Avoiding a cafeteria-food-and-ramen diet becomes an important struggle for many Columbians. Disappointed by John Jay and eager to expand both their social and culinary horizons, some turn to cooking.
There are a variety of cooking-oriented groups and events on campus, from small informal dinner parties to the Culinary Society’s block parties. That’s not to say that the average student is likely to pull out Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking on a regular basis. However, with the success of Julie & Julia, Nora Ephron’s new film, Child’s classic may find its way onto many new shelves.
Julie & Julia follows the lives of Julia Child (played by the incomparable Meryl Streep), the first chef to make French cooking accessible to an American audience, and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a professionally unsatisfied woman who spent a year cooking Child’s recipes and blogging about the experience. The movie tracks Child’s path to becoming a hugely influential author and TV personality, and Powell’s success with her blog. Both women recreated themselves on a personal and professional level through what was once only a hobby. In short, the film is both life-affirming and butter-worshipping. Cooking, for both Julia Child and Julie Powell, is a marriage of meticulous discipline and self-indulgence. It requires mastery and dedication, but the results can be life-changing. Cooking becomes a metaphor for self-realization.
Julia Child addressed her book to “the servantless American cook who can be unconcerned on occasion with budgets, waistlines, time schedules” or “anything else which might interfere with the enjoyment of producing something wonderful to eat.” Under Child’s direction, food preparation becomes an activity that is rewarding and enjoyable, and free from practical concerns.
Most cooking enthusiasts at Columbia take an understandably different approach to cooking. They want to cook food that is tasty, but also easy to prepare and relatively healthy. Highly caloric and time-consuming boeuf bourguignon—one of Child’s signature dishes—is not a campus favorite.
But some Columbians are creating their own communities to learn the joys of home cooking. Students join dinner circles, in which a group of seven or eight people cook for each other on alternating days, meaning everyone gets to enjoy regular home-cooked meals without the hassle of cooking every night. “After months of very institutional, mass-produced meals at John Jay with the occasional pricey restaurant supplement, it was nice having a reliable, affordable source of home-cooked meals,” said Brandon Storm, CC ’12, who joined a vegetarian dinner circle last semester.
Bhakti Club’s vegetarian cooking classes can be instructional for cooking newbies and experienced chefs alike. The classes also seek to provide a delicious meal and a strong sense of community. Weekly potlucks at the appropriately named Potluck House allow students to sample fellow Columbians’ culinary efforts and mingle with fellow foodies. According to participants, these cooking initiatives—like those of Julie and Julia—seek to provide fulfillment as well a delicious escape from the daily grind. Bon appétit, Columbia!
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