Cooking with Julie and Julia

I've always loved to cook. When I was a young teenage bride, my sweetie bought me a cookbook for our first Christmas together. The woman at the bookstore recommended a Betty Crocker one with lots of bright pictures and easy recipes, many revolving around canned soup. He proudly assured her that I was much more advanced than that and, ignoring her warning that it might be too difficult, bought me my first Joy of Cooking book. (A friend later bought me my second when the first fell out of a cupboard at a Christmas party and she was appalled by all the food stains, which, to my mind, only meant it had been well loved.) That was only the first of many wonderful cookbooks I've collected over the years. (There are, by the way, some super recipes from locations in my books on my website.)

I grew up in ranching country in Oregon's Cascade Mountains, a small town still isolated miles from the nearest freeway. Which meant dinner pretty much involved hunks of grilled or roast meat and potatoes. (If you've ever eaten a baked potato, or even one of the fabulous new purple fingerlings, there's a good chance it came from my home county.) Right after I got married, my new groom informed me that we needed to save more for our move to Arizona, where he'd been accepted into ASU's grad school. One way to do that, he claimed, was to eat casseroles.

I honestly had NO idea what a casserole was. I asked my mother. She shrugged and said, "'I'm not exactly sure, but I believe it's a bit like a meat loaf."

So, trying to get with this new save-money casserole program, I got a tuna/green bean/condensed mushroom soup recipe from a friend. I rushed home from work and prepared it just as instructed. But it wouldn't turn into a brick-like meatloaf.

I cranked the the oven up to 500 degrees. Still it wouldn't solidify. I tried broiling it. Which made those little canned onion rings on the top nearly black, but didn't help.

I dragged out the pressure cooker (anyone remember them?) we'd gotten as a wedding present and pressured it for a looong time. But it still refused to stick together.

Finally I gave up and threw it in the trash. When my sweetie arrived home all hot and smoky from his summer job fighting forest fires, I burst into tears as I related him my tragic casserole saga. He laughed, gave me a big comforting hug and kiss and assured me I'd never have to make tuna casserole again.

And I haven't.

Because I've been madly writing to deadline, and had a visit from son and grandkidlets last week, I also haven't seen a movie I've been dying to see -- Julie and Julia. But it's on my calendar for September 16th, the day after I turn The Homecoming in. Meanwhile, for those of you who may have been living on Mars the past month and missed it, here's the movie trailer. Enjoy.