Don't Call Her a Foodie

Posted on October 21, 2005

The Associated Press has the storytalkstalks to amateur cook-turned-author Julie Powell, who landed a book deal after blogging her experiences as she attempted to cook her way through Child's landmark 1961 cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1. The result is Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (Little, Brown). The new author discusses her book and why she doesn't like being called a foodie.

She may have mastered the art of French cooking, but don't call amateur cook-turned-author Julie Powell a foodie. "Foodie to me implies being really taken with the trappings of the more elitist aspects of enjoying food, so I try to veer away from the term," she says.

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"It was very clear to me from the beginning that I couldn't just take the blog and plop it into a book form, because that would be excruciatingly boring," she says. But publisher Little, Brown (a division of Time Warner, as is CNN) had faith in her, even though it was the first time it had picked up a book based on a blog. Critics, however, have gotten snagged on the transformation. Some say the book is too, well, bloggy.

"'Julie and Julia' still has too much blog in its DNA: it has a messy, whatever's-on-my-mind incontinence to it, taking us places we'd rather not go," writes David Kamp of The New York Times. (Powell's disclosure that she sold her ova to pay off her credit card debt springs to mind.)

Talk about your oversharing.

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