One night the author notices that the few items she's grabbed from the Korean grocery store are the very ingredients for Potage Parmentier, as described in Julia Childs' legendary cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking . She begins to cook - every one of the 524 recipes in the book, in the space of just one year. This is her story.

Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie Powell decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery. She finds her way to Fleischer's, a butcher shop where she buries herself in the details of food.

Presents Julie's story, as she prepares dishes ranging from oeufs en cocotte to bifstek saute au beurre, from Bitch Rice to preparing live lobsters. As the richness of the thousands of sauces she slaves over begins to spread into her life, she begins to find the joie de vivre that has been missing for too many years.