NPR Interviews Nora Ephron re "Julie and Julia"..(Good for us Back to Cooking folks)

[KoKo]

Nora Ephron On Julie, Julia And Cooking Like A Child

August 7, 2009

Nora Ephron never met Julia Child. But the Hollywood veteran — the writer-director behind Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail and now Julie and Julia, a film about the iconic chef and a food blogger who plows her way through hundreds of Child's recipes — says she always felt a connection to television's famously unscripted food evangelist.

"When I used to cook from Julia's cookbook, I had long imaginary conversations with her," Ephron tells NPR's Linda Wertheimer. "And I used to think maybe she would come to dinner, even though I had never met her, and never did."

That sentiment was clearly shared by Julie Powell. The young blogger cooked the recipes from Child's landmark Mastering the Art of French Cooking — all 524 of them — in a single year. While holding down a full-time job.

"Which is insane," Ephron says. "She, I know, dreamt that she would meet Julia, and Julia would salute her for her achievement, and at least write her a nice note. But that was not to be."

A Teacher Whose Lessons Included Confidence

Child built an empire and sparked a whole new TV genre — the cooking show. Not only was she savvy, but she also was a great teacher who coached generations of women, Ephron says. And her methods are rarely seen on television today.

"I'm a good cook, and I look at something like Iron Chef and think, 'It's a good thing I already know how to cook' — because I would never think I could do it, if I watched these shows," Ephron says. "She made you know you could do it."

Though Child and Powell had different life experiences, both found their literary success through cooking — Powell (who became an Internet celebrity and turned her quest into a best-seller) as she turned 30 years old, Child as she approached 50. Ephron says she was surprised to learn that Child came to the cooking scene later in life.

"It's so astonishing that she turned her life around as late as she did," Ephron says. "She just didn't become herself until she was 50 years old."

Ephron tells Wertheimer that, if nothing else, she hopes the film — which portrays extravagant food scenes — will bring back butter, an ingredient whose praises Child never stopped singing.

"Because you can never have too much butter, that is my belief," Ephron says. "If I have a religion, that's it."

LISTEN to INTERVIEW, HERE:

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=111543710&m=111646852


LINK to NPR SITE, HERE:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=111543710

[present and past]

1. Nora Ephron's Husband Should Have Sniffed Oregano, Not Cocaine.

What Ms. Ephron is not saying is that Ms. Child had a very successful marriage to a man who gave her children and who never dissuaded her from her various careers. Not even in the era before the women's movement.

Ms. Ephron wishes she were so lucky. Even after the women's movement was in full swing, her husband Carl Bernstein told her to stop writing screenplays, and he cheated on her. They had a small child together at the time (biological, not adopted). Carl was a cocaine user who lost all his money. Eventually, more than ten years after his target President Nixon resigned, he knocked on old friend Bob Woodward's door (in Washington, DC) without any money or a place to sleep.

Julia Child was still doing her television show while Carl Bernstein snorted cocaine. He blindly followed the wrong people! Nora knew the right person to idolize.

[KoKo]

2. Well...I'm glad Norah moved on...and has done some delightful movies

and this one is a treat in these dark times...contrasting the Older with the Younger.

[Warpy]

3. Julia Child taught me how to cook

and more importantly, that good food didn't have to be that complicated and good cooks didn't have to be martyrs.

I've always refused to be guilty about butter. I never tasted real butter until I left home and it was a total revelation when I did. Now that I know it's not as harmful as saturated trans fats, I can nearly feel righteous about it.

Fat and wine are the two things in cooking that carry flavor. Butter, in addition, adds its own rich flavor. While I can no longer use it to the extent Julia Child did, I still find some is absolutely essential.

I do hope this movie inspires people who can no longer afford to eat all their meals in restaurants to explore cooking instead of shoving frozen stuff into a microwave or assembling a pot of processed food.

It's cheaper, it's fun, and it tastes great.

[present and past]

4. Too Much Of Anything Is ...

Be sure to get enough exercise to burn off the fat you get from eating all those Julia Child recipes. Too much food is just as bad as too much alcohol. They are both worse than marijuana.

[KoKo]

6. She and her husband, Paul, lived into their 90's....so it can't have been all bad...

And, given my current spectrum of relatives...the oldest ate Fish, Butter and drank wine and hard liquor. :shrug: Maybe it comes down to genetics...but the others are all dead or dying.

[Warpy]

7. Thank you for that lecture

based I am sure on a life lived perfectly.

[KoKo]

5. I'm with you Warpy...I bought butter again...and that's saying something since

I started to look at my family members who lived into their 90's who ate butter as opposed to the family members who are dead who ate margerine.

Because one of my family members has a heart problem we all use margerine...the Yogurt or Benecol (no trans fat, cholesterol lowering margerines) that supposedly reduce cholesterol.

I'm thinking that maybe eating margerine since we were kids was not a good thing...since other family members who ate the butter lived to 90's.

And...OMG...the BUTTER makes such a big difference in food taste and satisfaction!