Movie: Julie and Julia

How does one review a movie that was enjoyed, but not immensely?  It's easier to review something you either passionately hate or passionately love, but most of the movies deliver neither.  This movie was okay and you don't have to like cooking or even French food to watch it.  Meryl Streep, as usual, gave a superb performance.  

What the movie did not do was inspire  me to buy either Julia Child's cookbook or to read Julie's blog.  But then, I don't cook.

There's a reason for that.

Nobody eats what I cook.  Oh, a lot of times it tastes okay, but there is always a missing ingredient to my recipes -- love.  It's just not there.  Cooking for me is a chore and apparently a chore for anyone who happens to eat what I prepared.  Ask husband number 1 who took my hard cooked dinner and threw it on the floor screaming:  You expect me to eat this shit! Ask husband number 2 who did the exact same thing.  But I do learn from my mistakes.  No more marriages and no more cooking.

My honey-bunny has to take us out to eat 2 times a day, or prepare food himself, which he refuses to do, so we eat out all the time.  We should get some kind of award for eating out the more than anybody in the world.  What's worse, we live in Huntsville, Alabama and the restaurant offerings are terrible here.  Just terrible.  They over-salt everything.  We found a really good Indian restaurant and it went out of business because the food was spicy, delicious and authentic.  Now we're stuck with the other Indian restaurant that serves on its all you can eat lunch buffet:  fried okra.  Their food is also bland and over-salted.  There are 3 Thai restaurants in town and only one is worth patronizing.  Unfortunately for us, they are on the other side of town and pricey, pricey, pricey.  When I lived in the San Francisco Bay area, we could get great Pad Se Eu just down the street for $8.95.  In Huntsville for the same dish, almost as tasty, we pay $12.95.

Oh, and one time I was asking my neighbor where to go for a salad bar, and she didn't know what a salad bar was, had to think a minute, and then suggested a couple of greasy spoon buffets -- both dirty, both with over-cooked vegetables and lots and lots of fried.

Even though we eat out all the time, we try and eat healthy -- which here in the deep south is an oxymoron; and sometimes I would actually like to learn to cook.  Occasionally, I'll go to the Farmer's Market and load up on Amish veggies, which is wonderful -- but I have no clue what to do with them.  There's no way I'm going to flour up anything and fry it.  There just has to be a better way.

In the meantime, we have reservations at 7.