Shelley Seid talks to Julie Powell about her rise to fame

Julie Powell sprang to fame with her book, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen.

It was the outcome of the blog she'd begun in 2002 to record her attempt to cook her way through the late Julia Child's seminal recipe book, Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The blog - witty, smart, filled with culinary disasters as well as moments of gastronomic glory - was so utterly original that it soon attracted a large and loyal fan base of blog readers (bleaders, as Powell calls them).

The blog led to the book and the book led to the hit movie, Julie and Julia, intertwining the stories of Powell and Child.

Powell is on her way to the Cape Town Toffie Food Festival. It will be her second visit to Africa; she spent some time in Tanzania with the Maasai, she tells me when I phone her at home in New York, and watched a goat being slaughtered and drank its blood.

Cape Town's City Hall will probably not be anywhere near as exciting but Powell seems to find grist for her mill in every circumstance. Take her second memoir - Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession - where she deals with a torrid, two-year extra-marital affair by organising herself a stint as an apprentice butcher.

"I thought it would be a good way to get rid of my aggravation," she says, "cleavers and blood and hacking - but it's not like that at all. Butchery is a delicate and meditative craft. It feels peaceful, almost spiritual, and I was fascinated and calmed by ushering an animal into meat in a responsible way."

She classes it alongside knitting or gardening. "It's rote and repetitive and soothing, and my mind was in such turmoil at the time."

It may have been cathartic, but the book received mixed reviews - too much information, they said, too self absorbed. But Powell has few regrets. "I started with the medium of the blog, and set the bar of intimacy and rawness early on. It became part of who I was as a writer. If I had started in 2008 I would have approached it with a savvier sense of self protection."

In 2002, blogging was a new medium. Powell, almost 30, frustrated with her life and her dull secretarial job, needed a project and had decided to cook her way through Child's book. It was husband Eric (the man she loves "like a pig loves shit") who suggested she blog. "What's a blog?" I asked him. "I had no idea how the medium would develop. It seemed like a good way to keep me honest and keep me writing, and that was the extent of my ambition at that point."

Powell admits to never having seen an episode of Child's show, but her mother had a copy of the book and the 11-year-old Powell found it enthralling.

"No one considered her a good writer but she really was and ... I kept looking at the book and at its structure and its craft and how it built off the basics into complex and intricate recipes.

Powell's blogging days are over, for now at least. She is busy with a novel, "a post-apocalyptic comedy of manners", and does not want to be pigeonholed as a foodie novelist; neither does she want to be a blogger, ranting on about issues. As she says, she can do that on Facebook.

Nevertheless, Powell constantly expresses her gratitude to Child - whom she was never able to meet - for helping her develop her voice and standing.

The Toffie Food Festival and Conference takes place at the Cape Town City Hall from September 3-4. Powell is speaking from 12:30-13:30 on September 4. For more information visit www.toffie.co.za