Julie & Julia & Alejandra: Adventures in Julia Child's Kitchen at the Smithsonian

"There was no question of where to make the drop-off -- at the center of the exhibit, beneath a large black-and-white photo of Julia in chef's apron and wild seventies polyester shirt, one hip cocked, grinning. There was even a narrow shelf running along under it, as if it really was a shrine, and pilgrims really were expected to leave their offerings there."

Julie Powell, Julie & Julia

I caused a bit of a ruckus at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History the other day. Those of you who have seen or read Julie & Julia will probably understand why.

The brilliant idea struck me late on Friday night as we were packing for our weekend getaway. My friend Lindsay had invited us down to the city and was throwing a dinner party in our honor. Even though we were coming in from five states away, I certainly wasn't about to show up empty-handed so I promised that I would bring a homemade dessert. I chose Molly's "Winning Hearts and Minds Cake" as it's an easy (but amazing) chocolate cake that actually tastes better on the second day.

That night, in the midst of the packing and scrambling that usually occurs before a trip, I popped into the kitchen to stir up the copious eggs and butter and chocolate that basically constitute the entirety of that recipe. Once the cake was in the oven, I noticed the now-empty box of butter.

"I'm bringing this to Washington!" I announced, running into the living room with the butter box in my hands. "And we can go to the Museum of American History and I can recreate that scene from Julie & Julia where Julie takes the awkward picture with the butter!"

I ran to the computer to Google image search "Julie Powell Butter Smithsonian" while Eugene gave me that look that he gives me when it's already midnight and we have to get up in 4 hours and instead of packing I'm Googling things about food. The picture came up and I dragged the laptop over to my mirror so that I could practice mimicking Amy-as-Julie's awkward pose.

"This is going to be great!" I told him, while I dismantled the box to keep it from getting crushed in transit. I think by this point, Eugene was just glad I wasn't bringing actual butter to DC with us.

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We actually didn't make it to the museum until our last day in Washington (although that wording implies the scheduling wasn't intentional...which it absolutely was).

We started at the Air & Space Museum (long been my favorite of the Smithsonians) and then walked across the National Mall to American History. It was only once we were inside that I realized I'd completely forgotten to bring along tape to put my butter box back together again. As soon as we got past security, I dragged Eugene to the gift shop in search of "some gum or something sticky" that I could use to seal the box. Unfortunately, there were no gum or stickers or tape of any kind anywhere in the store.

I started to despair until no other than Julia Child came to my rescue. Near the back of the store there was a display of Julia Child cookbooks. I turned one over and realized that the sticky price tag on the back of the book would be perfect. With Eugene blocking me from view, I slowly pulled off the price sticker off the book and ran out of the store. In the main hall I ripped the sticker in half and used it to tape the box back into shape. We were now ready for phase two of our mission.



The Julia Child exhibit at the Smithsonian has always been a popular one, but even more so since the movie opened. The exhibit was teeming with tourists taking pictures and watching the Julia videos playing on a constant loop on a TV screen near the front. I suddenly started getting a little nervous that my plan wasn't going to be as easy as I imagined. We walked around trying to find the exact spot in the movie where Amy Adams/Julie Powell left the butter, but it quickly became apparent that the movie had lied. There was no neat little corner with a guest book and framed portrait of Julia. The location from the movie didn't exist in real life.

"Hollywood lied!" I hissed at Eugene as we realized that we weren't going to be able to recreate the scene. Disappointed, I pushed past the throngs of people and pressed my face up against the plastic window looking into Julia's kitchen. It was smaller than I remembered, but really lovely. All the elements where there: the beautiful peg board with Paul's outlines, the pictures of cats, the gorgeous copper pots. Close to the window, there was a memo pad and Julia's phone with little bits of tape stuck to it. I looked at it closely and realized something remarkable! On the speed dial pad, next to some names I didn't recognize, there was a button clearly marked "Dorie. G."

"It's Dorie!" I said out loud to nobody in particular, and stood in amazement at seeing Dorie Greenspan's name listed on Julia's speed dial. I pointed it out to Eugene who didn't know what I was talking about, but I figured you guys would (I can always count on you!), so I took a picture. Now if I could only figure out the rest of those names...


By this point it was pretty clear that we weren't going to get the photo I'd wanted. Just as we were ready to move on to the next exhibit, a group of people watching the videos cleared out and, like a glorious mirage, Julia appeared.

"Oh my God!" I called Eugene over and pointed out the large photo of Julia in a crazy polyester shirt and apron. "It's a picture! I can do it here!" Beneath the portrait, just like in the book, there was a little ledge. The perfect spot for my butter.


I gave Eugene the camera and walked over to the spot. There were still a lot of people around so I had to summon up my nerves, but I did it. I pulled the butter out of my bag and placed it on the ledge while Eugene snapped away. I did my best to recreate the awkward pose from memory: one hand straight, one hand towards the photo, chin scrunched into my shoulder.

While I was posing, people suddenly started to recognize what I was doing. I kept hearing them whisper "butter" and "Julie & Julia."

"You brought your own butter!" One man finally said to me when I finished with the shoot.

"Did you see the movie? I'm a food blogger. I'm trying to recreate the scene," I explained hastily. He laughed appreciatively, noting that he loved the movie, and I gave him my business card so he could check the site out later. A mini crowd had gathered by this point so I told them all about the blog and handed out a few more cards.

Eugene turned to me after the crowd moved on. "Are you satisfied now?" he asked.

"Oh yes!" I said, and took his hand as we headed over to the next exhibit.


Back in New York the next day, I pulled out my copy of the book and flipped to the end where Julie makes her pilgrimage to Washington. I laughed because her description of the moment was actually a lot like what I experienced. And from her words, there is no doubt that the picture I saw was the same one she took her photo with. The movie may have lied, but ultimately my recreation of it ended up being a lot closer to the original than I'd imagined.

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Julie & Julia: An Edible Movie Review

I wasn't sure what to expect from Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron's lively film based on the book of the same name. The book chronicles a year in the life of Julie Powell, a bored temp who decides to cook and blog her way through all 534 recipes in Julia Child's book Mastering the Art of French Cooking...in just one year. The movie version took the book further by paring Powell's story with Julia Child's in a bit of a flip-flop parallel structure that I originally expected to hate, but didn't.

On paper it seemed perfect: a Nora Ephron movie about food set in Paris and New York with a clearly (even from just the previews) brilliant portrayal of Julia Child?! How could that possibly go wrong? I love Nora Ephron and I love movies that have to do with food and cooking, and though I knew very little about Julia, I figured it's hard to mess up a story about learning to cook in Paris.

The part I was a little iffy about--the part everyone seemed a little iffy about--was the Julie Powell side of the story. I read the book about a year ago and I enjoyed it, but it definitely wasn't one of my favorites. I found myself skipping over parts and bristling over the harshness of her language. Nothing about the book ever made me want to run to the kitchen to cook, the way other food memoirs have. In fact, I remember finishing the book feeling exhausted and sweaty and, more than anything, just glad that it was over.

What it came down to is that I never felt a passion for the food itself in Julie's words. It seems ironic given the subject, but really what she had was an obsession and a determination. It was as if she made a choice and decided to stick with it come hell, but had no true love for it. She battled her recipes. She tackled them the way people tackle packing up books for a big move or tiling the bathroom floor. As incredible as her feat was, it failed to seduce me. And when it comes to food, I want to be seduced.

The movie was a different beast entirely. It opens in post World War II Paris, where Julia Child (played by the ever-brilliant Meryl Streep) is trying to figure out what to do with herself while her husband Paul is stationed at the US Embassy. Talking it over with Paul (Stanley Tucci) she determines that the only thing she really loves to do (and the only thing she is really any good at) is eat. Julia signs up for a tough French culinary course where she warbles and charms and fearlessly cooks her way to the top of the class (and beyond).



The Queens side of the story is somewhat less fanciful. Accordion music doesn't waft through the air in Long Island City, where Julie Powell and her husband live in a cramped studio over a pizza parlor. This isn't the charming New York City of Ephron's You've Got Mail or When Harry Met Sally. In fact, the city barely exists here at all, save for a few sweaty subway rides and the shots of Ground Zero outside Julie's office window.

The New York story takes place almost entirely in Julie's tiny kitchen where she diligently attacks lobsters and melts copious sticks of butter with the determination of a soldier, interspersed with her regular tantrums over poorly-trussed chickens and slippery aspic.

The eating is less pretty than at the Parisian dinner parties, but this part I actually liked. I relished watching Eric Messina, who plays Julie's ever-supportive husband, shove large spoonfuls of cake and entire slices of bruschetta in his mouth. It was that kind of real, honest, big-mouth eating that happens in home kitchens and tiny dining tables where the plates might be chipped and the trucks roll by all throughout dinner, but it’s no matter because the food is really, really good.

Other critics have said they thought the Julie story wrested time from Julia’s, but I enjoyed the modern contrast. Had the two stories been turned into individual films, I doubt that I would have been so drawn to either of them. What I found most intriguing, was the way that Ephron rewrote Julie as a much softer and likable person (all the whining and weird, bushy hair aside). While I actually liked the movie-Julie much better than the book version, I question whether someone with the temperament of the girl in the film could have actually accomplished such a task. I think one would need the fiery harshness of the real-life version to actually get through it.

I also thought it odd that neither of the characters gained any weight throughout the course of the story, even though that was a constant theme in the book—and one with which the real Julie Powell still admits to struggling. At one point, upon seeing Eric Messina shove another handful of cake in his mouth, my own boyfriend, who is very aware of the reality of living with a food blogger who constantly cooks and serves him delicious things, leaned over to me and asked “well why doesn’t he gain any weight?” Even though there were points where movie-Julie complained that she was “getting fat,” she could have just as well been complaining about being a giant green elephant, since either claim would have been equally absurd. I couldn't help think about those wonderful scenes in the Bridget Jones movies where her mood and the events in her life are actually mirrored in the pounds that come on and off her bottom. It would have been fun to see a bit of that realism injected into this movie, too.

As a food blogger with dreams of bigger things, I couldn't help being absolutely enchanted with the scene where a profile by the New York Times' Amanda Hesser causes Julie's phone to explode with calls from reporters, publishing companies, and literary agents. It was several years ago, when the food blog market was much less saturated, but I couldn't help but stare wide-eyed and think "Damn! I want that!"

Aside from the "book deal porn," one of the most lust-inducing scenes in the movie was the one where Julia walks around a cookery shop with Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck, casually picking up and dropping breathtakingly gorgeous copper pots into her shopping basket the same way one might randomly grab an apple at the supermarket. I was drooling over her gorgeous collection of shiny copper cookware and those perfectly outlined peg boards that Paul lovingly assembled for their Cambridge kitchen. “Can you make me one of those?” I whispered to Eugene when I saw them.

Despite all the warnings, we made the mistake of not having dinner before the movie. When it ended (two hours and change later) we rushed out of the theater and walked straight up Broadway to the nearest French bistro, where we quickly ordered warm goat cheese over frissee, duck pate, hanger steak in a red wine shallot sauce, garlic frites, and lots and lots of French bread and butter. At the table we talked about the film, and I was surprised that my boyfriend actually liked it; we never agree on movies so this was quite the event. Like me, he loved Meryl Streep's portrayal of Julia the best. Once the bread was gone, the waitress came back to ask if we’d like to see the dessert menu. I nearly laughed as I dove for the menu. We chose the chocolate fondue, which is not technically French, but I can’t imagine Julia ever objecting to a dessert that requires you dip delicious things in hot, melted chocolate. Can you?

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