Why I don’t want to be a 1960’s housewife

Last week I spent a day slaving over a hot stove preparing a delicious and nutritious meal for my husband – Julia Child’s beef bourguignon. A while ago we sat down and watched the film Julie and Julia. If you haven’t heard about it, it’s based on the blog of Julie Powell who decided to cook all 524  recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking (1961) within 364 days. She blogged about her progress which eventually turned into a book, then a film – apparently the first film ever produced from a blog.

The film appealed to me as I was interested in how both women claimed their identities through food, and how and why Julie blogged. I loved the fact her mum kept asking her why she blogged as no-one was reading it!

I thought I would pay my own homage to the blog/book/film by trying Julia Child’s most well known recipe – beef bourguignon. I gathered all the ingredients and started my own little journey. The recipe wasn’t hard just time consuming. There were quite a few steps but fortunately Edward was happy playing in the garden so I could keep one eye on him and the other of what I was doing in the kitchen.

I left all the ingredients simmering away for a couple of hours and enjoyed a very grown up meal with my husband after we had put Edward to bed. This is a fab recipe and is tasty too. I can’t imagine I’ll be cooking it too often though. Who has time to spend hours slaving over the stove when there are kids to look after, a pile of washing to be done and a house to keep clean. Pass me the ready meals!

 This was my Monthly Make for August