Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Joining us in the Inkwell is Julie Powell, the author (if that is the
correct term) of "The Julie/Julia Project", a blog at Salon.com.  She is a
secretary who lives in Long Island City, Queens with her husband, three cats
and a ball python.  Julie has just finished cooking her way through Julia
Child's classic cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking," and is now
in need of a gym membership.

Co-facilitating things are WELL members Michele Knaub and Dana Reeves.

Michele is an enthusiastic home cook who last year abandoned plans to cook
her way through _Mastering the Art_ (and to document it online) when she
heard some Julie chick was already doing it. She pawed through James
Peterson's _glorious French food_ instead, and is getting ready to attack
Vietnamese cuisine this winter. She lives in Brooklyn and dreams of ditching
her job in digital advertising to go to culinary school. She is the host of
The WELL's <gay.> conference.

Dana is a refugee from the telecom industry who occasionally works as a
personal chef and caterer. He currently resides in San Francisco, but dreams
of moving to a tiny village in the Swiss Alps to raise goats and make
cheese. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment this year was feeding Spam to
Clarence Thomas, although he considers this achievement to be political
rather than culinary in nature.

Welcome!
  

    
Hey, guys.

Wow, Michele, sorry I beat you to the punch there.  Sounds like you're
bringin' out the big boys with that Vietnamese stuff, though...
  

    

based on how exhausted you seemed toward the end, i'm not so sorry you beat
me to it, actually!

yeah, Vietnamese. i figure it has less potential to cause me to blow up like
a balloon, plus i just find it so... comforting. comforting and spicy at the
same time.

i have so  many questions for you, but i'm trying to hang on until the
discussion actually gets moving. so glad you're here!
  

    
I'm glad I'm here too.  Sure does beat dealing with the fucking hell
of my average workday.  Too bad I can't curl up into the box here and
post myself into the Well, never to be seen at the LMDC again....
  

    
Uh-oh. You just shattered my fantasy that the soul-sucking had stopped
and you had been whisked away to a life of fame and fortune.
  

    
Speaking of which, did you suspect from the beginning that you'd get
anywhere near the attention that the Project has drawn?
  

    
Not yet gone from here, sadly....  But beginning to have some
high-falutin' dreams in that direction.

There was no way I could have guessed I'd get the kind of attention I
have.  That's not to say I didn't have fantasies -- that's what
quixotic endeavors are for, I guess.  But not even I would say to
myself, "Hey!  I know!  If I cook the 524 recipes of Julia Child's
classic "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in 365 days, and write
about it, all while holding down a crappy fucking job, rivers of money
are sure to follow!"  

I mean, come on -- I may be nuts, but I'm not crazy.
  

    

you posted a few entries on your blog about the trouble you started having
with your employer when they were tipped to your... commentary on your
workplace. is it ok to ask non-specific questions about this issue?
  

    
Non-specific is okay.  Hell, specific is okay, to some extent.  What
are they going to do, fire me?
  

    


well, i read a post of yours that they'd given you a talking-to. and then
there was no more info after that, so i wondered if you'd decided to tone it
down (hah, i think i already know your reaction to that!)

someone responded to you in the Comments area that it was illegal for your
employer to impinge upon your right to express yourself after working hours.
did you investigate this at all, were you worried enough to take that step?
did you consider removing the links to your employer from your blog? how, n
general, have you been navigating this?


(this is of particular interest to Well people, who, like all online
denizens, sometimes forget that what they write online is not private.)
  

    
It's funny, nothing really ever came of the talking-to (yet.)  

I think I'm sort of a special case, in that I happen to be a person
who got some press for her blog, and I happen to work in an office that
is VERY VERY concerned with the media.  And so when the New York Times
article came out, I think they felt they had to handle me with white
gloves, a bit.  I'm like a little bomb they haven't figure out how to
defuse.  Which is fun.

The people at my job are not, by and large, blog-readers; basically,
if doesn't appear in the Post or the Times, they don't care.  They've
never bothered me about anything I've written on the blog, only quotes
I've given to the press.  So the blog is still a safe place,
relatively.

I had to sign a confidentiality agreement at my job when I started, so
when things got hoppin' I did try to discreetly ask a few of the folks
at the job that I trust about that.  Turns out it's total bullshit,
there's nothing much they can do to enforce it.  I decided as long as I
didn't actually reveal privileged information (like I have any) I'm in
the clear.  That, and I try not to call people assholes unless I
really mean it.
  

    

i've heard similar things about the confidentiality agreement. although i
did have my breech of it waved in my face at an exit interview recently -
luckily, no legal action ensued.


here's a question for you for when you get back from D.C.: do you have
professional culinary aspirations?
  

    
Well, here's my pre-D.C. answer... No.  

I thought I did for awhile - probably The Project was a way for me to
feel things out, actually.  Certainly the hands-on, physical aspect of
it appeals.  But I'm a married woman who wants a dog and a kid, so the
18-hour days don't.  Plus - as an obsessive personality, I don't need
to place myself in the way of temptation, amphetamine-wise.

Also, I'm very wary about making your hobby your job.  I want to want
to cook, what I want when I want.

That's my pre-DC answer.  Maybe after my pilgrimage to Julia's kitchen
I'll change my mind, but I don't think so.
  

    
I particularly liked it when they observed that you have "a lot of anger."

Well, no shit, Sherlock.

Will the pilgrimage to Julia's Kitchen be documented anywhere in the
media (outside of the blog, natch)?
  

    
slippage!
  

    
And what kind of butter will you offer to Julia - fancy-dan French butter,
or humble everyday butter?
  

    

i'm interested to hear more about why you dohn't think making your hobby
your job is a good idea - so many happiness 'gurus' say the opposite, don't
they? perhaps you don't want your hobby to lose its appeal?

but i really hear you regarding the temptation/kitchen culture/amphetamine
comment. i'm SO right there.
  

    
The pilgrimage will just be me and Eric, I believe, and whatever fans
show up.  Which is as it should be, I think.  All these mornings shows
wanted me to, like, cook my last meal on their show or something, but
this has been a personal thing -- hundreds of daily readers
notwithstanding -- and I'd like to keep it that way.

Hotel Bar is good enough for me, so it's good enough for Julia. 
Besides, Julia wouldn't want me to lest delicious yummery French butter
go to waste.

Re: the hobby/job thing -- I guess I make a distinction between
hobbies, jobs, and "what I do".  

Cooking and knitting are hobbies -- I do these things to relax, to
remove myself from the stresses of life.  If I was getting paid to do
these things, they would inevitably become stressful, and I would hate
to infect these things with that.

Whereas writing, for instance, is "what I do."  It doesn't exactly
relax me, I just love working at it.  And if that was what I got paid
for, I'd still stress out about it to about the same degree, but I'd be
enjoying it at the same time, so that would be good.

Filing, on the third hand, is neither a hobby nor "what I do."  It's
just a job.  A job which sucks.
  

    

interesting, interesting.

forgive my ignorance - i suppose i haven't read all eleventy billion entries
in your blog, or i would already know this answer - but has writing been
'what you do' for a long time?  BB, before blogging?
  

    
I suspect your instincts are dead-on, Julie. Awhile back, I quit a
corporate soul-sucker and went to culinary school, only to discover
that professional cooking is an entirely different animal than avid
home cooking. There are advantages, of course - you get paid to feed
your mistakes to strangers, but it's the rare restaurant that encourages
you to mix a gimlet and play Civilization while the kidneys braise.
  

    
I suspected that might be the case.  

I guess y'all read that piece about Mario Batali in the New Yorker a
few months ago?  Well, in that he talks about how restaurant cooking
differs from personal cooking because consistency the most important
thing.  You wanna make a list of Julie's Good Qualities?  Well I'll
give you a hint -- consistency is nowhere in the running.

As far as the writing goes -- yeah.  I was pretty much your classic
Frustrated Writer.  3/4s of novels clogging up the computer, etc.... 
So the Project really was a way to give myself - well, a project.  Some
structure, something with a built-in beginning, middle and end. 
Because I generally suck at ends.
  

    <scribbled by wiggly Fri 5 Sep 03 14:43>
  

    
That was the real beauty of the Project, from both a writing and cooking
perspective. I was a late-to-the-party reader, but when I read the
introduction, I kept thinking, "Goddammit, why didn't I think of this?"
I can only imagine mig's frustration when she did think of it, only to
discover she'd been scooped.

The finite nature of your blog is also a plus - it's the only one I've
read religiously (well, I guess the occasional forays into Real Live
Preacher could be considered religious, but you know what I mean), and
the suspense of the looming deadline and relentless pace were a big
part of the appeal.

Early on, you mentioned at least one other food-OCD event, the "Like
Water For Chocolate"-themed meal for your now-sainted Eric. Have there
been, or are you planning any other extreme cooking events - say, a
Julie vs. Alice Waters WWF cage match, for instance?
  

    
Tickets for that wouldn't be cheap!
  

    
Now see, I wish I'd thought of THAT.

I've always been something of an extremist, in cooking as in all
things.  I didn't have any real interest in cooking until around the
time I went to college.  And there was none of this, "You know, I
really ought to learn to make a good omelette, perhaps a few reliable
salads."  Not me, man.  It was Paul Prudhomme's file gumbo or nothin'.

So, yeah.  I'm sure there's crazy food stuff on the horizon -- there
always is.  But I don't know that I'll be cooking my way through Volume
2 in six months or anything like that.  Maybe I'll tackle the French
Bread.

Truth to tell, I'm still really pondering my next move here.  It's sad
to end the blog, but the fact that it was going to end was always sort
of the point, wasn't it?  

Alright, I'm toddling off to D.C. now.  Will check in upon my return.
  

    

Where do you like to shop for food?

I live in the East Village and saw you (I think) one day on Sixth Avenue
around Citarella and Jefferson Market, not long after the Times article.

What are your favorite butchers, fish markets, vegetable places?