• Julie Powell passed away on October 26.
• Her yearlong quest to cook through Julia Child’s “French Cooking” masterpiece was immortalized.
• The successful web and social media ventures may be traced back to her initiative.

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that writer Julie Powell, whose yearlong quest to cook through Julia Child’s “French Cooking” masterpiece was immortalized in paper and film, had died of cardiac arrest. She had reached age 49.

According to her husband, one of the first food bloggers passed away on October 26 at her home in upstate New York.

Her death announcement sparked debate on Twitter, with numerous users claiming she had Covid.

Several users reposted the tweet that Julie Powell wrote a few days ago.

Powell, dissatisfied with her low-level administration work in New York and seeking a creative outlet, established her Julie/Julia Project in the early days of internet writing, describing her culinary escapades with sarcastic humor and a straightforward, diary-like tone.

The effort entailed preparing all 524 dishes from Child’s 1961 masterpiece “Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume 1” from her husband’s and her tiny, broken-down apartment in Long Island City, Queens.

The self-deprecating drama of her blunders and disappointments in and out of the kitchen resonated with a majority of Gen X readers, and the blog received hundreds of thousands of hits at a time when many people were still using dial-up.

The effort was released in 2005 as the book “Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen”.

The late writer and director Nora Ephron adapted the book for her final film, which was nominated for an Oscar and starred Meryl Streep as Child and Amy Adams as Powell.

The successful web and social media ventures of cooks such as Dorie Greenspan, Ina Garten, Deb Perelman, and Alison Roman may be traced back to the framework and tone established by Powell’s initiative.

Perelman tweeted on Tuesday under the account of her popular social media and cookbook brand, Smitten Kitchen, “I was shocked to learn this morning of the passing of Julie Powell, the original food blogger.”

“Cooking through Julia Child’s books, she made Child relevant to a new generation, and wrote about cooking in a fresh, conversational, this-is-my-real life tone that was rare back then.”

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