2 to 3 green onions, sliced into small pieces
1/3 to 1/2 cup of miso paste, depending on taste (I prefer an organic dark miso paste that I order from the Asian Food Grocer in San Francisco.)

Directions:
Bring water to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer seaweed and shiitake mushroom in the water for at least 20 minutes. The longer you simmer the seaweed, the less "fishy" the seaweed will become. I leave the top partially on the pot, to allow steam to escape, and keep the heat on low.

After simmering, remove shiitake mushroom, slice up, and return to the broth or "dashi".

Add sliced green onions, tofu, and smallest dash of soy sauce, and continue to cook for 5 to 10 minutes.

Gently mix miso paste in a bowl with about a cup of the dashi, then add to soup pot and simmer uncovered for a couple of minutes on very low heat before serving. (Do not boil miso, because that destroys the flavor and healthful properties of miso, which is a superfood.) Soup is best enjoyed steaming hot.

As with any recipe, vary amounts of ingredients to taste. You can get creative and add small amounts of other things to your miso soup, such as edamame and sliced baby corn. To make miso soup for one, use about 1 cup of water, two teaspoons of miso paste, and reduce other ingredients as well.