natasha montero: Dinner & a Movie

So I just got around to watching Julie & Julia on Netflix the other night, and now I am making Beouf Bourguignon for dinner....random, I know. I cried my eyes out watching this film, and I know it's terribly corny and cheesy, and it probably isn't the best of movies (I also saw The Fighter this weekend, didn't shed a tear, though every female I know said they cried through it. Good movie though!), but I felt as if they had made this movie for me! I too am turning the big 3-0 this year, I love to eat (did I not mention that before, ha!), I love to cook, and at times I ran (more like dragged my feet) through my twenties trying to find "myself" (whoever that chick is).

There is a scene in the beginning of the movie where Julia Child's husband asks her "What do you like to do?" as they discuss what she will do with her time in Paris, she giggled and answered proudly, "EAT!" and that made me laugh out loud because it was an HONEST answer and I would have answered the exact same way, well except I would have said "Eat and stare at photographs". If there had been more about photography in the film (turns out Child's husband shot a lot of the images in her cookbooks, what a hip couple!), and less about being a "writer" (lets face it, writing is not my best asset. Let's put that skill on the "things to improve before I turn 30" list!), it would have been my life story. Either way, the movie is based on the book which is about the true life of Julie Powell, and it just reminded me again (and I need a lot of reminding) to follow my dreams, so here we are on this blog, shooting my dinner, doing what I love, and what I love is my Day Job, how cool is that!

Anyhoo, to sum it up, I like corny, chick flicks, and this one made me want to cook what they made in the movie, for dinner tonight. So me and the BF bought some vino and I got to "cooking" a la Julie Powell & Julia Child. BTW I was TOTALLY one of those weird little kids that was totally into Nick at Nite in the 80's (loved Patty Duke & Donna Reed) and I would seriously watch Julia Child's cooking show on PBS, so there you go, me and that movie were destiny!

This entire recipe was actually pretty labor intensive to make in my tiny kitchen, but it came out Damn good, so it was worth it!

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We also went to the liquor store for the most important ingredient in our dinner and got a little way too carried away after we found wine & liquor with our names on it!!!!! Ugh seriously a big deal when your name is Natasha (they never have anything with my name on it)!! Then we started to buy bottles of wine with cool labels, just because they related to our interest (if only they had a pinot grigio with a camera label on it!), not even caring what type of wine it was or whether or not it tastes good. Who does that?!?! So a lot of money (mind you we went to the store to buy ONE bottle of wine) wasted later on pretty marketing we drank as we waited the 2.5 hours the Beouf Bourguignon needed to cook.