How Julie Powell and her ‘Julie/Julia’ blog changed food writing

When Julie Powell, a 29-year-old low-level “government drone” living in Queens, set out in 2002 to cook every recipe in Julia Child’s epic “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” and to write about it on her personal blog, she called the self-imposed assignment “deranged.”

In her first post, she posited that the task might cost her marriage or her job. “365 days. 536 recipes. One girl and a crappy outer borough kitchen,” she wrote. “How far will it go? We can only wait. And wait. And wait …. The Julie/Julia Project. Coming soon to a computer terminal near you.”