Julie Powell death: ‘Julie and Julia’ food writer dies of cardiac arrest aged 49

Family say renowned food writer Julie Powell died on 26 October

Food writer Julie Powell, who rose to fame while trying to emulate the culinary feats of Julia Child, has died at the age of 49.

Ms Powell died from a cardiac arrest at her home in Olivebridge, upstate New York, on 26 October, her widow Eric Powell toldthe New York Times.

In 2002, Ms Powell spent a year documenting her attempts to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking at her apartment in Long Island City for a food blog which she called The Julie/Julia Project.

It was later turned into the book Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, and then the 2009 movie Julie and Julia, starring Meryl Streep as Child and Amy Adams as Ms Powell.

According to an obituary on Eater.com, Ms Powell’s blog was “emblematic of the early days of food blogging”.

“Powell embodied a wry, exasperated tone when discussing both food and life, with no shortage of cursing and schadenfreude,” the obituary states.

The blog, published on Salon, earned a huge following and inspired fellow food writers to build up a following on social media by sharing their unvarnished home cooking techniques.

At the time, Ms Powell was nearly 30 and an “aspiring writer” who was working a “low-level administrative” job in Manhattan, the Times wrote.

Ms Powell told the Times in an interview that she decided on the project in “one of those panicked, backed-into-a-corner kind of moments”.

In 2005, Ms Powell told Salon that it was not just about food, but about the journey her decision had brought.

“Ultimately I think we get so scared that our choices are not going to lead where they need to, and we’re not going to have the right husband or the right career, that we just don’t make any choices at all.

“For me the idea of making my own choice and seeing it through to the end — even though there was no logical reason to do it — wound up being a freeing thing rather than a constraining thing,”

Julie and Julia was filmmaker Nora Ephron’s final project before her death in 2012.

Ms Powell wrote a second book Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession, in 2009 which focused on her marriage.