Julie & Julia

My friend Tram never ceases to amaze me at how she crafts and cooks so effortlessly.

FYI: There is a Tram and a Tran - it's not a typo - it's two different people. I know, gosh darn those Vietnamese people huh?! We all have either similar names (Tran & Tram), same names (Yen & Yen) or names that rhyme (Huong & Phuong) and we all have the same freakin two last name (Nguyen & Pham)! Trust me, I understand your confusion :)

For Tram, cooking is a stress reliever. For me, it's anything but!

So this past Tuesday, Tram invited me over for dinner and a movie. We watched Julie and Julia, a film based on two true stories about blogging and cooking! How fabulously appropriate! The night started off with some delectable olives and cheese, complimented with a bottle of pinot gris, which she picked up while wine tasting at Anne Amie Vineyards in Carlton, Oregon. I eat pretty much everything except for eggplants, mushrooms and until recently, olives. I know that sounds insane since everyone I've ever known loves mushrooms, but I can't stand the texture of the aforementioned. However, I believe it'll only be a matter of time before I start liking them since over the past few years, I have a acquired a taste for many other things I use to hate i.e. onions (where have you been all my life???), fresh mint, basil and cilantro in my pho (I use to eat pho like a 5 year old), tofu and as of two years ago, olives (while at a bar in Ibiza, Spain - there was nothing else to eat)! More recently, I discovered that I loved these bright green (see pic), Castelventrano olives, which were introduced to me by Tram.

So while I munched away and drank to my hearts content, she waltzed around her kitchen and made a Venetian squid linguine (that she bought from Pike's Place in Seattle), with smoked salmon and clams in a creamy vodka Sauce, served with a side salad and crab cake, topped off with some parsley which she plucked from her own garden!

Note to self: Start buying seeds to plant an herb garden (I already asked my Dad to section off a piece of land for me to garden in our back yard this Spring. He did a double-take, as I'm sure many of you would. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine myself wanting to dig in the dirt for "fun." Especially while living in New York, I thought I'd be perfectly content living in an 800 square foot apartment forever, with no yard work to ever worry about or cleaning to ever do (everyone had a cleaner - even if you lived in a studio and could barely afford rent, you had a cleaner :) But they say as you get older, you feel closer to the earth.

After dinner, Tram brought out dessert, which she picked up from the gourmet bakery at Freddy's on her way home from work (we can't expect her to hand make it all - the girl works too)! I've been reading up on how to take better food pictures. See me practice?

After finishing our bottle of wine, picking away the last of our desserts, and watching our flick, we ended the night in high spirits. Prior to the movie, all I had known of Julia Child was through re-runs of her show with Jacques Pepin (that French chef that doesn't seem to have very clean hands and spits in his foods all the time) and she never seemed to do anything besides hover over him and talk real high pitched. But Meryl Street did a wonderful interpretation of her. Who knew Julia Child was such a sanguine soul, with a certain liveliness to her that made her all the more interesting and a pioneer in French cooking for Americans?! She was nearly 40 years old when she went to cooking school in France, basically stumbling upon her talents and empire. That gives me and Tram some hope in our lives. Maybe someday I will start cooking! And like the other main character in the movie, Julie, maybe one day Tram will start blogging!