Julie and Julia started as a blog by Julie Powell, became a book, also by Powell, and eventually a major motion picture starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. All three document Powell's efforts to cook her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook in one year's time.

The blog, book and movie explore the obvious and not-so-obvious ways that the project changed the life of Julie Powell.

This is how it all began. Julie Powell, a New Yorker in a dead-end clerical job decides to cook her way through Julia Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. She gives herself one year to complete the task and decides to document the effort on a blog called The Julie/Julia Project.

Much to Powell's surprise, the blog begins to attract readers and eventually the attention of Newsweek, CBS, and The New York Times, among others. At some point it even attracts the attention of Julia Child herself and her reaction is covered in the book that is born from the blog.

While the blog covers the day to day details of the Julie/Julia project, the book tells the larger story of that year and how it affected Powell, her husband, her family, and her friends. It details how the blog began and how it took on a life of its own.

In the book, Julie Powell's experiences are interspersed with fictional accounts of the lives of Julia and Paul Child. Those accounts were based on Julia and Paul Child's letters and biographical information about Julia Child.

Julie and Julia is the movie version of the book. It stars Meryl Streep as Julia Child and Amy Adams as Julie Powell. it is scheduled to be released on August 7, 2009.