Julie Powell, food author of “Julie & Julia,” whose best-selling attempt to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s famous cookbook in 365 days, has died at the age of 49 after suffering a cardiac arrest
- Powell’s Julie/Julia project made her one of the internet’s first food bloggers
- She wrote a bestseller that was adapted into an Oscar-nominated film
- Powell died at her home in Olivebridge, New York, her husband said
Food writer Julie Powell, whose blog about cooking every recipe in Julia Child’s 1961 book French Cooking was turned into an Oscar-nominated film, has died at the age of 49.
Powell rose to fame in the early 2000s when she started a blog about her attempt to cook every recipe in Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking: Volume 1.
The project made her one of the first food bloggers on the internet, and she wrote the book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen in 2005.
The late writer-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 hit blog Julie/Julia Project became a blockbuster, has died at the age of 49
The Oscar-nominated film starred Amy Adams as Powell and Meryl Streep as Julia Child
Powell died of cardiac arrest at their home in Olivebridge, New York, on Oct. 26, her husband, Eric Powell, told the New York Times.
Powell was born Julie Foster on April 20, 1973 in Austin, Texas.
After moving to New York and looking for a creative outlet, she became disillusioned with her simple administrative job and launched her Julie/Julia project in the burgeoning era of internet writing.
She described her kitchen adventures with a pointed sense of humor in a direct, diary-like tone.
The project entailed cooking all 524 recipes from Child’s 1961 French cooking classic in her tiny, rundown apartment in Long Island City, Queens, which she shared with her husband.
The self-deprecating drama of their mishaps and disappointments both in and out of the kitchen struck a chord with a group of mostly Gen X readers.
The book, based on her successful Julie/Julia Project blog, went on to sell more than 1 million copies
Powell died at the age of 49 after suffering cardiac arrest at home in Olivebridge, New York
Meryl Streep, who played Julia Child in the film adaptation of the book, was nominated for an Oscar
The blog received hundreds of thousands of views at a time when many people still used dial-up Internet.
Within a year of launching on Salon.com, it had around 400,000 page views and thousands of regular readers.
The following book sold more than a million copies, mostly in paperback entitled Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously.
Powell’s project inspired numerous food bloggers to follow him, and his template and style are evident in the subsequent successful web and social media projects of chefs such as Dorie Greenspan, Ina Garten, Deb Perelman and Alison Roman.
“I was shocked to learn of the death of Julie Powell, the original food blogger, this morning,” Perelman tweeted Tuesday on the account of her famous social media and cookbook brand, Smitten Kitchen.
“By cooking through Julia Child’s books, she made Child relevant to a new generation and wrote about cooking in a fresh, chatty, this is my real life tone that was rare at the time.”