Hello Friend,
This is my first blog of all time, but certainly not the first time I expressed my opinion :) I am full up on opinions! And I would love to hear from you & what you are thinking.
If you read my "About Me" you know that we live in the Philippines full-time serving as missionaries to the urban poor. I am stateside right now bringing my 3rd daughter to college, and to help with my mom who is not doing well.
I have spent 2 weeks with my daughter and her husband in Delaware before we head to MN early tomorrow morning. We have had a great time with my 4 daughters and son-in-law -- relaxing, sight-seeing, playing games, making great food, and now we are having a Smallville marathon. We don't want the night to end and have our time together come to a close, so we're staying up all night. Coffee time soon! :)
We've made some great eats and I will share those recipes in another blog soon.
We saw Julie & Julia yesterday, and we all loved it.
Let's talk about it :)
What I loved:
**Julia had so much joy in life -- she adored her husband, she loved food and wasn't afraid to admit she loved to eat. I loved that about her. She appreciated even the little things of life -- I actually think that is part of the key to experiencing joy; being able to find joy in the little things.
**She was not afraid to love people and showed great interest in them.
** She wasn't afraid to speak her mind, but she did it will grace & tact; and respect for people -- I liked that.
I could relate to her so much because she felt obsessed with cooking, and that's how I feel right now. Being stateside for just 2 weeks has allowed me to use a kitchen that's "my size" again and get ingredients at every store, have hot water come from the kitchen spigot, use a dishwasher!! -- Yeah for dishwashers!! I love cooking in this country; it's so convenient! I have ordered about 5 great cookbooks from Amazon that I can't wait to get and study.
I told my girls just a few days ago that I want to study cooking and learn so much more about the techniques. I have been cooking for 26 years and consider myself a reasonable if not pretty good cook, but there is so much more to learn.
My new passion is breads -- I want to work through a book -- I truly thought about it before I saw the movie yesterday :) Some of the books I've thought about are: The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Artisan Bread in 5 minutes, or Julia Child's "How to Cook." Let me know what you think and if you want to join me. I hope I can get the ingredients in the Philippines. That's one of my challenges, but I need to embrace this challenge and/or alter recipes to make them work. Hey, I'll blog about it! Original idea :)
Back to the movie.
**Julia Child was really tall -- 6'2" I believe. She was way taller than her cupboards and stove -- it looked like most things in her kitchen really. That's my situation in the Philippines -- the counters are not American sized so I lean over or sit on the counter when I work in the kitchen.
Yet, the size of her kitchen didn't affect her love of cooking, and that inspired and encouraged me. She looked at her challenges with joy and with determination -- it encouraged me to look for ways to deal with the challenges I face in my own kitchen; no hot water, short counters, small oven, limited availability of ingredients, no dishwasher, and excessive heat.
**Julia and her sister adored each other and expressed it with exuberance -- I loved that! It reminded me of my kids -- they love each other and truly enjoy each others company. They laugh with each other and it just brings such joy to my heart. I am so happy they have each other.
The only thing I didn't like about this movie was to find out that Julia Child smoked. I'm sorry but I can't see why anyone who loves food and appreciates good taste would suck ashes & smoke into their mouth and lungs. I just don't get it.
And, I wish that Julia and Julie would have met -- I couldn't understand why supposedly Julia Child thought Julie had somehow disrespected her. Julie loved Julia and appreciated all the great things about her -- she totally respected her. I was a little disappointed that that's how it ended, because I like a happy ending, and it seemed to leave you hoping for a meeting.
Anyway, those are some of my thoughts on the movie. I'm sure Julia Child's books will be flying off the shelf as more people see this movie :)
Blessings to anyone out there who reads this,
just julie :)
