Finding a recipe for meaning in a cookbook

Instead, in her lively, often laugh-out-loud funny memoir, Powell recounts a project that found her. Depressed and underemployed, the young writer is facing 30 without any form or meaning in her life (although she has maintained a happy marriage to her high school sweetheart, Eric). To make matters worse, she has a medical condition that means ''I was going to get hairy and fat, and I'd have to take all kinds of drugs to conceive." When three medical professionals in a row advise her to start listening to her biological clock, she freaks. Her husband advises her to return to her Texas family for a while. There, she stumbles upon her mother's copy of the Child book. It awakens memories of comfort and also sex. Before she even realizes what she's doing, she's back in Long Island City, making Potage Parmentier and a plan. The resulting blog (www.juliepowell.blogspot.com/) turned Powell into a celebrity of sorts, featured everywhere from CNN to The New York Times.

This might not have been so odd if Powell were already a foodie. For, say, The New York Times writer Amanda Hesser (who has a cameo in the book), it might be a normal way of working through an early midlife crisis. But Powell is no Hesser. She's a fan of Domino's bacon and jalapeno pizza. She's never knowingly eaten an egg before she starts what becomes known as the Julie/Julia Project. She has certainly never killed a lobster, split open a marrowbone, or sautéed brains and kidneys on her tiny gas stove. And if anyone begins to suspect that she's just a little more accomplished than she lets on, the maggot episode will confirm that Powell is nobody's Martha Stewart.