Nora Ephron Cooks with Food Critic Jeffrey Steingarten

How do you feel about that sandwich Jeffrey?

I m enjoying it very much.

Good, I m glad.

(guitar strumming)

I love cooking because if you follow the instructions

it comes out.

Which is not true of anything else in my life.

(Guitar strumming)

Food I think is my favorite thing.

That when I go somewhere I have no desire whatsoever

to see a famous Renaissance painting.

Right

I only want to go to the market.

Mhmm.

And I only want to go to the restaurants,

it s all I care about.

[Jeffrey] Does your family have a home-cooking

tradition out there in California?

Well we had a cook, but you know one of my first jobs

that my other gave me one summer

was that I was in charge of all the menus in our house.

It was such a great thing to learn.

[Jeffrey] Oh you mean how to instruct a cook?

Not how to, well, just how to make a menu.

(guitar strumming)

The first season Julia Child was on,

she was out of breath for almost the entire...

Every show.

There was a kind of suspense about whether

she was gonna get through it because she was so

very amateurish at the beginning.

[Jeffrey] So when did you first become aware of

Julie Powell?

[Nora] When I read Amanda Hesser s piece about her

in the Times.

I remember thinking what a great idea.

And then I thought what a horrible idea.

It s an amazing thing she did to do all that cooking

in a recipe you would never ever make

in this day and age.

Don t you find it amazing sometimes when you see

a home movie about how people live

and there s no food in it?

I know! And well the other thing I think

is very frustrating is when you see a movie

where there is food in it, but no one s eating it.

It s very rare in a movie that people just eat.

They love, you know, and that s what this movie s about,

it s people who love to eat.

I ll never find anything so completely up my alley,

as this movie was, because it was just,

everything I love. Every special of the foods.