Powell’s career cooks thanks to blog, book

Lecture by Julie Powell, Tuesday, April 13, 7 p.m., Scranton Cultural Center (420 N. Washington Ave.), Lackawanna County Library System 2010 Library Lecture Series. Tickets available by showing library card at any Lackawanna County Library System library, the SCC box office or Everhart Museum. Info: 570.348.3003.

“365 days. 524 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen.” If this notion sounds vaguely familiar, it may or may not have something to do with the fact that it is the plot behind “Julie & Julia,” a recently released film starring Amy Adams and Meryl Streep. The movie revolves around a woman’s ambitious undertaking of recreating every recipe from Julia Child’s cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” But long before Streep was traipsing through movie sets as an awkwardly tall and larger-than-life Julia Child, there was a book. And before that, there was the blog that started it all.

The mastermind behind the book, “Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Kitchen Apartment” and the blog, “The Julie/Julia Project,” is New Yorker Julie Powell. Luckily for her devoted readers, she will be opening the Lackawanna County Library System 2010 Library Lecture Series at the Scranton Cultural Center this month. Powell’s lecture will likely touch on how she came to find so much success from one innocuous blogging project eight years ago — way before the general population even knew what a blog was.

As most people can surely relate to, Powell was more than a little disenchanted with the direction her life was taking at the time. Though she had a wonderful husband and a little abode in Queens, N.Y., her career was stuck in neutral, consisting of a string of unsatisfying jobs. So in August of 2002, Powell started the “Julie/Julia Project,” something she calls her own “midnight revelation.” Powell pointed out that she had always been familiar with Child’s cookbook, as it had been a fixture in her childhood home, and her passion for cooking and love of writing seemed to make cooking her way through the book the perfect way to release some of her pent-up tension.

“It all came together in a very intuitive moment. The subject matter, the medium, it was all there,” Powell said.

Talk about the pieces falling into place. If you had asked her then if she thought her brainchild would become a bestselling book and a major motion picture, the response would have been a resounding “no way.” If ever there were an instance where fate existed, though, this was it. Where some people might have seen a dauntingly lengthy collection of recipes with obscure (and often downright nasty) ingredients, Powell saw a challenge. Before long, she said, that challenge gave her purpose, “nonsensical” though it may have been, and provided her with a safe haven after a grueling day of work and commuting.

And cooking and blogging about her experience gave Powell an unforeseen reward.

“There was this unexpected and extraordinary bonus of a community of readers, which was a great surprise to me, and I really treasure it,” she said. This virtual clique rallied around her and helped her push through, adding solid support to her already concrete work ethic.

Powell’s community of dedicated readers extends to those she meets at the lectures and Q&A events she participates in, like the upcoming one in Scranton. Speaking to her, it’s obvious she enjoys sharing her experience with others at these appearances, and she is eager to have the opportunity to chat with the people whose interest has helped her career flourish to the point that it has.

“(Hearing about) someone else’s experience with the (book or the blog) is useful and moving, and it’s fun to get to talk to readers and get their take on it,” she said.

In addition to being thrilled to share this ride with her readers, Powell is also grateful to have been able to touch on her love and devotion for Child and to bring her back to the forefront of the culinary world in a generation that is likely unacquainted with her life’s work.

Late last year, Powell published a second book, “Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession,” which is a darker, even more personal counterpart to “Julie & Julia” and is an exploration of a time in her life involving illicit affairs and an apprenticeship at a butcher shop.

Through all of this experience, one would expect Powell to have a great deal of insight to share about cooking, writing and life itself. But she would be quick to give the disclaimer that she can’t necessarily offer much practical advice about, say, getting a book published. She can, however, lend a bit of advice about taking a risk.

“I’m not one to say something like, ‘follow your bliss,’ but take a step that scares you,” she said.

w