Step 1: Don’t go see Julie & Julia, a delightful culinary treat, on an empty stomach – unless, of course, you are a masochist.
Step 2: Blend the ingredients together until you get a nice, fluffy texture. Julie & Julia is two stories, both based on real-life women at a crossroads in their lives and interwoven together. First, there’s Julia Child (Meryl Streep), who in 1947, doesn’t know what to do with her life after her excitement as a government employee during WWII. Her adoring husband Paul (Stanley Tucci), a foreign diplomat, has been assigned to Paris, where Julia quickly realizes one thing: She loves to eat French cooking. Such is the catalyst for her to become the revolutionary cookbook author and TV host we know and love today. Then, jumping ahead a few decades to 2002, there’s Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a 30-year-old writer stuck in a depressing day job – and stuck on what she should write. She’s always admired Julia Child – and is a pretty darn good cook herself – so, with her husband Eric’s (Chris Messina) encouragement, she decides to make 524 recipes from Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days and blog daily about her experiences. You know how it all turns out but it’s still fun to see the how the cooks got their start.
Step 3: Realize some flavors are stronger than others. Streep is once again, simply amazing as Child, punctuating her words and exuding all the positivity and joie de vivre the real chef was known for. When we are in Child’s universe, as she tries to write the French cookbook, the film really takes off. Unfortunately, things slow down a little when the film switches back to Julie’s world. Adams does a nice job, conveying Julie’s angst at turning 30 and searching for some purpose in life, but the 
character isn’t very sympathetic overall. Messina and Tucci are great, however, as these two pillars of strength, loving and supporting their wives in their arduous endeavors — especially Tucci. He and Streep have amazing chemistry and apparently accurately portray the Childs, who were very passionate with each other. Yes, that means they had a lot of sex.
Step 4: Do NOT skimp on the meal. Oh, the cooking in this film! Writer/director Nora Ephron knows all about romantic comedies (When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle), but she is also an accomplished cook in her own right. So making Julie & Julia must have just been a dream job. Ephron said she wanted the food in this movie to be like porn, and she hit it right on the spatula. It’s like rolling around in a giant skillet of butter, which Child always said you could never have enough of. In fact, even more than leaving the theater hungry, I left wanting to COOK. I took my mother with me, who loves LOVES to cook, and I was asking her a bunch of questions. Is it really hard to poach an egg? De-bone a duck? Kill lobsters? She was full of hope we’d start a catering business together – not quite. I do want to poach an egg, though.
Level of difficulty in watching Julie & Julia: Easy as pie. A big Bavarian cream pie with a strawberry swirl.
