Cooking and Love and Perseverance

I went to see "Julie and Julia" today with my sis-in-law. We decided to meet first for brunch and take our time over it, making plenty of time for some much needed catching up.

I sometimes crave breakfast foods - waffles covered in whipped cream and fruit, pancakes dripping with syrup, french toast that looks like the Alps because of the mound of powdered sugar on top. But I almost never order it. I usually opt instead for oatmeal, or a quiche, or sometimes just two eggs and toast. But today felt special. (And that little voice in the back of my head kept reminding me that I just this week made a wish that the door to my free spirit would reopen. That I would remember to be ME and follow my desires.)

So I ordered the pan perdu (stuffed with cream cheese and orange marmalade). Appropriately, since we were going to go celebrate Julia Child, it came with an enormous mound of butter. And I didn't scrape it off. (She sighs heavily as she smiles remembering.) Heaven.

The movie was darling. (Meryl Streep as Julia Child was wonderful.) It was funny, and tender, and definitely made me want to shop for copper pots and wire whisks. It was inspiring.

And it had to do with so much more than cooking. It had to do with love, and it had to do with perseverance.

The two main characters, Julia and Julie, are both married and are both ambitious women. I was really touched by the relationship between Julia and her husband Paul. He wanted, it seemed more than anything, for her to be happy and urged her to keep looking until she found whatever it was that made her so. They just really seemed to adore each other.

Julia was told when starting cooking school that she would never be able to keep up with the men, and that she would never become a professional cook. She had her first cookbook turned down by numerous publishers. But she didn't give up.

Julie had set a goal to cook all the recipes in Julia's cookbook in one year, and to blog about it. Julie wasn't a cook; she worked in an office and aspired to being a writer. She endured a few setbacks and suffered some failures. But in the end, she cooked all 524 recipes in 365 days.

Julie also had a supportive husband. And, as we all do sometimes, she needed to be reminded just how important love is. All the sauces and the soufflés and the ducks are pretty meaningless if you have no one to share them with.

So . . . go see the movie. You'll laugh a lot, clutch your heart in a tender moment once or twice, and smile at the rewards of hard work and determination.

Enchanté,