Anyway, I am LOVING the new book. I went to my mom’s for a week and forgot it, which thoroughly pissed me off. I’m hoping to finish it this weekend (4 hour car ride for vacation) and start cooking it next week. I swear it won’t be 3 months til you hear from me again, and never again will it take me 3 months to get through a book. I promise!

Anyway, onto some amazing news! I was in NY last week, and while I was in town, the always fabulous Giulia Melucci (of our first book, I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, was doing a reading in SoHo. My sister came with me, and I loved it! She read a great part of the book…about her first encounter with Ethan and his school of cooking (I swear, buy the book!). She also prepared two dishes for everyone to try. One was one of my favorites – her Healthy Penne with broccoli and raisins. The other, I hadn’t made yet – because my hubs is not a fan of eggplant. She made Lachlan’s Rigatoni with eggplant. AAAAAAnd it was delicious. We both gobbled up plates. I would have taken that tray of pasta and dashed out the door if I could.

I did get some time to chat with Giulia and she was super sweet. She remembered our blog (and Marilla, because really, who forgets her?) I bought another copy of the book. Yes. I did. I figured I could use my hardcover for recipes and keep the paperback that she signed for me on the shelf. AND in the paperback version, there’s an extra chapter! So I had to buy it. Of course. Always an excuse to shop with me!!

Anyway, thank you Giulia for taking the time to chat with me!

Giulia and I at her reading at McNally Jackson Books.

I was slightly disappointed come Christmas Eve. More in myself than anything. You see, I had spent all day attempting to cook with quite an eager, overtired toddler underfoot. While she was able to help with most of the desserts I was making (and the baklava was put together during naptime), I was not ready for her to cover her hands in pasta dough and run all over the house I had spent all week cleaning. Silly me did not read about the fact that I needed a potato ricer and/or food mill until the potatoes were boiling in the pot. Strike one. As we speak, Amazon is running a search for one/both of those so I can try again, as gnocchi is my dad’s absolute favorite food. I was really rushed making it as well, as it was getting late and I had hungry people waiting to be fed. Giulia’s sauce was really delicious, I thought, but my husband (sorry G!) still seems to prefer my own sauce (which is my grandmother’s recipe). My gnocchi was a little lumpy since I tried my best without a food mill. I was more disappointed in myself. I had been looking forward to making that recipe since finding it in the book, and everything else I made that day came out absolutely perfect, except the one I really wanted! So, live and learn. The consistency was right, but they were just a tad lumpy. I hope that next time (and I will definitely blog about it!) it comes out better.

As we say farewell to I Loved, I Lost, I Made Spaghetti, I feel very bittersweet. Partially because it was our first book, but I really felt myself understanding Giulia and where she came from, and I loved her story and her wonderfully positive take on everything. I feel like had we grown up closer to each other (Not like Nassau County and Brooklyn are terribly far away, but you get the point), I like to think we would have been friends. She had posted about this blog on her own twitter page (If you’re a fan of the book, or of her, follow her at @gmelucci) and on her own facebook page as well. There seems to be an unspoken camraderie of us Catholic School girls – kind of like the unspoken trials and tribulations of making it through years with those nuns. She is a fan of us, which makes this first book even more special – the fact that we were embraced so greatly by its author. I can only hope the future authors we read (and cook) enjoy our blog half as much as she has. So, thank you Giulia, for making our first couple of months with this blog SO worthwhile

I hope everyone had a happy and safe holiday and enjoyed your time with your families and loved ones. We sure did!

[ Psst... If you're at all unfamiliar with Julie Powell's blog, The Julie/Julia Project, about her adventures in cooking one of Julia Child's cookbooks and how it was turned into a book and then consequently the aforementioned movie, or the story behind it, then perhaps you won't follow this very well. So I suggest you do some research (Wikipedia always helps, a little). ]

So Julia Child didn’t like Julie Powell’s blog. She thought that Julie wasn’t “a serious cook.” That sort of annoys me, although I get that it was probably a generational gap, or perhaps Julia wasn’t getting the snarkiness or maybe even didn’t like the expletives that possibly were sprinkled (or peppered, haha) in. I get that. But what I don’t get is why cooking has to be serious. Why can’t it just be fun? Or maybe even predictable, sometimes, in a comforting way? Why does it have to be serious to the point where a blogger is considered “flimsy” for her attempts?

Don’t get me wrong- I love Julia Child. I recognize how she revolutionized cooking and changed America’s outlook on cooking (and the world, I suppose). I love that she loved butter, because, hell… I do too. Probably more than I should. I know she was fabulous. But, I mean, we aren’t curing cancer here. We aren’t formulating a plan for world peace, or assisting in the Healthcare reform bill, or anything.  It’s a cookbook. It makes people enjoy life more, expand their culinary horizons, that sort of thing. It’s a pleasurable book, not War & Peace. Just like how we’re reading, and cooking, and sharing our experiences about both, and it’s a pleasurable experience. And while in some forms cooking can be serious business (for example, if you’re a restaurant owner I’m sure it’s fairly serious), I don’t find that it has to be stuffy. And I sort of resent anyone who does. Why can’t you cook and when something goes wrong say “fuck” or “shit”? I do it all the time, like that one time when I forgot to put the eggs in my cupcake batter and realized after they were in the oven. I’m pretty sure Julia uttered the ‘F’ word once or twice, too. Why can’t you take on something and do it with humor and seriousness? I don’t see anything wrong with that. I don’t see why you can’t have a sense of humor about making coq au vin or lobster thermidor. What’s so serious about lobsters and cheese!? It’s delicious, yes, but lobsters are pretty funny too, or at least cooking them can be. And in laughing about it, I don’t think it makes you a less serious cook than anyone else. At least you’re putting the effort in to make something like that or boeuf bourguignon, and not defrosting a microwave meal or frozen pizza. I think it was an homage to Julia, and I’m sorry she didn’t see it that way. But you don’t have to be a Le Cordon Bleu graduate to love, enjoy and appreciate cooking, or do it well.

Because here’s the thing: cooking IS fun. It’s a blast. I love it, I love it as much as I love art, and that’s a lot. I am not a classically trained chef, I never took a pastry class in my life, and I probably cut my onions the wrong way. I don’t have T-Fal pots and pans, and you know what? I don’t give a shit. I love to cook. I love to bake. I don’t do it to impress anyone, and I don’t need to. I have fun with it, because it is fun, and I love not only the creation process, but the devouring process. It doesn’t have to be boring, the same, boring, tasteless, spiceless, flavorless chicken every night, or the same lousy casserole no one likes  to eat, but at the same time, no one thinks they can do any better, because OH-EM-GEE, cooking is, like, so totally complicated! You don’t have to make an 8-course meal every night, use Smart Balance every time, or worry about how fattening everything is every single day. Loosen up. Live a little. You don’t have to be Julia Child- and you certainly don’t have to cook lousy food because it’s  quick or tasteless food because it’s “healthy”! Because it’s supposed to be fun, and enjoyable, and savored when it’s eaten; whether it’s drenched in butter or just steamed vegetables, and you’re supposed to be you- make what you like to eat, how you like to eat it, and when.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a vegan, vegetarian, a person of Muslim or Jewish religious beliefs who won’t eat pork, or a Hindu who won’t eat beef: YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO ENJOY YOUR FOOD. And even more so, enjoy CREATING it! Cookbooks are supposed to inspire you, and make you happy, and you’re not supposed to be worried or scared it won’t turn out perfect, or commit yourself to an entire day in the kitchen just to feel like you’re doing the recipe and it’s author justice.

For example, the four of us plan to take on Giulia’s gnocchi as our final project of her book. I can’t speak for the others, but making your own pasta is sorta terrifying. I did it once for a Daring Bakers’ Challenge on Cupcake Rehab and it was a bit daunting. But it was lasagna, so it wasn’t nearly as difficult as potato pasta formed in little pillows with your thumb and a fork. It wasn’t like anyone was going to say “Your lasagna noodles are too thick/thin” or “Your lasagna noodles  don’t have the right shape.” Now I’m fairly certain that gnocchi is not brain surgery, as people have been making it by hand for many, many years. But still… when you create something that seems larger than life like that, it makes you feel different and accomplished. And it’s kind of a testament to the person who wrote the recipe if you can make it and say “Wow, that wasn’t as hard as I thought it was going to be!” because that means they’ve achieved the best thing a “teacher” can achieve: teaching on a level you can understand, learn from, and launch off of, so to speak. Julia should have been flattered that she was so adored by Julie, that she inspired her so, and that her recipes translated so well they could be created in a tiny kitchen in a Queens apartment, not to mention so long after the book had been first published.

I should say now that I’m extremely glad that not all Julia/Giulia’s are the same and that Giulia Melucci didn’t view us  and our blog the way Julia Child viewed Julie Powell and what she was doing. Just as I hope every other author we choose sees it as flattery, not mockery, or us trying to “use” a book for fame. Because that’s certainly not the case. It should be taken as flattery. That, and seen as a group of friends doing what we love, keeping ourselves sane through the therapy of reading and cooking,  sharing the experience with all of you and maybe, just maybe… learning something new both in our kitchens and about ourselves.