Masters of the Art of French Cooking

Do you hear that? The voices, the laughter, the corks popping, the arteries hardening? It can only mean one thing.

You’re hearing the echoes of my book club’s discussion of Julie Powell’s "Julie and Julia".

OK, there wasn’t much book discussion. We’re rather lax in that department, but there was lots of sharing and savouring. When we did talk about the book, we came to the consensus that Julie Powell is nuts. We all struggled to prepare our selected recipes from Julia Child’s "Mastering the Art of French Cooking". Considering the trouble I had when I attempted a trial run a few weeks ago, I took childish pleasure in that. Few of us could imagine doing a second recipe, let alone trying to cook every recipe in the book.

In spite of our lack of enthusiasm for our own MtAoFC creations, we all enjoyed the dishes prepared by other club members. That could be because many of us were too frustrated to enjoy the results of our labour-intensive recipes. We all agreed that, left to our own devices, we could have created similar dishes with less effort, and they would have tasted better.

Like I said, though I wasn’t impressed with my Riz Duxelles, I was impressed with the rest of the food. When I’m not completely intimidated by their cooking abilities, I do so love being the same book club as these women. More pictures from the evening are below. Try not to lick your monitor.






After reviewing the pictures, I can see it's a good thing I signed up for Meghan's 3-Day Green Smoothie Cleanse over at Making Love in the Kitchen. In fact, I'm feeling pretty good about my decision to join, but that could be because I'm still full of French food. Check back in a few days to see if I'm still feeling so positive!