Julie and Julia - the movie

I'm not a movie critic or reviewer, but I have to say that the Julie & Julia movie was inspiring to me on so many levels. It also helps that Meryl Streep played Julia Childs because she has become one of my favorite actresses over this past year. Perhaps it was the Momma Mia movie.

What a wonderful thing to have your food blog (Julie) turned into a movie!

Don't we all wish that this could happen? A little effort day to day and wa-la! Someone calls and wants us to publish us and write up articles about our experience.

That's the great thing about it. A woman, Julie Powell, is really disgruntled with her life and picks up the Julia Child cookbook and decides to make all the 500+ recipes in 365 days. Plus, she blogs her way through the experience with all of the joys, sorrows and lessons learned along the way. All of this intermingled with flashes back to Julia Childs experiences in learning how to cook and writing a cookbook.

What pulled at me most is that what people say is true - if you pursue what you love, you will be happy and the money will follow.

It doesn't have to be a book. It doesn't have to be a movie. It just has to be what we love.

This movie gets a 5 star from me. It inspired me to act on some of my ideas, learn more about cooking and watch an old episode of Julia Childs in action.

Go see it if you can.

Cooking Repertoire - McBecker addition

My cooking repertoire has been fairly basic over the past few years. It consists of the following:

• Brownies - from the box and requiring the addition of water, oil, eggs and occasional walnuts.


• Spaghetti - angel hair pasta and a jar of the store purchased sauce with no meat.


• Sandwich - peanut butter and honey on toasted wheat bread or ham and cheese on toasted English muffin.


• Frozen dinners - microwave.


• Go out to eat - this offers a wide array of options with no clean up requirement.

In enters my new entree - McBecker muffin!

As shown below, it requires three ingredients - egg, English muffin, frozen sausage. Cheese is an optional fourth.

We have this every few days now because once you've bought a Costco big bag of sausage, a dozen eggs, a pack of cheese and a pack of English muffins - it can last a while.

If I add one new entree every two months that will add up over time, right? That's about all I can handle ...or have any interest in pursuing.