So I had to read this after reading Julie & Julia and before I saw the movie so I could see what Meryl Streep's part was all about (Julia Child isn't actually in the Julie & Julia book) Fascinating. Her husband was transferred to Paris just after the war to work for the State Dept. and Julia fell in love with France. She cooked...but not well. She actually used the Joy of Cooking book. But as she ventured out into the city and went shopping at the local markets and had the local cuisine at the restaurants she became fascinated with the tastes and ingredients used. So she decided to enroll in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school and learned the basics of French cuisine which she dutifully experimented with on her husband. She developed an obsession for cooking tools and friended the fish monger's and the produce stand women.

She and two friends decided to start cooking classes for mostly Americans living in Paris. This evolved into writing a cookbook for Americans to teach them how to cook French cuisine. Oh the work she put into her recipes! She needed to make sure you could find the ingredients in America and had to work out substitutions. She would do these recipes 40 or 50 times! Her passion for food and France oozes from the pages.

Definitely a fun and interesting read!

5 STARS