Julie & Julia

As I type this, I am sitting here watching "Julie & Julia".  I now understand why everyone I know who's seen it says that you feel hungry just watching it.  Hunger is the last thing on my mind right now - I've spent much of what has so far constituted my vacation eating.  I admit it.  It's kind of difficult not to when you're surrounded by cookies and no actual, decent food.  Well, that will change.  It will.

From the computer room I hear squealing tires and revving engines.  I feel like I've been magically transported to last year's Christmas vacation, when my husband played Grand Theft Auto 3 (or is it 4?) for several days straight.  I spent a couple of those days sitting in the room with him, in an easy chair, with a laptop on my lap.  I was working on a story which of course stopped developing as soon as vacation ended and 9-5 picked back up.  It was nice to be working on something, you know? Maybe I'll revisit that story.  It usually benefits me to put a piece aside and reevaluate it with a fresh set of eyes.  I guess after a year, my eyes are pretty fresh.

Things are sort of in flux right now, and it's nothing I feel like getting into at the moment.  Not until there's a more solid outline of what's going to happen.  I just feel kinda blah.  I feel like life is on 'pause'.  I don't like it very much, but that's just how it is.  It'll get better.  I know it will.  For the moment my brain is just bouncing off the walls, as evidenced by my inability to pick a train of thought and stick with it.

Anyway, back to the movie, and the cookbook.  In a sadly underused word: Delightful! What a fantastic, life-altering book it is for a person like me who loves to cook and has picked up almost everything they know by trial and error.  So many things are becoming clearer, like the fact that proper saute can't be executed in butter alone - it won't get hot enough without burning.  So oil needs to be involved as well.  Brilliant.  Also, in the movie Julie makes the same revelation I did about sauteeing mushrooms! I wasn't the only one doing it wrong! And how fun is it that Boeuf Bourguignon is featured so prominently - I've made it many times and it just gets better and better.  Maybe I'll make it for the Julie & Julia party...whenever and wherever that is...