Julie Powell, a writer and home cook who became a culinary phenomenon trying to prepare every recipe in Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” a year-long project she dedicated to an irreverent blog and book, Julie & Julia,” which was adapted into a hit film, died on October 26th at her home in Olivebridge, NY. She was 49 years old.
The cause was cardiac arrest, said a friend, Nicole Mabry.
Ms. Powell was a bored administrative assistant living in a cramped New York apartment on the cusp of her 30s when she launched her project in 2002 in “one of those panicked, cornered moments,” she later told the New York Times. Her blog, the Julie/Julia Project, was a humorous, quirky catalog of her attempt to cook all 524 recipes from her mother’s dog-eared copy of Child’s 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of French Cooking , which required her to scour grocery stores and butcher shops for rare ingredients (kidneys, sweetbreads) and learn to peel potatoes into olive shapes.
The blog brought her a wide audience and eventually a publishing deal.
Her book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (2005) sold about 1 million copies and was made into a film in 2009. Written and directed by Nora Ephron, Julie & Julia starred Amy Adams as Ms. Powell, whose story was intertwined with that of Child (played by Meryl Streep) and Child’s husband Paul (Stanley Tucci).
A full obituary will be released shortly.