One woman's quest to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking.
Married to her high-school sweetheart, but childless and staring down her thirtieth birthday, disgruntled outer-borough secretary Julie Powell was in a serious funk. To pull herself out of it, she decided to devote a year to cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The author later admitted that the life-changing project was "like doing Thanksgiving every day for a year" — especially if your idea of Thanksgiving involves many pounds of butter. Powell risks her marriage, her job and her sanity as she tackles omelets and offal in her tiny kitchen, and chronicles her successes and failures in a blog that eventually became this book. Listening to the frequently foul-mouthed author describe sweating over broken mayonnaise — all the while staying well-lubricated with cocktails or red wine — is a tonic, the perfect soundtrack for any stressed-out cook short of time with company on the way.