“Some people like to paint pictures, or do gardening, or build a boat in a basement. Other people get tremendous pleasure out of the kitchen, because cooking is just as creative and imaginative an activity as drawing, or wood carving, or music.” –Julia Child

Greetings! My name is Julie Richter and I am a college student at Texas Christian University. This past month I was inspired by a recent film, “Julie and Julia,” to figure out if cooking would be a fun hobby for me. To be really honest, I LOVE FOOD, but cooking I only love when it is either really easy to make, or exceptionally wonderful to my taste buds. I bought the Julia Child cookbook, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” to see if any of the recipes looked like something I could do. I very quickly realized that Julia had incredible attention to detail; details that I never had thought of or heard of before. But once I began reading a few of the recipes, I was soon determined to try out some of her famous dishes.

So, in short, I have decided to cook one dish a week from Julia’s recipe book and blog about my accomplishments, failures, frustrations, joy and confusion. My hope is to find recipes in Julia’s book that I think would be easy enough for a college student to master. Considering that most of the meals that I cook consist of “break and bake” or “under 15 minutes to cook,” I know that it will stretch me beyond what I normally have been able to do in the kitchen. I would say that I am a fairly average college student when it comes to cooking, but my hope is to find some dishes that I enjoy making and that, of course, taste wonderful.

It seems that many of the people that I deem with having wisdom in my life are also incredible cooks. Whether there is any actual correlation there I’m not sure; but I do think it says something about a person when they are comfortable and impressive in a kitchen. For college students, I think it could be a great change of pace to be able to impress friends or family by creating a meal. In our culture, food can bring a community of people together for a common purpose and an enjoyable time. Think about it, whenever there is a great event going on, what is one of the central focuses, FOOD!

So this is for you college students who might want to impress someone: whether it is a boyfriend/girlfriend, friends, or family, learning to cook a wonderful meal might be a great way to do so. This is also for the entertainment of those who will probably get a good laugh out of reading me trying to cook something that I have no idea about! But I embark on this adventure with courage, enthusiasm and hope that I will come out of this with some great food and a sense of accomplishment.
“no fear, Julia” - (Julie and Julia, 2009)