I saw it!

Julie & Julia that is. The first blog made into a movie - how could I not? Dad & I met our friend Linda at a theater in Petaluma. We giggled like girls and LOVED the movie. Dad said he enjoyed it, but didn't laugh as much. But he stayed awake!

Of course, we had to go to a restaurant commensurate with all that food viewing afterward, and tried Cucina Paradiso at first, which was booked until 8 p.m., so we wandered down the street to Central Market (to be a separate post which I'll back link to later). Yes, I did a little research before we went so we would not be disappointed. And I had to attempt looking up the blog "The Julie/Julia Project" on my cell phone while we were waiting for our food.

Hmmm, what's this? No photos? Well I vowed to look closer when I got home. Indeed, no photos. And a terrible interface for the history, just a calendar to keep clicking dates, one month at a time, with no post titles list. I kept clicking through and reading things randomly. Arrugh. I would have passed this blog by if it weren't for the movie. My friend Jo-Ann and I were talking the other day about the amount of foul language passing for writing on some blogs and comments. I can't stand to read writings full of expletives, it's just not pleasant.

In the movie, Julie says something about her mother perhaps not liking it that she uses the F* work a 'couple times'. That's an understatement. However the movie doesn't go overboard with the expletives, so you get a sense of what she was trying to accomplish and how she struggled to make all those complex recipes. You come to love Julie's quirkiness as well as Julia's effervescence in the face of anything. As she came to the end of her cooking lessons with Julia, she convinced me too that mayonnaise can be made by hand, and you can create new doors and new horizons for yourself. Julie's last post was the day after Julia Child died, where she shared her thoughts about Julia and how she changed her life.

I have a goal for my blog too, although more sanely, I have never given myself a deadline for completion. I do plan to visit every eating establishment in Marin and blog about it. Excepting the fast food chain type places of course. And I'm actually very close to meeting that goal. This experience, 1,294 post strong and ongoing, has enriched my life in so many ways in the last 6 years. Yes, this blog will be 6 years old on August 16th!

The casting for the film was brilliant, Meryl Streep was perfect as Julia, and take a look at this MSNBC article on Julie's book, where the real Julie is pictured and it's obvious why Amy Adams was just the one to tap to play Julie.

Thanks Nora Ephron, for exposing the stuggles and souls of two lovely women in this film! (And by the way, Nora blogs too!)

photo credit: iStockphoto.com