Posted: 20:58, November 1, 2022 | Updated: 21:52, November 1, 2022
Food writer Julie Powell, whose blog about cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s 1961 book French Cooking was turned into an Oscar-nominated movie, has died aged 49. Powell rose to fame in the early 2000s when she started a blog about her quest to cook every recipe in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume 1. The project established her as one of the Internet’s first food bloggers, and she went on to write the book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen in 2005. The late writer and director Nora Ephron adapted the book into an Oscar-nominated feature film starring Meryl Streep as Child and Amy Adams as Powell. Julie Powell, whose blog Julie/Julia Project became a hit movie, has died aged 49. The Oscar-nominated film starred Amy Adams as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child Powell died at her home in Olivebridge, upstate New York, on Oct. 26 of cardiac arrest, her husband, Eric Powell, told The New York Times. Powell was born Julie Foster on April 20, 1973 in Austin, Texas. Disillusioned with her low-level administrative job after moving to New York and looking for a creative outlet, Powell launched Julie/Julia in the nascent era of Internet writing. She described her adventures in the kitchen using sharp humor in a direct, understated tone. The project involved cooking all 524 recipes from Child’s 1961 French Cooking Classic from her tiny, run-down Long Island City, Queens apartment she shared with her husband. The self-deprecating drama of her misadventures and disappointments both in and out of the kitchen struck a chord with mostly Gen X readers. The book based on Julie’s successful blog/Julia Project went on to sell more than 1 million copies Powell died aged 49 of cardiac arrest at home in Olivebridge, upstate New York Meryl Streep, who played Julia Child in the film adaptation of the book, was nominated for an Oscar The blog gained hundreds of thousands of views at a time when many people still used the internet via telephone. Within a year of its launch on Salon.com, it had approximately 400,000 page views and thousands of regular readers. The book that followed sold more than a million copies, mostly in paperback, which was titled Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. Powell’s work inspired dozens of food bloggers who followed, his template and tone evident in later successful web and social media cooking programs, including Dorie Greenspan, Ina Garten, Deb Perelman and Alison Roman. “Shocked to learn this morning of the passing of Julie Powell, the original food blogger,” Perelman tweeted Tuesday under the account of popular cookbook and social media brand Smitten Kitchen. “Cooking through Julia Child’s books, she made Child relevant to a new generation and wrote about cooking in a fresh, conversational, this-is-my-real-life tone that was rare back then.”
