69 Quotes by Julie Powell

We ate it sitting on the couch, bowls perched on knees, the silence broken only by the occasional snort of laughter as we watched a pert blonde high school student dust vampires on the television. In almost no time we were slurping the dregs of our third servings. (it turns out that one reason we're so good together is that each of us eats more and faster than anyone either of us has ever met; also, we both recognize the genius of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.)

The thing you learn with Potage Parmentier is that "simple" is not exactly the same as easy.

It was 10:30 in the morning and I was already running behind. This is hardly unusual, but it pisses me off every single time.

There, I was just a secretary-shaped confederation of atoms, fighting the inevitability of mediocrity and decay. But here, in the Juliaverse... energy was never lost, merely converted from one form to another. Here, I took butter and cream and meat and eggs and I made delicious sustenance.

Without the Project I was nothing but a secretary on a road to nowhere, drifting toward frosted hair and menthol addiction.

When I got home I peered down at the lobster to see how he was doing. The inner plastic bag was sucked tight around him and clouded up. It looked like something out of an eighties made-for-TV movie, with some washed-up actress taking too many pills and trying to off herself with a Macy's bag.

The crunch of the mustard-spiked crust somehow brings the unctuous smooth richness of the liver into sharp relief. It's like the silky soul of steak. You have to close your eyes, let the meat melt on your tongue, into your corpuscles.

For nearly a week I neither cooked nor grocery shopped. Instead, all of our various families took Eric and me out for Mexican food, for barbecue, for beignets. We ate cheese biscuits with Rice Krispies, and spiced pecans, and red beans and rice, and gumbo, and all those other things that New Yorkers would turn up their noses at, but New Yorkers don't know everything, do they? This is what Texas, and family, are for.

Sometimes, if you want to be happy, you've got to run away to Bath and marry a punk rocker. Sometimes you've got to dye your hair cobalt blue, or wander remote islands in Sicily, or cook your way through Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a year, for no very good reason.