Julie and Julia

From Michelle Thies — Blog by Michelle Thies

August 30, 2009

I recently saw the movie Julie and Julia, and I felt as if I was watching my own life. Julie, like me, has a job in which she sits at a cubicle and basically gets yelled at all day, and when she comes home, she uses cooking as an escape. This is exactly my life. I sit in my grey cubicle during the day, and after fielding through calls from bill collectors, emails from the insureds demanding something be done right this minute, and claimants who never seem to get their checks, I often look around and say “How did I end up here?”

When I come home however, a culinary world awaits me. I have a growing culinary library and cookbooks by my bed. My mind often wanders into thinking about putting menus together for a dinner party, or a Christmas feast even though it’s months away. My husband thinks he is the luckiest man alive because he gets to eat a home cooked meal almost every night! We are sort of a culinary team because I cook with the beautiful ingredients from his garden that he lovingly attends to. In the movie Julie embarks on cooking all the recipes from Julia Child’s, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”, and she does this, all at night, after she has suffered at her insufferable job. In the movie Julie’s husband is her biggest supporter, just like my husband is to me.

I went to Johnson & Wales and received my degree in Culinary Arts. I cooked professionally after that, but after a health issue decided to stop. I was 22 years old and hated working the long hours and having no life. I decided to take my life in a different direction, and ended up where I am today.

But cooking has always been there for me. It has only been in recent years that I have felt a calling, to do something in the culinary world again.

The other part of Julie and Julia that I loved, was the story of the great Julia Child. Julia’s career as a chef was really her second career, as she was a spy in her early adulthood. It wasn’t until she was in her 40’s that she began to learn to cook. She was what you might call-a late bloomer. It is this part of the story that gives me hope. That somehow I will be able to foray into something that I am passionate about again.

I know my friends and family are behind me, I just need to find the right forum to enter into again.

My heart and passion has always been, and will always be in preparing beautiful dishes and having my loved ones tell me-that’s the best thing I ever had!

Then maybe there is hope that I will be, a late bloomer!